Charles Bendit, a chief executive of the development powerhouse Taconic Partners, has found a taker for his former home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
A little more than a year after picking up a co-op on West 81st Street, Bendit has sold his previous residence, a townhouse at nearby 40 W. 74th St. The sale price for the seven-level Beaux-Arts edifice was $16.5 million, according to a deed that appeared in the city register Wednesday.
The deal closed Nov. 29. But Bendit and wife Karyn, a philanthropist, had been trying to sell No. 40 since May 2022, when they listed it for about $20 million, meaning it required about an 18% discount to land a buyer. That purchaser is listed on the paperwork as 40 West Revocable Trust, with real estate lawyer Michael Dinowitz serving as its trustee.
The townhouse, near Central Park, had been in the Bendit family for decades. In 1980, Bendit’s parents, Benjamin and Rosalyn, then living in suburban New Jersey, bought No. 40 with another couple, Lewis and Susan Sharp, who were looking for investment partners after a previous couple pulled out of the deal, according to an account in The New York Times. The foursome paid $375,000, split equally among the Bendits and Sharps, with each couple putting $100,000 down.
“The Bendits, who will occupy the top half, are busy remodeling in contemporary design, while the Sharps, staunch preservationists, are restoring the original 1902 detail in their lower half,” the story said.
Today that modern-atop-antique look endures at the 25-foot-wide townhouse, which also features a gym, home office and landscaped roof deck.
Benjamin Bendit, a lawyer, died in 1984, though Rosalyn continued to live at No. 40 until 2018, when she relocated to an assisted-living facility in California. She died last year at 91, according to an obituary. Although it functioned as a two-family in recent years — the building has two kitchens — No. 40 is technically a three-unit condo, records show.
It’s unknown when Charles Bendit moved in. Cathy Franklin, the Corcoran Group agent who marketed the property, declined to comment through a spokesman. But records indicate Bendit purchased unit No. 1 in 2003 for $1.5 million and unit No. 2 in 2007 for $1.7 million, both from family members or family-related entities, records show. Details about when the Sharps sold their portion and the history of the third unit are unclear from public records.
Bendit didn’t travel far. His new home — a five-bedroom, 5 ½-bath co-op with 5,000 square feet — is at 15 W. 81st St. It cost the Bendits $10.5 million in October 2022, records show.
Taconic has taken some big swings and largely connected, such as with its co-development Essex Crossing, a 6-acre mixed-use megaproject on the Lower East Side. And in 2010 the firm, whose other chief executive is Paul Pariser, orchestrated one of the city’s largest-ever single-building sales when it unloaded the prewar warehouse 111 Eighth Ave. to Google (now Alphabet Inc.) for $1.8 billion.
But there have been apparent misses. Taconic last spring unloaded a 14-building Bronx rental portfolio after just a few years of ownership at a 40% loss.