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WHEN A SMALL-time developer agreed to pay $1.8 billion for a swath of Donald Trump's Riverside South development on Manhattan's Upper West Side in June, real estate insiders were stunned. Since then, Gary Barnett has been showing up everywhere.
"People in the industry have known about Gary for a while, but all of a sudden, he's doing really high-profile deals, and lots of them," says Scott Latham, a senior director at brokerage firm Cushman & Wakefield Inc.
Backed by some of the deepest pockets in the business and willing to trample on the toes of some of the most powerful folks around, the president of Extell Development Corp. is on a tear. He is constructing a 60-story apartment building on West 42nd Street, as well as sprawling apartment complexes in Miami and Boston.
Mr. Barnett has acquired more than two dozen properties in New York over the past five years, according to city records. He owned the 40-story Enron headquarters in Houston, which he purchased in 2002 for $102 million. He sold the building to ChevronTexaco last year.
David and Goliath
INCREASINGLY, the 50-year-old developer is openly challenging some of the biggest names in the business, as he did last month when he uncorked a $150 million bid to develop an 8-acre rail yard at the edge of downtown Brooklyn. Few had expected anyone to challenge Bruce Ratner, who hopes to build a huge...