We mourn the loss of our colleague and friend Michael T. Sillerman, who passed away on Saturday, Sept. 25, 2021. He was 75.
Michael joined the Land Use practice at Kramer Levin in 2002, having previously been a partner at Rosenman & Colin and before that the executive assistant to former City Council President Carol Bellamy. As co-chair of Kramer Levin’s Land Use department, Michael was one of the most respected voices in New York City land use and real estate, and his counsel was sought on numerous high-profile projects. He retired from Kramer Levin in December 2020 after a legal career spanning four decades.
Michael served as land use counsel on the expansions of Lincoln Center, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan Library. More recently he served as counsel to the developers of new residential supertowers, including 111 West 57th Street, 36 Central Park South, 43 East 60th Street and 53 West 53rd Street. He also acted as land use counsel for the first two transfers of development rights from the Hudson River Park, for the 1.711 million-square-foot St. John’s Warehouse project and for the 752,000-square-foot Douglaston project on 29th Street and 11th Avenue.
A longtime resident of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Michael was born on Aug. 4, 1946, to Michael McKinley Sillerman and Estelle Sillerman (nee Levande). He received a B.A. from Cornell University in 1968 and his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1976, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. He started his career as a litigator at Paul, Weiss before joining Ms. Bellamy’s staff.
Fiercely intelligent and full of positive energy and enthusiasm for life, Michael loved travel, architecture and movies. At work, he often invoked movie lines to lighten the mood, particularly the threat of “double secret probation” from his favorite film, “Animal House.” He was an avid collector of architectural books as well as historical maps and prints of New York City.
Throughout his career, Michael was active in numerous cultural and professional organizations. He served on the boards of the Museum of the City of New York and Poets House and was chairman of the Landmarks Committee of the Real Estate Board of New York. He was a member of the Grolier Club, the New York State Bar Association, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, the American Planning Association, the Urban Land Institute and the Society of Architectural Historians.
Michael is survived by his cousin, Joyce Lowinson; sister-in-law, Laura Sillerman; companion, Jessica Harris; and her son, Sterling, for whom Michael had deep affection and whom Michael considered to be his grandchild.
We the partners, attorneys and staff of Kramer Levin extend our heartfelt sympathies and condolences to Michael’s family.