Luxury Developer Lands $236M To Erect Tallest Building North of 72nd St.

Naftali Group, a prominent residential developer with multiple up-market properties on the UES, has secured a total of $236 million in funding from JPMorgan Chase and Starwoods for its latest residential venture: a 36-story tall luxury condo tower at 255 E. 77th St.

The building will reportedly be the tallest structure north of 72nd St. upon completion. It will contain 62 units and top out at 500 feet tall. Construction is well underway, as evidenced by a December 13 visit to the site.

Naftali Group bought the space on the northwest corner of E. 77th St.–which also encompassed 1481-1489 Second Ave.–from Sky Management Corp. in 2021, for just under $73 million. The Naftali Group reportedly demolished at least two buildings on the lot, including dozens of preexisting residential units, to make way for the new luxury development. It will add to the company’s portfolio of three sold-out condo buildings elsewhere in the neighborhood: 200 E. 83rd St., 1045 Madison Ave., and 1165 Madison Ave.

The 83rd St. building stands at 489 ft. tall and contains 86 units, meaning that the newer development on E. 77th St. will be both slightly taller and contain even less residential space. JPMorgan forked over $195 million, while Starwood pitched in $41 million.

Sky Management Corp. reportedly made for an infamous landlord before the sell-off to the Naftali Group. Sky Management’s CEO, the notorious Daniel Ohebshalom, had allegedly made violent threats in 2021 against a tenant at 1483 Second Avenue: Vero, a wine bar then-located on the ground floor. The bar had reportedly refused to take a buyout tethered to a redevelopment plan that Ohebshalom was pursuing. The wine bar were given 180 days to vacate the premises by Alliance 77 LLC, a subsidiary of Management Corp, which cited a demolition clause that would require them to do just that. Indeed, Vero was eventually sued by Alliance in order to enforce an eviction.

However, Vero claimed in a lawsuit of their own that a certain “John Doe” affiliated with Sky Management had paid the wine bar’s manager a visit during the back-and-forth, where he supposedly told him that “you better give up this place or you will end up in the back of a garbage truck.”

Consequently, Vero filed a suit of their own against Sky Management and Alliance 77 LLC in federal court–under the RICO Act.

In a court transcript viewed by Straus News, a lawyer representing the Vero bar’s owners also claimed that they had video of Daniel Ohebshalom entering the premises and trashing it himself. When filmed on one visit, he reportedly proclaimed that he had “friends in high places” and that the wine bar employees would be “dead soon.” Marko Matic, a manager at Vero, had reportedly told his lawyer that he had trouble sleeping at night and feared being killed in a “nontraditional way.” At one point, he even postulated that Ohebshalom would be happy to demolish the wine bar with its employees inside.

A federal district court judge declined to grant a preliminary injunction to stall Vero’s eviction, noting that the NYPD and the state court system could better resolve the conflict. Indeed, it appears that Vero moved out that fall.

Now, with JPMorgan’s hefty batch of financing for the Naftali Group’s forthcoming condo tower, it appears that such struggles may remain ghosts of the past.

The company’s namesake and CEO, Mika Naftali, said in a widely-circulated statement that “the closing of this most recent financing package represents not only Naftali Group’s esteemed reputation—especially in an extremely challenging market—but also our firm’s unwavering commitment to long-term investments in New York City.”