Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Someone actually paid $57 million for this East Village building



Wow. $57 million for this dorm-looking thing on Third Avenue and East 11th Street? (And you thought that the Yankees overpaid for Beltran!)

Oh, anyway, this 12-story residential thing with retail space hit the market back in April. Now The Wall Street Journal reports that the Benchmark Real Estate Group LLC is the new owner.

Per the Journal:

The mixed-use property has 55 rental apartment units and 10,500 square feet of retail space. The current commercial tenants are the Smith, an American restaurant, Asian market M2M and NY Copy Printing Co.

Benchmark plans to invest money from its $45 million first mortgage to renovate and upgrade the apartment units and increase the retail space by 15% to 20%, said Russell Frahm, head of Mesa West's New York origination team.

The original listing noted that "[a] buyer may wish to expand the residential floor plate above and restore the building above by reskinning glass." And this is the rendering...



Oh boy.

7 comments:

A little while ago I said...

Never mind the scores of dead birds on the sidewalk that had crashed into the facade. No big deal, eh?

Anonymous said...

Just wait until the bodies come bursting up through the floor!

Giovanni said...

The mirrored facade is positioned so you can check out your hair and makeup as you pass by on your CitiBike or in your private helicopter. How convenient!

Anonymous said...

So wait, if the mortgage is $45m, what did they actually pay cash money? $12m? Or did the owner come down from that ridiculous asking price to a slightly-less ridiculous price? Either way, they're basically playing Monopoly with other people's money. If they can't make it work (and it's hard to see how you could pay that kind of money even in the New Upper East Village and turn a profit), some other sucker's loss, right?

Morgan Tsvangirai said...

Chuckled at the Beltran joke. Good work.

I've been in an apartment in this building before, and it's real shitty.

Anonymous said...

I bid 56 million...At the last minute someone stole it from me...

Anonymous said...

I actually know that the building will not look like that.