Billionaire Garavoglia family borrows $34M against six Manhattan properties

Lagfin, a Luxembourg-based company that manages the assets of the billionaire Garavoglia family of Italy, through the entity Boulevardier Spritz LLC (and others) as borrower signed an initial loan with lender Deutsche Bank through the entity Deutsche Bank Luxembourg SA valued at $34 million for six Manhattan properties with 23 residential units. Lagfin is the controlling shareholder of spirits producer the Campari Group.

The Lagfin purchases in New York City have not been previously reported. The buildings were bought without disclosing the true owner and were not reported in the trade press.

The properties are the four-unit office and retail building (O5) at 486 Broadway in SoHo, the four-unit (C4) at 680 Broadway in NoHo, and the eight-unit walkup building (C7) at 924 Third Avenue in Midtown East and 42 to 46 East 21st Street. Lagfin purchased the buildings between December 2020 and December 2022 paying a total of $57.5 million.
CoStar reported last year that the firm had made a similar series of investments in Chicago, totaling $106 million, but did not mention any acquisitions in New York City.
The loan closed on July 12, 2024 and was recorded on July 17, 2024. The six properties have 74,094 square feet of built space and 32,673 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 100,735 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The loan price per built square foot is $458 and the price per buildable square foot is $337 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 signatory for Lagfin was Paul Xuereb. Paul Xuereb leads the property management firm Tri-Star Equities, which manages the assets in New York. Luxembourg-based Lagfin is the company which manages the Garavoglia family investments.  Prior to this, Lagfin had no debt on the buildings.

The block

On the tax block of 486 Broadway, PincusCo has identified the owners of eight of the 20 commercial properties representing 280,346 square feet of the 387,586 square feet. The largest owner is Zada Realty, followed by Wing Yee and then Thor Equities.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 40 percent of the 387,586 square feet of built space are office buildings, with retail buildings next occupying 26 percent of the space.

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