Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who revealed yesterday that he would enter the race for New York City Comptroller, has sought refuge in his father’s real estate company since receding from the limelight after a prostitution scandal in 2008, Capital New York reported.
Since leaving Albany, Spitzer has played a key role in several key real estate transactions. His work includes the Spitzer Enterprises purchase of the retail condominium at 350 West Broadway in February for nearly $30 million in late 2011 and the negotiated sale of the family’s garage and medical office condos at the Corinithian at 330 East 38th Street in Murray Hill.
“Eliot has been very, very active,” Robert Knakal, the chairman of Massey Knakal Realty Services, told Capital. “He’s acquired some tremendous assets in Washington and he’s aggressively looking for opportunities in New York.”
Spitzer — whose father, Bernard Spitzer, is a real estate developer — has focused on buying in prime areas: Central Park, Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue, as Jeffrey Moerdler, who represented the family’s real estate interests for 25 years, told Capital.
The Spitzer family portfolio, located exclusively in metropolitan Washington and Manhattan, includes 985 Fifth Avenue, where Eliot Spitzer once lived; 800 Fifth Avenue, where his parents now live; the mixed-use Crown Building at the southwest corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue and the Corinthian.
Spitzer declined to comment to Capital. [Capital NY] –Julie Strickland