Affiliate of IMG Artists CEO acquires Lenox Hill office building from star antique appraiser Leigh Keno valued at $8.8M

An affiliate of IMG Artists CEO Alexander Shustorovich through the entity Transferco LLC acquired an interest from PBS television antique appraiser Leigh Keno valued at $8.8 million for the three-unit office building (O8) at 127 East 69th Street in Lenox Hill, Manhattan. The buyer entity is affiliated with the prior lender entity, and the property was nearly sold at a UCC auction in 2019.
The deal closed on August 16, 2022 and was recorded on August 26, 2022. The property has 7,349 square feet of built space and 12,525 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 19,881 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $1,194 and the price per buildable square foot is $441 per the PincusCo analysis. (The price per square foot analysis is the transaction price divided by square feet as reported in public records and assumes no air rights have been sold.)
The buyer entity is an affiliate of millionaire Russian-American Alexander Shustorovich, the CEO of IMG Artists who is also owner of Pleiades Publishing, which publishes translated Russian scientific journals. The building has been the home to Leigh Keno’s Keno Auctions, an auction company. Keno is an appraiser listed as “Currently touring” with PBS’s Antiques Road Show.

In 2000, Keno bought the property and at the time borrowed $3.4 million. By 2018 Leigh Keno upped the loan to $9.86 million with debt from Pleiades Financial Services, an affiliate of Shustorovich.

In 2019 Keno put the property into bankruptcy (19-12647-shl) to block a UCC auction of Keno’s interest in the property, claiming it was worth $13 million and that a portion of the building was rented to the Pace Gallery that in 2019 was paying $13,685 per month according to a court filing. That bankruptcy case was dismissed in 2020. A tax lien sale was recorded against the property in 2022.

A portion of the loan was recorded as satisfied simultaneously with the transfer, with Ruben de Semprun, who is an executive at Pleiades Publishing’s sister company also owned by Shustorovich, Allerton Press,  signing on behalf of the lender Pleiades Financial Services. The buyer entity is listed at the same address as the lender Pleiades Financial Services. Pleiades is a translator and publisher of Russian scientific journals, and its president Alexander Shustorovich donated $1 million to the Trump Inaugural Committee.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer Alexander Shustorovich had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months. Shustorovich owns the office building 7 West 54th Street, which is headquarters to IMG Artists, Pleiades and Allerton.
The seller Leigh Keno had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period. The former owners according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development includes Leigh Keno, head officer and Mitchell Keno, officer. The business entity is 127 East 69th Street Llc. The 7,349-square-foot property generated revenue of $439,176 or $60 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.

The property

The 127 East 69th Street parcel has frontage of 22 feet and is 100 feet deep with a total lot size of 2,209 square feet. The zoning is R9X which allows for up to 9 times floor area ratio (FAR) for residential with inclusionary housing. The property is in the Upper East Side Historic District. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $1.7 million.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property since September of 2020. In addition, according to city public data, the property has received $125 in OATH penalties in the last year.

Development

There are no active new building construction projects or major alteration projects with initial costs more than $5 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In Lenox Hill, the bulk, or 35 percent of the 51.9 million square feet of commercial built space are elevator buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 28 percent of the space. In sales, Lenox Hill has the highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $3.1 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Lenox Hill has had very little major development activity relative to other neighborhoods.It had 857,000 square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 2 percent of the neighborhood’s built space. There were two pre-foreclosure suit filed among other office buildings in the past 12 months.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of seven of the 32 commercial properties representing 157,403 square feet of the 293,940 square feet. The largest owner is Union Club of the City of New York, followed by Nomad Ventures Usa LLC and then Isaac Chetrit.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 32 percent of the 274,752 square feet of built space are hotel buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 24 percent of the space.

Direct link to Acris document. link