Mr. Catsimatidis, 65, is the owner and chief executive of the Red Apple Group, a New York company with holdings in real estate, oil refining, retail petroleum products, convenience stores and the Red Apple and Gristedes supermarkets.
Mr. Catsimatidis also was a candidate for the Republican mayoral nomination.
Q. Everyone calls you Cats.
A. In high school they called me Catsi, and during the campaign, we cut it to Cats.
Funny story: Curtis Sliwa and Melinda Katz, who was running for Queensborough president last year, were coming down this street in Queens where they were campaigning, and they had a big sign that said, “Katz, Katz, Katz.” And we were coming up the other side of the street with “Cats, Cats, Cats.” And we met in the middle.
Q. Your bid for the New York mayoral race was cut short. Would you ever consider running again?
A. I am not going to say that. Look, I’ve known Bill de Blasio for 20 years, and I hope he does a good job. But I love politics; I love people; and if an open seat comes along that I think I would enjoy, I would definitely do it. I want to be in a position to make a difference. I’m keeping my options open.
Q. Much of your focus right now seems to be on real estate development.
A. Unless there’s an adverse change in New York City, my plan is to keep expanding our real estate development business. We have about four, five, six projects ready to build.
Q. Let’s talk about some of them, starting with your project in Coney Island.
A. We bought the land, right on the beach. We have the zoning all ready to go. We’re building three towers. We’re going to design and build them as rentals, but if the market is very, very hot, we have the ability to change it. If you go there on a sunny day, you fall in love!
Altogether there will be about 500 units. The first building that will go up — maybe in September — will be about 22 stories.
Q. And there’s development in Downtown Brooklyn, around Myrtle and Flatbush Avenue.
A. In 2007 we were going to build this as one big project — it was a $500 million project — except none of the banks had $500 million. They had the problem. I bought this property about 30 years ago — three city blocks. We paid about $400,000. Now it’s been estimated, just the land alone, at $200 million.
Four residential buildings. We built the first one. It’s a rental, about 110 units — studios, one-, two-, three-bedrooms — with a Red Apple supermarket and a CVS store at the bottom.
We began construction on the next building in November — we’re up to the fourth floor. We should be finished by this fall. There will be around 220 to 230 rental units. Then I pressed the button on another building. We are supposed to start the foundation by March or April.
Then the minute we put the foundation in we start on the fourth building, a 40-story tower. It will be rental, but maybe we’ll put condos on the top 10 floors. We’re reserving our rights.
Q. Could you ever see yourself developing luxury condominiums?
A. Right now I’m leaving that to Gary Barnett.
Q. You prefer to build and hold, don’t you?
A. I’m not a net seller.
Q. What else do you have in the pipeline?
A. We own the office building on 56th and 11th Avenue where the Lexus dealership is, and we have the same zoning, so right now our architects say we can build 22 stories there. It might be part hotel, residential or office — we don’t know. It’s our building. We’re going to knock it down. We’d move our offices somewhere else, possibly 1790 Broadway, where we are part owners of that office building.
Q. What’s your outlook for New York real estate?
A. I think New York is going to hit new highs — unless there’s something that the new mayor does that hurts the city. What could hurt it? Street crime could hurt it; adverse increase in taxes could hurt it; adverse demands for housing with an increase of 80/20 may hurt it. I could spend the next couple million dollars building in New York City, or I could spend the next couple million dollars building in Florida.
Q. Your children are involved in your business, aren’t they?
A. My daughter’s working for the company full time now. She’s starting to oversee Gristedes. She likes food. She spends time learning the real estate business.
My son is overseeing that oil company we bought in bankruptcy a year ago in Brooklyn, and then looks at the real estate business, too.
Q. Sounds like you’re grooming them to take over the business.
A. I hope sooner than later.
Q. Are you thinking of retiring?
A. To me, the definition of retirement is working four days a week.
via:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/realestate/commercial/john-a-catsimatidis.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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