Will Avenue D finally turn into Avenue C?

The three-story building that houses the bodega on the southeast [OOPS! SouthWEST] corner of Seventh Street and Avenue D is now for sale for $1.4 million...



According to the listing:

91 Avenue D is a 3 story mixed-use building that is available through an estate sale. There is one store and two residential units. The two apartments are currently vacant while the lease on the ground floor expires in June of 2011. The store is currently paying well below market rent. It is perfect for a user looking for a space to run their business and expand in the future.

This is a tremendous opportunity to buy an investment property with future development potential on a prime corner in the East Village. It is located in one of the most densely populated areas in Manhattan and benefits from the heavy pedestrian traffic.

This is interesting for many reasons. For starters, the new home of the Lower Eastside Girls Club will be built on Avenue D between Seventh Street and Eighth Street. (This 12-story building -- a new development that will actually give something back to the neighborhood -- will include a community center and 72 apartments.)



And, just around the corner on Seventh, you'll find the Flowerbox Building, where the record-breaking $10 million penthouse recently closed for $5.2 million.



Perhaps some enterprising foodie type will nab this corner spot at Seventh and D for some signature-drinks outpost... and be ahead of the pack for the day when the condofication reaches the eastern edge of the neighborhood. Or maybe some luxury housing.

Could this finally be the start of Avenue D turning into the new Avenue C?

Of course, this speculation has been going on for years... As the Times noted in March 2005:

The frenetic about-face that transformed Alphabet City from a drug-infested no man's land to the epicenter of downtown cool hasn't quite made it to Avenue D, and some predict it never will. Capped at the south by the bustle of Houston Street and at the north by the soaring smokestacks of Con Edison's East River generating station, the 12-block artery remains largely a relic of the neighborhood's pre-hip past.

There is nary a bar in sight. Not a single boutique. The handful of restaurants serve tostones and chicharones, not goat cheese tapas or tuna tartare. Tough-looking boys hold tough-looking pit bulls at the end of steel chains, mothers push shopping carts to coin laundries, and wrinkled old men in newsboy caps putter in front of the grocery store, keeping a cagey eye on the street.

Still, recent rumors about the fate of the two sprawling public housing projects on the avenue has fueled broader speculation about the avenue's future. Now that Avenue C has become what Avenue A was a decade ago, many residents of Avenue D wonder if their street will become the new Avenue C.

[Flowerbox photo: Elizabeth Felicella for The New York Times]