• Josh S. Winefsky advises clients in sophisticated real estate transactions in New York City and throughout the United States. Josh represents owners, funds, developers, real estate investment trusts (REITs), family offices and other institutions. He routinely handles acquisitions and dispositions of both fee and equity interests; leases for commercial spaces as well as ground and net leases, including in the context of sale-leaseback transactions; joint venture and other equity investments; debt financings; and, in New York City, all aspects of condominium projects. An effective communicator with a direct, commonsense approach, Josh provides pragmatic, business-oriented counsel and facilitates issue-solving in even the most intricate and challenging deals.

    Josh regularly represents Brookfield Property Group, the leading alternative asset manager in the United States, in commercial transactions involving the acquisition and disposition of assets in the multifamily, mixed-use and self-storage spaces, including related financings, from coast to coast.

    Josh handles all varieties of leasing matters and is often called upon by major institutions to negotiate their most complicated leases. Companies including New York Life Insurance Co., Lazard, Blue Owl Capital and Institutional Shareholders Services look to Josh to handle their national tenant-side — and, in some instances, landlord-side — leasing transactions, to provide them with consistent and value-focused counsel portfolio-wide. He has negotiated office space leases in numerous major markets and sub-markets across the United States, including New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Austin, Boston, San Diego and Memphis.

    Josh’s recent leasing transactions include representing Blue Owl Capital in the negotiation of an office lease for approximately 137,000 square feet at 375 Park Avenue (the Seagram Building); New York Life Insurance Co. in the negotiation of a sublease of approximately 47,000 square feet at 1 World Trade Center; VICI Properties Inc., as landlord, in a 25-year triple-net lease for a portion of the Cabot Citrus Farms luxury golf resort in Brooksville, Florida; and The Browning School in the negotiation of a 99-year ground lease on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

    Josh also represents developers of high-profile, complex mixed-use condominium and cooperative projects, implementing creative governance structures tailor-made to address the nuances of a specific project. He guides clients through the various phases of condominium and cooperative formation as well as through the sales process, including the preparation and filing of offering plans and applications for no-action letters with the New York State Department of Law. Josh’s current condominium projects include three of the highest-profile developments in New York City — the conversion of the world-famous Waldorf Astoria hotel into a mixed-use condominium, Extell’s Central Park Tower and CIM Group’s 432 Park.

    Josh’s experience in both general commercial transactions and condominium developments allows him to bring a unique multidisciplinary perspective to his work, providing cutting-edge counsel on commercial transactions relating to condominium assets, including bulk sales, transfers and leases of commercial units; financings secured by condominium assets; and the structuring of tax-exempt leasehold ownership condominiums (TELOC) for not-for-profit entities.

    Josh is also well-versed in the emerging market in New York City for Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) loans (as well as Local Law 97), and he has spoken on and written about C-PACE on numerous occasions.

    Josh was named a 2021 Law360 Rising Star in real estate and a National Law Journal Trailblazer for real estate and construction law. In 2019 and 2020, he was named a Crain’s New York Real Estate Rising Star. He was named a New York Super Lawyers Rising Star in real estate from 2015 through 2019.

    Josh is a member of Kramer Levin’s Hiring Committee and is part of the firm’s ESG Task Force. He is also a member of the Real Estate Roundtable’s Committee on Equity, Diversity & Inclusion.

    Experience

    • Represented VICI Properties Inc., a publicly traded real estate investment trust, in multiple aspects of its $789 million acquisition of the Harrah’s New Orleans hotel and casino. This highly complex transaction involved negotiating a purchase and sale agreement, through which VICI acquired the property and provisions of a master lease, leasing the casino back to the seller to operate it. Josh has also advised VICI throughout a triparty negotiation of an amended and restated ground lease between the city of New Orleans, VICI and the seller, which permits the assignment of the leasehold interest in the property to VICI and the simultaneous leaseback to the seller. This particularly challenging negotiation involved modifying numerous provisions of the ground lease to protect VICI’s REIT status.

    • Represented The Walt Disney Co. in the sale of its ABC campus, including nine buildings on the Upper West Side, for $1.2 billion to Silverstein Properties. The deal included the negotiation of a variation of a triple-net lease that allows The Walt Disney Co. to continue to occupy the campus following the closing.

    • Represented New York Life Insurance Co. in the negotiation of a lease for more than 190,000 square feet in a Class A office tower in White Plains, New York.

    • Represented Property Markets Group in connection with obtaining mortgage and mezzanine construction loans to finance the development of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel & Residences in Miami, Florida.

    • Represented Safehold Inc. in connection with its acquisition and simultaneous 99-year leaseback of One World Trade Center in Long Beach, California.

    • Represented VICI in its acquisition (together with Century Casinos Inc.) of Isle Casino Cape Girardeau in Cape Girardeau, Missouri; Lady Luck Casino Caruthersville in Caruthersville, Missouri; and Mountaineer Casino, Racetrack & Resort in New Cumberland, West Virginia, for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $385 million. Simultaneous with the closing of this transaction, VICI entered into a triple-net master lease agreement with Century Casinos related to the assets.

    • Represented a real estate operator in the concurrent negotiations of the acquisition of a highly coveted retail condominium unit in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and a joint venture agreement with a limited partner and a mortgage financing relating to such acquisition.

    • Represented the owner of a property located on the Long Island City waterfront in the negotiation of a development management agreement with a real estate developer that provided for a multiphase, mixed-use development of the site.

    • Represented a global insurance company in its acquisition of a commercial office building located in Philadelphia. The transaction involved highly complex issues including the lack of sufficient on-site parking. In order to guarantee parking rights for tenants of the building in perpetuity, a number of long-term ground leases and ground subleases were negotiated with neighboring property owners.

