Joseph Sitt, CEO of Thor Equities

Here's an excerpt from a Q&A in The Real Deal with Joe Sitt, the developer who is selling 7 acres of land to the City.

You have squabbled with the city over this land since 2005,
when you began to buy it. Over that time, the surviving amusement park
section shrunk to a shell of its former self. How does it feel for this
deal to be completed?

Yes. It feels really good, because when you work hard, you want to see
something moving forward. This is an incredible opportunity to be
partners with the city government to create one of the most talked
about real-estate development in the United States in decades.

Initially, your plan called
for a $1.5 billion mix of time-share hotels and a glass-enclosed water
park, in what many compared with Las Vegas. Now that you will be
squeezed into a smaller plot, what will it be? Will it look like the
old renderings?

We have to redo all of our plans, but we will still have millions and
millions of square feet of apartments and hotels and retail and
restaurants and enclosed amusements. Yes, it will still have the Las
Vegas component to it. The latter versions of the renderings are close
to what it will be.

Earlier this year, the city offered to
buy 10.45 acres of your holdings there for $105 million, which works
out to about $229 a square foot. Now, the city has paid $320 a foot.
That’s a big increase. And that’s close to what Manhattan land sold for
at the peak. How did you do it?

Today’s focus is not about the dollars. I’m happy, but that’s not my
main focus. My happiness is having a partner in the city of New York
and a commitment of dollars to getting something done there.

Read more at The Real Deal.