Ghermezian Family Buys $6M Fieldston Mansion in the Bronx

Naomi Ghermezian, a member of the Canadian family behind the American Dream Meadowlands megamall and West Edmonton Mall, has bought a Tudor-style mansion on Iselin Avenue in the Bronx’s Fieldston section, Crain’s New York Business reported. The seller was developer John Fitzgerald, and Crain’s put the price at roughly $6 million for the roughly 11,000 square foot estate. The Real Deal, reporting on the same deal, said the home last asked $6.8 million and has five bedrooms.

Why it matters

The Ghermezian family’s name is attached to some of the largest and most heavily leveraged retail projects in the country, including the American Dream Meadowlands complex in New Jersey, a megamall that has carried heavy debt since it opened. A personal residential purchase in Fieldston, one of the Bronx’s most established enclaves of large freestanding houses, shows family wealth moving into New York real estate even as the megamall side of the business works through that debt load. Fieldston’s stock of large, architect-built homes on big lots has drawn a steady run of buyers willing to pay well above typical Bronx prices for scale and privacy.

The numbers

Crain’s reported the sale price at about $6 million for the roughly 11,000 square foot house. The Real Deal’s account of the same transaction put the asking price at $6.8 million before the deal closed and described a five bedroom layout. Either figure places the sale among the more expensive single family transactions recorded in the Bronx this year.

What’s next

Neither outlet reported a closing date for the deed, so the transfer has not yet shown up as a recorded sale. The next confirmation will come when the deed is filed and indexed, which will fix the final price and the buying entity’s exact name. For now the purchase stands as a data point in New York real estate: members of a family whose core business is still digging out of mall debt are still writing large personal checks for Bronx trophy houses.