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The group, owned by brothers Joseph and Meyer Chetrit, paid for $31.5 million for the buildings situated in Penn Plaza.
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Joseph and Meyer Chetrit, owners of the Chetrit Group had a plan when they paid out $31.5 for two adjacent properties situated opposite the Madison Square Garden in the highly desirable Penn Plaza commercial district- to knock them down and start again.
The Chetrit Brothers bought the two buildings, situated on West 34th Street from the Brooklyn-based retail chain Conway Stores owned by the Abe Cohen family, which they now intend to develop in a partnership deal with partnership deal with Cornell Realty Management, who are also based in Brooklyn.
Almost as soon as the deal was signed the Chetrit Group filed demolition plans with New York’s Department of Buildings to demolish the two buildings, which untypically for New York are only one- and three-stories high. According to sources in the real estate industry, the site on which the two buildings, listed as numbers 245 and 247 can be combined to easily accommodate at least a 25, 000-square-foot property.
Penn Plaza is becoming an increasingly popular shopping destination for price-conscious New Yorkers, with the commercial real estate industry point to the fact that rental charges in and around the area have been rising steadily in the last few years, especially since 2012 where rental prices have shot up by as much as 30 percent.
The two properties had not been used as Conway outlets for a number of years and had been rented out to another concern. However, with the property deal pending Conway agreed to let their tenants out of the lease.
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Joseph and Meyer Chetrit were both born in Morocco during the 1960s to a family who were already well financially established with thriving businesses in the field of textiles and shipping.
Meyer was the first of the four Chetrit brothers to arrive in New York in the late 1980s and initially to represent the families textile industries where he was followed by Meyer and another two brothers, Jacob and Juda. The four brothers began to slowly develop property interests during the early nineties, with their property portfolio growing to considerable proportions under the heading of the Chetrit Group.
In 2011 the Chetrit Group split up into two separate companies, with Joseph and Meyer Chetrit continuing to operate as the Chetrit Group, while their brothers Jacob and Juda, established a completely separate entity to be known as the Chetrit Organization.
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