    • Represented an institutional investor in its simultaneous acquisition of a development site and corresponding development rights in Seattle for an aggregate purchase price of $124 million.

    • Represented Del Monte Pacific Limited on real estate matters in connection with the acquisition of the consumer foods business of Del Monte Corp. for $1.675 billion and in the mortgage financing in connection with the acquisition, which transaction involved the acquisition of 39 fee properties and the assumption of 69 leased properties.

    • Represented VICI Properties Inc. in its acquisition from Caesars Entertainment Corp. of the real property associated with the iconic Harrah’s Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas for approximately $1.14 billion and its simultaneous $73.6 million sale to Caesars of undeveloped land adjacent to the Las Vegas Strip, upon which Caesars intends to construct a 300,000-square-foot convention center.

    • Represented private equity firm Third Point in the negotiation of a lease to occupy the top floors of 55 Hudson Yards, comprising approximately 89,000 square feet.

    • Represented numerous private equity funds in negotiating joint venture agreements relating to the ownership of properties of various asset classes nationwide.

    • Represented a private equity firm in the disposition of an office asset located in Long Island City, Queens, to a public REIT for $142 million.

    • Represented a client in the negotiation of a programmatic joint venture with an investor partner, which established a platform for the acquisition and financing of office properties throughout the United States.

    • Represented a global insurance company in numerous acquisitions in the past several years throughout the United States, including office, multifamily and industrial assets in San Francisco, Houston, Charlotte, Philadelphia, Miami and Boston.

    • Represented a client in the dissolution of the client’s business partnership, which involved a series of private auctions and related transactions held to determine the buyer and seller of ownership interests for each asset in a portfolio of shopping centers.

    • Represented CIM Group in its acquisition of the residential and garage condominium units at a property located on the Upper East Side. In this unusual deal, the property first had to be converted to a condominium. As condominium counsel, Josh negotiated the condominium’s governing documents with the seller (which retained the retail unit in the building) and represented CIM in the acquisition and financing transactions.

    • Represented a real estate developer in the negotiation of a construction loan for a condominium development site in the East Village.

    • Represented a joint venture between Westbrook Partners and Atlas Capital Group in the establishment of a condominium regime at St. John’s Terminal at 550 Washington Street in downtown New York. The condominium structure resulted in the creation of two condominium units that comprise the entire site. This structure was implemented to facilitate the sale of one of the units to Oxford Property Group.

    • Represented an institutional lender as condominium counsel in the condominiumization of a property in Gramercy, which property was the lender’s collateral. This included modifying existing loan documents and negotiating condominium documents with the borrower.

    • Represented SL Green as condominium counsel in the making of a loan secured by the condominium units at Gramercy Square Condominium.

    • Represented LCOR in the disposition of commercial units at 25 Broad Street Condominium.

    • Represented Fortress Investment Group in the bulk sale of condominium units at The Sheffield Condominium.

    • Represented an institutional bank in the negotiation of a lease for its flagship branch located in Williamsburg. The leased premises comprise a portion of a ground floor retail condominium unit.

    • Represented a pharmaceutical company in negotiating the acquisition of a commercial and industrial facility in New Jersey, as well as in the mortgage financing related to such acquisition.

    • Represented a client in the disposition of a hotel property located in Queens.

    • Represents the owner of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in the conversion of this world-famous property into a mixed-use condominium, including preparing the condominium’s governing documents and negotiating the terms with the property’s long-term hotel manager, as well as preparing and filing the condominium offering plan for the project.

    • Represents Extell Development Co. in the preparation and filing of a condominium offering plan for Central Park Tower in midtown Manhattan — which is the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere and tallest building measured by roof height in the United States, and which is home to New York City’s first Nordstrom department store — including the negotiation of the condominium’s governing documents with Nordstrom and the preparation and filing of the condominium offering plan.

    • Since 2011, has represented CIM Group in connection with 432 Park Condominium in midtown Manhattan, one of the tallest residential buildings in the Western Hemisphere. In addition to preparing and filing the condominium offering plan for the project, he represents the developer in the negotiation of contracts for the sale of individual condominium units and assisted in the negotiation of the sale of the retail and garage components of the condominium.

    • Represents or has represented El-Ad Group as condominium counsel in connection with the following developments: One West End Avenue Condominium (a condominium featuring inclusionary housing and rent stabilization components, located on the Upper West Side), 108 Leonard Condominium (a condominium featuring historic landmark elements, located in Tribeca), and 250 West Street Condominium (a condominium located in Tribeca).

    • Represents or has represented Extell Development Co. as condominium/cooperative counsel in connection with the following developments: One Manhattan Square (a condominium located on the Lower East Side), Carlton House (a sub-leasehold cooperative located on the Upper East Side), and One Riverside Park Condominium (a condominium featuring inclusionary housing and rent stabilization components, located on the Upper West Side).

    • Represents Solow Management in connection with One UN Park Condominium on Manhattan’s East Side.

    Credentials

    Education

    • J.D., Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, 2009
      • Associate Editor, Hofstra Law Review
    • B.A., Political Science, Binghamton University, 2006

    Bar Admissions

    • New Jersey, 2009
    • New York, 2010

    Professional Affiliations

    • New York State Bar Association, Real Property Law Section, Committee on Condominiums and Cooperatives
    • Real Estate Roundtable, Committee on Equity, Diversity & Inclusion
  • *No aspect of this advertisement has been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey. A description of the Super Lawyers selection methodology can be found here.