Pharma king sets Brooklyn townhouse record in pursuit of mega-mansion
Pandemic-friendly townhouses are setting new records across the city.
In Brooklyn, pharma king/activist investor Behzad Aghazadeh has spent $16 million on a Pierrepont Street townhouse and carriage house in the tony neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights that he is hoping to combine into a mega-mansion, according to documents filed with the city.
It’s a townhouse record for the borough — half a million more than the current records.
In 2018, actors Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany bought a $15.5 million townhouse just steps from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. That 8,000-square-foot mansion comes with striking views of the Manhattan skyline.
Photographer Jay Maisel also paid $15.5 million for a mansion on Pacific Street in Cobble Hill the same year. Brooklyn’s most expensive property, however, is a penthouse that Oscar-winning actor Matt Damon bought for $16.7 million last year, as Gimme exclusively reported.
Brooklyn prices, however, pale in comparison to Manhattan, where Melissa Schiff, ex-wife of billionaire George Soros’s son Robert, sold her West Village townhouse for $31.5 million in an off-market deal — a record for the West Village neighborhood, as Gimme exclusively reported.
If Aghazadeh has his way — and the powerful New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission signs off — he plans to create a mega-mansion out of a 25-foot-wide landmarked brownstone he bought for $12.5 million and the carriage house behind it, at 35 Love Lane, which he bought for $3.5 million.
Both deals occurred last May. However, the Pierrepont Street deal was not recorded until Nov. 13, according to property records. (The mansion was most recently on the market for $14.5 million; the brokers were Douglas Elliman’s Lindsay Barton Barrett, Christina Abad and Cristina Criado.)
The sales were hidden behind LLCs and Aghazadeh was revealed as the buyer of both properties when his architect, Baxt Ingui, submitted plans on his behalf to the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
The pharma king’s project will cost millions. But Aghazadeh has the cash — an activist investor, he is managing partner of Avoro Capital Advisors. He’s also the chairman of Immunomedics, a small biopharmaceutical company developing targeted therapies for cancer treatment — and he is in line for an eye-popping $2.35 billion payout if the company goes through with its sale to Gilead Sciences, according to a report in Fierce Pharma, an online trade publication.
“Behzad Aghazadeh, who has been Immunomedics’ chairman since 2017, is in line for a whopping $2.35 billion from selling the roughly 11 percent stake he has in Immunomedics shares to Gilead, according to a securities filing,” Fierce Pharma reported in September.
The landmarked brownstone is 8,000 square feet and features five bedrooms.
The same month, Aghazadeh bought the carriage house, at 35 Love Lane — abutting the back of the Pierrepont Street mansion — for $3.5 million in an off-market deal. That document lists an address at 428 5th St. in Park Slope. Aghazadeh bought that property in 2007 for $1.36 million, according to city property records.