Boymelgreen Besieged
The harder they come, the harder they fall. One of the city’s (and Brooklyn’s) most prolific developers of the last decade, Shaya Boymelgreen, has been getting hit from all sides in recent months. As a New York Times article detailed yesterday, the 58-year-old former asbestos inspector is juggling both bankruptcy and eviction in the wake…
The harder they come, the harder they fall. One of the city’s (and Brooklyn’s) most prolific developers of the last decade, Shaya Boymelgreen, has been getting hit from all sides in recent months. As a New York Times article detailed yesterday, the 58-year-old former asbestos inspector is juggling both bankruptcy and eviction in the wake of the real estate market bust and collapse of his business relationship with Lev Leviev. This guy was headed to be the next Robert Moses, Howard L. Zimmerman, an architect who had worked on three of Boymelgreen’s Brooklyn projects, told The Times. He just flamed out. I don’t think he had the infrastructure to sustain the growth.
A King of Real Estate, Fallen on Harder Times [NY Times]
Photo from Lost City
30K assessment on a conversion is beyond teething, imo. more like getting your wisdom teeth pulled sans novacaine.
btw, the “vision” also included building a lot of family-sized apts that found a lot of demand.
but totally agree with your point (last two paragraphs).
I think the quality (or lack) of Boylemgreen’s projects is WAY overstated – new construction ALWAYS has teething issues; and while his may have been in some occasions worse, I dont think that this a major issue (especially now since virtually everything he built is now up for a few years and any problems should be apparent by now)
His problem is that he had NO idea how to manage his projects. Unless the market is increasing 20% a yr (which it was) and you have access to real cheap capital (which he did) you just cant afford to have years long delays on projects, and endless litigation with prior purchasers like he did and still expect to not to lose your shirt.
It really is simple, he had the vision (or luck) to buy in places that people ignored (cheap land), those areas got hot and the endless appreciation and the initial low buy-in covered up the fact that he didnt know what the F he was doing. Then land got expensive (and he kept buying), appreciation slowed and then reversed, and Shaya’s incompetence caught up with him…..it happens every cycle.
Thanks, Broke!
you’re the exception that proves the rule, benson.
both wrt this site and wrt your condo building!
i have spoken to many, many folks in many of his developments. (and cityview is relatively benign, which i attribute that mostly to dumb luck! ok maybe he learned one or two things from his first efforts.)
is it possible your neighbor below was running from the assessment at newswalk? $5,000,000 / 173 = $30,000 / owner. ouch.
I’ll leave it to others to analyze the rise and fall of Boymelgreen. I’ll just make two statements that I know as fact:
-I purchased, and still live in, a Boymelgreen building. I am a satisfied customer.
-My neighbor directly below me lives in her second Boymelgreen building. She was apparently satisfied in her first purchase (Newswalk building) such that when she needed more space for her growing family, they purchased a new condo in my building.
From the NY Times:
Residents of the 173-unit Newswalk building, a former Daily News printing plant in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, that Mr. Boymelgreen finished converting into condos in 2002, have spent $5 million in repairs and legal fees to address structural problems, said Michael Rogers, a member of Newswalk’s condo board. He said that the building had so many leaks that some of its original concrete beams had started to fall apart.
“The Newswalk building in Prospect Heights has been falling apart from day 1.”
Are there problems? I hadn’t known that.
Can you hear my tiny violin? It’s playing his song…
The Newswalk building in Prospect Heights has been falling apart from day 1. Talk about shoddy construction.