A major New York City real estate investor has purchased the Riverfront Towers high-rise apartment buildings along the Detroit River for $79.5 million.

Image Capital LLC, founded by Asher Koenig, is the new majority owner of the two apartment towers totaling 557 units as the result of a deal that closed Wednesday. Koenig confirmed the purchase but declined further comment.

The purchase price amounts to $142,729 per unit.

The seller was Riverfront Tower Holding LLC, which is controlled by a group of private New York City investors.

Crain's first reported that the towers were for sale in July.

The Troy office of Berkadia handled the listing of the buildings, which feature a 77-slip marina and have counted Rosa Parks, Aretha Franklin and Coleman A. Young, as well as business leaders, athletes and musicians among their high-profile residents.

Rick Vidrio, managing director at Berkadia, and Rick Brace, senior director at Berkadia, were the brokers on the deal.

Vidrio told Crain's that there were 181 confidentiality agreements signed to evaluate the offering memorandum for the property and 21 offers to purchase.

Image Capital is the owner of significant East Coast office properties such as the 300,000-square-foot CNN Building in Washington, D.C., the 1.2 million-square-foot One South Wacker in Chicago and 360,000-square-foot 55 Broadway in New York City, among others in Orlando, Daytona Beach and Minneapolis. It also owns the 1 million-square-foot Regions Tower in Indianapolis.

The new management company is Indianapolis-based Apartment Management Professionals Residential, which manages Michigan apartment properties in Grand Rapids, Grand Haven, Holland, Mount Pleasant and Lansing, according to the company's website.

The company has an office in Grand Rapids.

The towers were built in several phases, starting in 1982.

The 26-story Tower 100 was built in 1992, while the 29-story Tower 200 was built in 1982-83, according to the Berkadia website detailing the property.

Tower 300, which was converted into 285 condominiums between 2005 and 2007, is not included in the sale. That was the first Riverfront Towers building completed, with construction beginning in 1982 and completed in 1983.

There wasn't always expected to be a mix of apartments and condos there.

A plan to convert all three of the buildings into condos ran into the economic downturn, and only Tower 300 made the leap to the for-sale market.

The complex, which was a joint venture between A. Alfred Taubman and Max Fisher, fell into receivership after the previous owners, Empirian at Riverfront LLC of Montvale, N.J., and Aintsar Riverfront LLC of Monsey, N.Y., defaulted on a $55 million mortgage.