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Credit Earl Wilson/The New York Times
Mr. Levy, 64, sold or lost many of his holdings during the recession and was banned from selling real estate securities in New York after being convicted of dipping into a reserve fund at 225 Rector Place, a condo conversion. He maintained that any money taken was used on the building.
Mr. Levy has recently returned to the business, focusing on small fixer-upper rental and retail properties.
Interview conducted and condensed by
VIVIAN MARINO
Q. How do you pronounce your given name?
A. YA-ear.
Q. So you’re making a comeback in real estate.
A. Yes. I come back as a representative of the family. I work together with the family.
Q. The family business is called Time Century Holdings L.L.C. What exactly is your role there?
A. Adviser.
I’m involved with whatever is needed. We all run it together.
Q. How big was your former real estate empire?
A. In real estate, we had a good run. We did all different types of deals: commercial, residential, offices, retail. We were involved with all different types of buildings. The sale value was like $2 billion. But the equity was not $2 billion. Some of them were with partners; some of them were not with partners. We sold everything; we lost a few, like many other people in 2008.
Q. And this time around?
A. We now start to buy and we are going to build up. It’s just a question of time. It’ll be another year or two when we start to play the big deal in the city.
Q. How many properties are in the portfolio?
A. About 10. Some mixed-use, some retail. We have a few other locations in the city. Downtown, I have something on Fulton Street.
Everything is in the trust.
Q. The family business recently bought a row of buildings on West 28th Street, an area known as Tin Pan Alley.
A. Yes. There are six: low-rise with good retail. The area is getting very strong.
For the time being we keep it as retail. We have some rental apartments upstairs. But the focus was on the retail. We’ve already replaced almost all the commercial tenants and we raised the rent. We’re getting about $120 a foot.
The apartments upstairs, we didn’t start to rent yet, but we are planning to get about $60 a foot. We bought a few tenants out. We’re planning to stabilize the building and maybe if we can, we’re going to fix it and keep it as is for the time being. In the future, this can be a development site.
Q. What was the purchase price of these buildings?
A. About $22 million.
Q. Are you looking to buy anything else in New York City?
A. We’re working on a few big deals. I cannot talk about them right now. I’m talking about mixed-use. It could be commercial office with retail mix; it can be rental apartments with retail mix.
Q. How will your plans to grow the business be affected by the lifetime ban by the New York attorney general from selling real estate securities, which includes condominiums and co-ops?
A. I’m allowed to build a rental apartment if I want, but no condo or co-op. That’s me personally. My family is something else.
Right now I’m not linked to any condominium. If we want to do condos in another big state, like Florida, we can. I’m looking to develop in Florida — the South Beach area. The family bought a shopping mall in Florida.
There are so many things in real estate that you can do that has nothing to do with condos or co-ops in New York City.
Q. Are you working to lift the ban?
A. We’re going to. We’re ready for the right time. I’m not ready to do anything now. Maybe by next year.
I was accused of something that wasn’t true. I have the proof that nothing was done wrong. I hope that in the future they will take it off.
Q. Why didn’t you appeal in court?
A. See, I was planning to appeal in court. But I have a judgment and the A.G. said if I don’t appeal they’re going to make a settlement and reduce the amount of the judgment. So I didn’t want to take a chance — I made a deal with them. It was $7.5 million, and we paid $5.5 million.
Q. Do you have any regrets about what happened at 225 Rector Place?
A. What happened to almost every developer in 2008?
I took nothing personally. Any money went against the building. Over all, the money taken from that fund was $1.55 million, and it all went against the building. Plus, I put additional money from my own pocket.
Q. Have you had much contact with Kent Swig, with whom you partnered on the Sheffield?
A. We see each other sometimes. We just say hello and that’s it. It wasn’t the best experience.
Q. You were accused of throwing an ice bucket at him.
A. Nothing really happened. He got a little wet. It was made into a big deal.
I’ve had many partners in my life and this was the only guy who I had a bad experience with.
It was a bad marriage. It happens sometimes.
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