Remembering Jacob Chetrit, Influential NYC Investor

Jacob Chetrit, one of four brothers who forged a powerful New York City-based investment business, has died at 69. His death was reported by Crain’s New York Business.

The Chetrit Group, founded by Chetrit’s brother Joseph, and which included their brothers Juda and Meyer, has earned a reputation for keeping a low media profile. However, the clan has been involved with some of the highest-profile deals of recent decades.

In 2004, a joint venture of the Chetrit Group, Joseph Moinian and American Landmark paid $841million for the Sears Tower, the Chicago office property that reigned as the world’s tallest building for a quarter century and is still the third tallest in the U.S. In 2015, Blackstone paid a reported $1.3 billion for the property, which by then had been renamed Willis Tower.

For more than a decade, Jacob and his brother Juda ran the Chetrit Organization, an entity that operated separately from the Chetrit Group but provided some management services to the original company.

The Chetrit Organization’s high-profile holdings have included 850 Third Ave., a 21-story, 600,000-square-foot Manhattan office building that HPS Capital Partners acquired in 2023. The firm also owns 1 Whitehall Street, an office tower in Manhattan’s Financial District. Completed in 1962, the 322,000-square-foot property was acquired from Rudin Management in 2019 for $182 million.

As reported by Crain’s New York Business in October, LoanCore Capital Credit filed a lawsuit in October to assume control of the building on the grounds that the Chetrit Organization hadn’t made a payment on a $156 million mortgage since 2023 or on another office property located at 428 Broadway.