The tenants include Pulino's "and a smattering of Chinese good stores." A Massey Knakal rep says that a lot of the tenants have leases expiring in the next few years ...
A family trust sold the portfolio to a group led by Joseph Betesh, whose family owns the Dr. Jays hip-hop clothing stores.
Douglas Elliman's Faith Hope Consolo says that the Bowery "is the place to be." She notes that current rents are $175 to $200 a square foot now... and if the lux boom continues along here, she predicts they will hit $325 in the next five years.
Updated 2 p.m.
A few more details from a Massey Knakal news release:
The properties are located at 83, 85, 88, 103, 105, 219, 221, 262, 276, 280, and 284 Bowery. The buildings total approximately 143,230 above grade square feet with all air-rights intact. The properties are not contiguous, but nine of the 11 buildings are paired with an adjacent property, excellently located between Houston and Canal Streets.
These properties have been family owned since the 1930s which presented a rare opportunity for Milestone Equities to acquire a portfolio with tremendous upside.
[Random Bowery storefront photo from 2012]
I know I shouldn't say this but the next financial / real estate bust can't come quick enough. Sometimes the only way to preserve our past is to keep capitalism at bay. Chinatown is my favorite part of the city and its the only place in town that looks the way it did when I moved here in 1981. I like the way it smells, the grime and the fact you can still discover things on its blocks. Meanwhile the rest of Manhattan looks like the upper east side more each day.
ReplyDeleteWhy do people want to live in the past? Why not rid ourselves of capitalism and move forward instead?
ReplyDeleteThis scares me! more sucking the soul of the city to make it more like a nasty glass tower island.
ReplyDeleteAgree with you on that -- it's the sense of discovery that is missing most of all.
ReplyDeleteNow? wax/juice/fro-yo, bro/repeat.
I have been out in Flushing every few weeks now and have been enjoying that so much from a food shopping point of view. Actually, if I have to leave my apartment but stay in NYC, I decided several years ago that I'd be moving to either the Bronx or Queens. They still feel like New York to me (and not 'cause of grime because the neighborhoods I've been in aren't grimy) just 'cause of variety, neighborhoods, character.
ReplyDeleteWhat you'll see now is overrated establishments and exorbitant prices.
ReplyDeleteOwned intact since the 1930s, gone by 2015.
ReplyDelete@shmnyc - "live in the past"? Dear God, have you never been to a European city where they preserve their old building stock rather than flatten it wholesale? Where you can wander around individual neighborhoods never knowing what's around the next corner? You may enjoy living in a bristling jungle of soulless steel and glass monoliths, but those of us who honor and cherish "the past" you so clearly disdain are having our hearts broken on a daily basis in the characterless nightmare New York is in the throes of becoming.
...and, oddly, "established" names that try to transplant aren't having much success; witness the Veselka transplant failure, while the original is booming!
ReplyDeleteAnd that Veselka isn't even the original one. anyone remember when it was half the size, wooden tables, and an sit down, close the door phone booth?
DeleteGojira, Yes, I have. What they preserve is the building, not the usage. Gentrification is rampant in Europe just as it is here. What they do there is what will be done here: buildings will be preserved, rehabilitated, and re-purposed, and existing tenants will be forced out, just as it's done in Europe.
ReplyDeleteOh my god, if one of these is the Chair Up building I'm totally gonna kill myself
ReplyDelete@ shmnyc
ReplyDeletewhen no neighborhood is safe from rich land developers then there is no chance of history, culture or diversity will survive. New York has always been about commerce and if it were not for some forward looking citizens great buildings like Grand Central Station would look like the present Penn Station with a glass tower on it, and the charm and serenity of Greenwich Village would have a Mosses highway running through it. There a lots of place to live if you prefer a sanitized existence but those of us that fled those places for New York City are "grieving " the loss of what is real and not the life an ad agency dreams up.
@shmnyc - Please show me where they are "preserving" these buildings you speak of, rather than demolishing them down to the basement floor. You seriously believe someone paid 62 million bucks for buildings with storefronts selling Chinese kitchen merchandise, but "with air rights intact" and plans to preserve the buildings as they stand? Heh heh, very funny.
ReplyDeleteThese buildings were once all Lyons Houses--an early 20th century company owning & operating marginally respectable flophouses on the Bowery & elsewhere in the city.
ReplyDelete@Anon 5:04 - we can cry together. Chair Up is #219.
ReplyDeleteholy crap AND the hotel over the diamond store at 88 I'M LOSING IT
ReplyDeleteI have a friend that lives in the Chair Up building. His roommate bought the place back in the day so I wonder what will happen with it?
ReplyDeleteExcept maybe for the parcels on the corner of Houston, none of these are ideal candidates for demolition and redevelopment. 83-5 and 103-5 are residential, so look out for evictions. 88 (hotel over the Diamond store) is overbuilt, so it is not likely to be demolished, but if there are SRO hotel residents, they may be pressured out and the place turned into an upscale hotel for slummers looking for the "authentic New York experience."
ReplyDeleteIf Betesh successfully brings a new commercial character, it will spread. That could be bad news for the Chinatown community considering the hypergentrification of the Bowery and the direction of big money there.
Both Cuba and the Soviet Union did a lot of preservation and recycling of historic buildings. It's the grasping of capital that endangers history, destroying both buildings and communities. Getting rid of capitalism doesn't entail getting rid of old buidlings. A motto of the green movement: the greenest building is the one that's already been built.
These properties were, in fact, all N.H. Lyons Company properties. Mr Lyons died in 1946, his eldest daughter, Alva, died in 1980, and his youngest daughter, Jean, died recently this year at 96. There are 10 remaining Lyons family relatives, most from Connecticut, that have since moved out of the NYC area, from Maine to Florida. The recent damages from Hurricane Sandy, as well as NYC taxes and regulations have forced the family to finally sell it all out... it is a shame...Lyons company is the end of the Bowery boys era.
ReplyDelete1:53 I envy your friend. I've walked by that building for years wishing I could live in it! hope he gets to stay.
ReplyDeleteI'd completely forgotten the sit-down phone booth! Didn't they discontinue the seats so you wouldn't have to piss on your shoes?
ReplyDelete