Pinnacle Group Sells Rights to Upper West Side Apartment Tower for $88M – Commercial Observer
Pinnacle Group has offloaded another asset, this time on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
The prominent New York City landlord, which put a massive rent-stabilized portfolio into bankruptcy last year, sold its rights to an apartment building at 323 West 96th Street to private real estate company Lightstone Group for approximately $88 million, according to a source with knowledge of the deal. The Real Deal first reported the sale, citing filings by Pinnacle’s parent company, Zarasai Group, with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
The filings, dated Aug. 13, announced the successfully completed sale of Pinnacle’s 100 percent interest in the 15-story building’s lease rights and a 50 percent hold on the land rights. Daniel Parker, Gary Phillips and Will Silverman at Eastdil Secured Savills advised on the deal.
An $11 million surplus from the sale is slated to be deposited into the account of Series C bondholders. A spokesperson for Pinnacle Group could not be reached for comment on the most recent sale.
The property carried an existing loan balance of about $65 million as of late March, last transferred from Starwood Mortgage Capital to a Barclays-sponsored commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) trust in 2023.
Pinnacle secured the leasehold to 323 West 96th Street in 2007, according to city records, and paid another $27 million for its land rights stake in 2016. The 173-unit apartment building, built in 2001, sits at the corner of East 96th Street and First Avenue.
The sale comes days after news that Pinnacle offloaded a $128 million condominium and commercial portfolio spanning 39 transactions across Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan. The buyer was Friar Park JW, an entity with links to Tremada Holdings, an affiliate of London-based property company William Pears Group.
Pinnacle, led by Joel Wiener, placed a portfolio of roughly 5,000 rent-stabilized apartments across New York City into bankruptcy in May 2025 after facing approximately $574.4 million in debt. Summit Properties earlier this year won the portfolio at auction for $451.3 million.
A spokesperson for Eastdil declined to comment on the transaction, and representatives of Lightstone did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Emily Davis can be reached at edavis@commercialobserver.com.
