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NYC real-estate mogul has no plans to move for Cuomo's Penn Station plan

by Sea Point Realtors

Steve Roth, the 80-year-old real estate billionaire, has a dream.

With the blessing of Governor Andrew Cuomo, he plans to level much of the Penn Station area and build 10 skyscrapers.

But the 92-year-old Arnold Gumowitz is ready to destroy the hopes of the relative whippersnappers.

The real estate mogul owns 421 Seventh Avenue, an office building across from Madison Square Garden that will have to be demolished if Roth's controversial glass and steel supertalls are to be built.

But Gumowitz doesn't want to sell the 15-story building he bought 43 years ago. Here he runs his commercial real estate empire and still comes to work with his son every day.

There is also no way he wants it to be demolished from an eminent domain, a possibility he only learned about recently when he saw plans for the project with a drawing of a roughly 80-story tower in place of his own building.

"I'm looking for fairness, but if someone attacks me, I react," Gumowitz told The Post. "This is a generation property. This is also a piece of real New York. I also hate that this area is becoming just another impersonal Hudson Yards with nothing but tall buildings and no sunlight. "

With the state declaring the area "damaged" a year ago, Roths Vornado Realty and Empire State Development Corp (ESD) – the state agency running the project for Cuomo – have the right to demolish certain blocks in the designated area. At least 200 people will lose their homes and 9,000 employees will be unemployed if the project continues.

Steve Roth's Vornado Realty and New York State plan to demolish Gumowitz's buildings and others near Penn Station to build new skyscrapers.Matthew McDermott for the NY Post

Gumowitz's building is at a critical point for the proposed Empire Station project: it is where the state plans to build a subway entrance and enlarge the sidewalk.

State officials, hesitant about taking Gumowitz's building to a major domain, hinted in a recent parish council hearing on the matter that it was a card they could play if they had to.

But to take advantage of a significant domain, the ESD's plan would have to go through another review process and public hearing, said an official who refused to be named.

You could also purchase the building through a negotiated sale.

Good luck with that, said Evan Cooper, who has worked for AAG Management, Gumowitz's real estate management company, for 23 years.

"Roth and this project are coming like a maddening train to Arnold," said Cooper. "But what they don't realize is that Arnold is the immovable object."

Gumowitz 421 Seventh Avenue building.Matthew McDermott for the NY Post

The Gumowitz building, built in 1921, is an affordable address where accountants and therapists can have their own small private offices. His shop occupies the top two floors, including a dance floor where he used to practice tango with his late wife Anne.

It is opposite the Pennsylvania Hotel, which Roth owns and plans to tear down. But he still needs the location on which Gumowitz's building stands so that the project can proceed as planned.

Like many in the area, Gumowitz didn't even know the details of the so-called Empire Station Complex plan that would allow Vornado and other nameless developers to build the towers until he read about it in The Post in March. The new structures would reportedly generate revenue to pay for the renovation of Penn Station, which Cuomo is supporting.

The state's plans for the "Empire Station Complex".Development of the Empire State

The towers – including five so-called "supertalls" with a height of up to 1,300 feet and two over 900 feet – would surround 34th Street station within a radius of two blocks. Opponents say the project is a boondoggle that will give Roth tax breaks on the buildings and impress its shareholders, but may not do much to improve Penn Station.

Gumowitz, his son, Gary, and Cooper have hired lawyers who specialize in major domain threats to investigate. They are especially annoyed that the promotion of a major domain is driving potential tenants away.

A Vornado spokesman referred calls to ESD.

Gumowitz called Steven Roth's offer for the building an "insulting price."Patrick T. Fallon / Bloomberg via Getty Images

Gumowitz met with Roth twice to enlighten him. Once, the two of them had lunch at Roth's palatial dig in Central Park South 220 on Billionaire's Row, where they ate poached salmon in the library surrounded by Roth's expensive art collection. "We're two poor kids from the Bronx," Gumowitz said with a laugh to The Post.

Then Gumowitz invited Roth to the 421 Seventh Avenue conference room for tuna sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies. Gumowitz said Roth offered an "offensive price" for the building, meaning "Why should I sell?"

As a multimillionaire, Gumowitz comes the hard way. He grew up with his family in the East Bronx for $ 20 a month selling homemade ice cream in a store he opened with his brother when he was 21. When that business failed in Harlem, he got a job as a busboy at Grossinger's in the Catskills, worked his way up to assistant manager, and met a waitress, Anne, who would become his wife of 62.

In 1958 he studied a book titled How I Turned $ 1000 Into a Million in Real Estate in My Spare Time by William Nickerson and built a real estate portfolio of more than 40 buildings in New York and beyond with a nest egg of $ 10,000.

92-year-old Arnold Gumowitz still enjoys coming to work in the Midtown Manhattan building every day.Matthew McDermott for the NY Post

Gumowitz lost Anne in 2017. His longtime attorney, who he said had led many legal disputes for him, died last summer. But he still enjoys coming to work and has no plans to retire – or move, Cuomo and Roth damn it.

"I love being able to just go out into the garden and watch the Knicks play," he said. "I think it's great that I don't even have to give people an address. All I can say is we're one block from Macy's. We have a unique home here.

"Let them try to get me out."

source https://seapointrealtors.com/2021/07/24/nyc-real-estate-mogul-has-no-plans-to-move-for-cuomos-penn-station-plan/

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