At a glance
Firm: Alexico Group Founder & principal: Izak Senbahar (President & founder), with longtime development partner Simon Elias Founded: 1993 (New York City) Headquarters: New York, NY Focus: Luxury residential (condominium) development and luxury hospitality — a boutique, high-end shop known for hiring award-winning architects Frequent design partners: Costas Kondylis, Richard Meier, and — on a joint venture — Herzog & de Meuron Portfolio scale: Reported combined project value of roughly $2 billion — a boutique, high-end platform rather than a volume builder Signature project: The Laurel (400 East 67th Street), Alexico's solo Upper East Side condominium; the firm also co-developed 56 Leonard Street with Hines and Dune Real Estate Partners Source: The Roebling Team at Compass — verified against public records, court filings, and published reporting. July 2026.
Who Alexico Group is
Alexico Group is the firm of Izak Senbahar, who founded it in 1993 and has run it since alongside his longtime development partner Simon Elias. Senbahar — born in Istanbul, educated as a mechanical engineer at Catholic University and in finance at NYU Stern, and a former commodities trader before he entered real estate — built Alexico into a small, high-end platform with a recognizable strategy: hire the best architects available, build the highest-quality product, and place it in the wealthiest Manhattan neighborhoods.
That strategy produced two very different kinds of asset. On the residential side, Alexico developed a series of design-led luxury condominiums, most visibly The Laurel on the Upper East Side. On the hospitality side, the firm developed and owns The Mark Hotel at 25 East 77th Street — a restored 1927 building with interiors by Jacques Grange and a Jean-Georges restaurant that has repeatedly ranked among New York's top hotels. For a buyer, the useful point is consistency of intent: this is a developer that competes on design and quality at the top of its market rather than on scale.
What they build
Alexico's signature is the architect-driven luxury building. The firm's residential work runs through a roster of marquee designers — Costas Kondylis at The Laurel and The Grand Beekman, Richard Meier at 165 Charles Street, and, on its most famous project, Herzog & de Meuron — and its hospitality flagship, The Mark, extends the same design-first posture into a hotel-and-residence format. The firm has often assembled its sites from air rights and built on constrained parcels, prioritizing design and finish over unit count.
One point deserves care, because it is easy to conflate. The Laurel is Alexico's solo signature condominium. 56 Leonard Street — Tribeca's "Jenga Tower" — was a joint venture, and the roles are distinct: Alexico originated and led the project, buying the land and driving the Herzog & de Meuron design; Hines joined as co-developer and operating partner to help secure the construction financing and effectively managed construction (taking no ownership stake); and Dune Real Estate Partners, with Goldman Sachs–managed funds, supplied the equity. Credit for 56 Leonard belongs to that partnership, not to Alexico alone.
Buildings by Alexico Group
Alexico projects already profiled on this site:
- 400 East 67th Street (The Laurel) — Alexico's solo 2008 Lenox Hill condominium, a LEED-certified, Costas Kondylis–designed limestone-and-glass tower of roughly 128 residences with a deep two-club amenity program
- 56 Leonard Street — the Herzog & de Meuron "Jenga Tower" in Tribeca, which Alexico co-developed with Hines and Dune Real Estate Partners; a 145-residence trophy tower with a lobby Anish Kapoor sculpture
Other notable Alexico work (pages to follow): 165 Charles Street, the Richard Meier–designed West Village condominium; The Grand Beekman (400 East 51st Street), a Kondylis-designed condominium; and The Mark Hotel (25 East 77th Street), the firm's luxury hospitality flagship.
Track record and market performance
Alexico's residential record is strong, and its most-watched project cleared a genuinely difficult path. The Laurel launched into the teeth of the 2008 financial crisis — its sales office opened around the Lehman collapse — and, despite the buyer turbulence of that moment, ultimately sold out and has traded since as a stable, well-regarded full-amenity Upper East Side condominium. 56 Leonard, after a decade-long timeline interrupted by the crisis, sold strongly: reporting described roughly 90% of units under contract within nine months of its relaunch and total sales well into ten figures. As with any trophy tower, a handful of speculative resales later traded softly, but that is ordinary resale variance, not a project failure.
For a buyer, the sell-through history at both buildings is a real signal — it points to durable demand and a developer whose design-led product the market has repeatedly validated at the top of its price band.
Reputation and what a buyer should know
On build quality, Alexico's record is largely clean, and the litigation that does appear is mostly financial rather than construction-related — a distinction that matters here.
The Laurel's crisis-era litigation was financial, not defect-related. In 2009, a small share of buyers — several using the Interstate Land Sales Full Disclosure Act, a common tactic of that moment — sued to recover deposits and exit contracts on units that had gone underwater; there were also contractor mechanic's liens and a sales-office rent dispute. Those are commercial and contractual matters, not building-quality claims, and no construction-defect or facade/structural suit at The Laurel surfaced in the public record.
At 56 Leonard, the one defect-flavored matter was a single-unit dispute, not a condo-board suit: an individual buyer alleged punch-list and finish problems (flooring, caulking, hardware) mixed with unmet marketing promises, which the developers called meritless. It is worth remembering that 56 Leonard's construction was Hines-managed under the joint venture, so execution responsibility on that tower does not sit with Alexico alone. No building-wide facade, water, or structural condo-board suit against 56 Leonard surfaced.
The firm's genuinely contentious litigation is financial and centered on The Mark Hotel — lender and foreclosure fights through the 2008 downturn and again during the 2020 pandemic, when Alexico successfully enjoined a foreclosure auction a court found was not commercially reasonable, before ultimately refinancing and stabilizing the asset. Those are capital-stack disputes typical of trophy hospitality, not construction or safety problems, and should not be read as building-quality issues. We found no verified construction fatality on Alexico's residential projects.
For a buyer, standard new-development diligence applies — read the offering plan and current financials, confirm lien and title status, and review the warranty and punch list — with no defect-specific red flag against this sponsor, and with the reminder that 56 Leonard's construction record belongs to the Hines-led joint venture.
The Roebling Team on Alexico buildings
We publish developer profiles because a buyer choosing a new-construction or recently-converted condominium is, in part, betting on the developer — its quality, its staying power, and its record when things go wrong. The Roebling Team at Compass tracks the sponsors behind Manhattan's luxury inventory building by building, and we bring that context to every new-development transaction: what the developer has built, how those buildings have held value, and what to verify before you sign.
If you're evaluating an Alexico building — or weighing it against another sponsor's product — a 30-minute consultation is the right starting point.
Corey Cohen, Principal · The Roebling Team at Compass 646.939.7375 · c.cohen@compass.com
This developer profile reflects publicly available information — including NYC public records, court filings, and published reporting — and The Roebling Team's transaction experience. It is provided for research purposes and is not legal advice; nothing here alleges wrongdoing or building defects beyond what the cited public record supports. The Roebling Team at Compass does not represent Alexico Group. © 2026 The Roebling Team at Compass.