An heir to the Goldman property empire has snapped up a Tribeca home as a twisting legal drama over his stake in his grandfather’s estate continues to play out.
Steven Gurney-Goldman has purchased a 4,200-square-foot condo on Warren Street for $7 million, according to a deed published in the city register Tuesday.
The four-bedroom unit in a prewar doorman building at West Broadway features four baths, a laundry room and gym, and also sports details like exposed brick walls and industrial columns.
Gurney-Goldman, a partner at Hudson Valley-focused real estate firm Arena Capital Partners, and his wife, Helen Cabot-Goldman, signed a contract for the unit January 24 and closed in an all-cash deal April 14, property records show.
The sellers were furniture designer Ornella Pisano, the founder of Brooklyn-based Ercole Home, and musician Pietro Russino, based on the deed. The couple had owned the home since 2000, records show, though it’s unclear what they paid for it.
But Pisano and Russino managed to sell the home relatively quickly and close to their asking price, no small feat in a market that often seems stuck in recovery mode. They listed the condo unit in May 2024 at $7.5 million, according to StreetEasy, and so scored slightly less than they first sought.
Gurney-Goldman, whose four-year-old firm invests in multifamily buildings in upstate communities such as Kingston, N.Y., has made real estate headlines in recent months not for his own acquisitions but for court battles against his aunt Jane Goldman, a daughter of Sol Goldman.
A Brooklyn grocer’s son whose portfolio encompassed 13 million square feet by the time he died in 1987, Sol Goldman was also an owner of the Chrysler Building in the 1960s and 1970s. His estate had a value of $1 billion when it entered probate court upon his death, legal filings show, though it’s presumed to be worth several times that today.
In addition to Jane, Sol Goldman’s children included son Allan, Gurney-Goldman’s father, who died in 2022; daughter Amy Goldman; and daughter Diane Goldman Kemper.
A year after Allan Goldman’s death, Gurney-Goldman and Amy Goldman sued Jane Goldman for allegedly cheating them out of their fair share of the family holdings by supposedly undervaluing sites through improper appraisals.
But a Manhattan judge ruled against Gurney-Goldman’s claim in August, and an appeals court upheld the decision in February, according to reporting in The Real Deal.
Still, the Gurney-Goldman team has not thrown in the towel and reportedly plans to continue to litigate the case on broader grounds that involve Jane Goldman’s alleged mismanagement of the family firm, Solil Management.
A related case unfolding in a Delaware court hinges on how much sway Gurney-Goldman should have over the Goldman empire because he’s Sol Goldman’s grandson and not a first-generation descendant. Last year, a judge agreed with Gurney-Goldman’s more assertive interpretation. But Jane Goldman filed an appeal in the case this month.
A spokeswoman for Gurney-Goldman said her client had no comment, and his broker in the deal, Douglas Elliman’s Josh Winston, also did not respond to a request for comment. Also, Ugo Russino, a Compass agent who represented Pisano and Russino, declined to comment.
