“Survive ’til twenty-five.”
His “twenty-five” motto recalls the spirits-lifting “Stay alive ‘til ninety-five” in the early 1990s, when too much new office space flooded Midtown just as demand shrunk and developers lost empty, gleaming towers to their banks. Eliasaf was quick to credit Fortress, which converted debt on 125 Greenwich to an equity position, as the project’s true heroes.
He said that firms such as Northwind will also play a larger role in commercial-debt financing now that the major banks have gotten cold feet, especially since“We’re now in the front row of providing loans to major projects,” Eliasaf said. “Our role is providing the capital that you simply can’t get from banks. Most Northwind loans are for mixed-use combinations of residential and retail.”