An investor and think-tank founder once known as the “Homeless Billionaire” for his eschewing of his own personal real estate has snapped up a string of buildings in Boerum Hill.
Nicolas Berggruen has purchased nine prewar mixed-use sites on a single block of Atlantic Avenue for $25 million, according to a deed that appeared in the city register Friday.
The deal for Nos. 525-541 Atlantic, which went into contract Aug. 8 and closed Dec. 18, was officially transacted by a shell company, Atlantic Gardens LLC, the deed shows. But the document was signed by Koonal Gandhi, chief investment officer of Berggruen Holdings, the Los Angeles-based investment arm of the Nicolas Berggruen Charitable Trust, according to the company’s website.
Since 2020, Berggruen has partnered with local developer Firebird Grove in a $500 million effort to acquire historic multifamily properties in Brooklyn and Manhattan that have been “undermanaged and operationally distressed,” the site says.
The seller of the properties, Joseph Sitt-led firm Thor Equities, has suffered a series of setbacks with many of its city retail properties in recent months, including losing two Manhattan buildings, 446 W. 14th St. in the Meatpacking District and 440 Broadway in SoHo, to foreclosure during the summer.
But the “distressed” label may not apply to the Atlantic Avenue sites—all of them brightly painted 3-story properties with apartments atop storefronts. All their retail berths appear occupied by such tenants as a sandwich shop, a tattoo-removal service and a chocolatier. And loans backed by the properties do not seem to be in trouble.
Thor paid $23 million for the nine sites in 2013, a year after the opening of the nearby Barclays Center, according to the register, and so realized about a 10% profit in about a decade.
More broadly Thor, a global firm with a $20 billion portfolio, has been pivoting away from New York in favor of other markets. Last month, in a blockbuster trade, it unloaded a 312,000-square-foot Amazon-occupied warehouse at 280 Richards St. in Red Hook for $157 million.
“We’re pleased to have successfully exited our investment in Atlantic Gardens, a property that has benefited from the ongoing growth in Boerum Hill,” Sitt said in a statement. “As always, we remain focused on strategically positioning our portfolio in high-growth areas and identifying opportunities for continued success.”
Berggruen’s father, Heinz Berggruen, who reportedly was a friend of Pablo Picasso, amassed an extensive art collection. The Paris-born and –raised Nicolas Berggruen, who attended New York University in the 1980s, counted hedge fund mogul Bill Ackman among his early partners, according to a New York Times profile. In the mid-2000s he offloaded his homes in New York and Miami in favor of staying in hotel rooms in order to live less materialistically even as he held on to a private jet.
In 2010 Berggruen founded the California-based philosopher-funding nonprofit group Berggruen Institute, which annually confers $1 million awards on writers, jurists and professors for “advancing ideas that shape the world.”
SoHo-based Firebird, which was previously linked to the $32 million acquisition of 11-building Greenwich Village cul-de-sac Patchin Place in 2022, could not be reached for comment by press time.
