Legion, SMA Equities To Partner On UES Resi Development
Victor Sigoura’s Legion Investment Group is adding another project to its Upper East Side portfolio.
The developer is partnering with Samy Mahfar’s SMA Equities to develop a 300,000-square-foot residential building on the corner of East 84th Street and Third Avenue.
The partners secured a $99 million loan from BDT & MSD Partners and Deutsche Bank, which closed Thursday. A Walker & Dunlop team led by Aaron Appel, Dustin Stolly and Sean Bastian helped arrange the financing.
SMA Equities, real estate investor David Moussazadeh and Rex Properties’ Francis Moezinia began assembling the site in 2007, when entities tied to them purchased 1491-1493 Third Avenue for $33.8 million, according to public records.
The trio bought the neighboring site, 1495 Third Avenue, for $18.2 million in 2016 and paid $12.5 million to add 1497 Third Avenue to the assemblage last year.
Demolition on the site has already begun, after the Department of Buildings issued permits earlier this summer. The duo tapped Hill West Architects to design the project.
The development will boost Legion’s footprint in the neighborhood, which already includes a 19-story 31-unit luxury condo at 109 East 79th Street, where banking executive Joseph Rallo and his wife, Ashley, paid more than $25 million for a penthouse in 2023.
Sigoura’s firm is also partnering with Nahla Capital on 1122 Madison Avenue, where earlier this year, a buyer inked a deal to purchase a penthouse priced at nearly $90 million. Sales at the 26-unit project launched at the start of the year, and by August, only two units, each asking roughly $39 million, remained available.
Apart from the Upper East Side, Legion is behind 550 West 21st Street, an 83-unit condominium on the West Chelsea waterfront designed by Danish architect Thomas Juul-Hansen. Legion nabbed a $155 million construction loan from Eldridge Real Estate Credit for the project in October.
The firm and Gindi Capital are also developing 38 Gramercy Park East, after completing the assemblage last February.
Mahfar, Moussazadeh and Moezinia have teamed up on other New York City real estate deals dating back decades. Moussazadeh and Moezinia developed a rental project at 83 Franklin Street in Tribeca in the early 2010s.
More recently, in 2022, Mahfar and Moussazadeh bought a majority stake in a development site at 280 Houston Street from members of the Hirsch family for $36.8 million.
Read more
Legion, Nahla Capital nab buyer for 1122 Madison Ave penthouse asking $90M
New York’s new dev pipeline could bounce back this fall
Samy Mahfar, investors buy 421a site on Houston Street for $37M
