The calm before the Irene

Photo by Bobby Williams...

Catching up with the developers who turned the Christodora House into luxury housing

On Sunday, we reposted that New York magazine article titled "The Lower East Side: There Goes the Neighborhood." A reader provided an update about two of the people featured.

Real estate investors Harry Skydell and Samuel Glasser bought the abandoned Christodora House on Avenue Bin the early 1980s and turned the building into luxury condos in 1986.

As The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported back in June 24, Glaser "was sentenced to time served and 100 hours of community service for a kickback scheme that cost a bank $133,000."

To the article:

Glasser, 65, owner of Samuel & Co. LLC, pleaded guilty in federal court in St. Louis Feb. 25 to a bank fraud charge and admitted he'd inflated invoices for asbestos removal, lead abatement and the interior demolition of the Ford Building at 1405 Pine Street in St. Louis.

The building's owner, Matthew Burghoff, passed those invoices on to Montgomery Bank to document expenditures from a loan. Glasser kicked back $133,332 of the inflated amount to Burghoff in 2007.

Under federal sentencing guidelines, Glasser faced 15 to 21 months in prison. Lawyer Scott Rosenblum argued for Glasser to be sentenced to the day in jail he'd already served, citing the fact that Glasser did not personally benefit from the scheme, his community service and his cooperation with the government, among other factors.

Glasser thanked court officials, his lawyer and the prosecutor for their professionalism and then apologized to his family for bringing shame on them. He also said that he was unemployed and no longer in business. "I couldn't get a loan to buy a head of lettuce," he said.

The reader noted that Skydell, a lawyer, resigned from the bar for disciplinary reasons in 1997.

Interestingly enough, someone claiming to be Sam Glasser commented on the post the first time we ran it. Per his comment:

Yes, I paid $3M for the Christodora House and I borrowed $2M of that at 24% interest. What a great building! What fun it was to renovate. The Black Panthers had been the last occupants. It was TRASHED. While my flooring subcontractors were installing the last of the oak flooring in the building, someone stole the engine and back seat out of their car which they had parked across the street from the building. The neighborhood was off the charts. I loved it. Sam Glasser December 9, 2009 1:41 AM

Previously on EV Grieve:
A voice from the Christodora's past

[Image via Streeteasy]

Sunset by the Christodora

Photo by Bobby Williams.

This evening in models awkwardly posing outside the Christodora House

There's a moon over the Christodora House tonight...

Photos by Shawn Chittle.

Monica Shay memorial travels from Avenue A to the Christodora House

All photos by Bobby Williams... Bo Bob Arihood has more photos and a narrative here.

3 views of an East Village sunset tonight

The Christodora House above... and in the distance...

Photos by Bobby Williams...

Our very own (alleged) ponzi schemer also (allegedly) bilked the Christodora House

Law enforcement officials are on the hunt for "fugitive hedge-fund manager" Brian Kim, who the DA charged with running a $4 million Ponzi scheme. (He may be hiding in Italy, according to reports. More here from the Journal.)

The 35-year-old founder of Liquid Capital Management also happened to live in the East Village — the Christodora House on Avenue B. More details on Kim, a CNBC pundit on Asian futures derivatives trading, are starting to emerge.

From the Post today:

The Manhattan DA's office discovered Kim was missing after he failed to show up for a Jan. 4 trial as part of earlier charges, where he stood accused of stealing $435,000 from the Christodora House.

In regards to the condo funds, Kim allegedly falsified documents identifying himself as the president-secretary of the condo association, allowing him to transfer $435,000 from the association's bank account to a bank account he set up for Liquid Capital. Within a month of making the transfers, he depleted all the money he had stolen — trading most of it away.

Kim was arrested in 2009 as part of that scheme, which led to an investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission into his hedge-fund business, which focuses on futures trading.
He now faces three indictments for stealing money from his condominium association, jumping bail and financial fraud.

If you spot Kim, then please call Joe Kernen.

[Image via CNBC]

The Daily News had the story yesterday, though I can't get their site to load today.

Hanging out at the Christodora House in 1929

Dec. 25 came early for a lot of NYC history buffs and other assorted bloggers... As you probably heard, the Museum of the City of New York has added like 50,000 archival photos to its, uh, archives... Shawn Chittle was the first to pass along the news to me Wednesday...Since then, I'm been ransacking looking through the photos, searchable by borough, era, etc.

So... some of my early favorites are the shots of Avenue B's Christodora House circa February 1929....Not much has changed from the exteriors....





Dunno about the interiors... never been inside ... so, here's the "music auditorium" (Did Iggy play here when he lived at the Christodora?)



the "Christadora medical clinic"



"fireplace in lounge"



My favorite: "Miss Kupkey's bedroom, D-4"



a "general view of the dining room"



And lastly... the fabled Christodora House pool!



The Christodora was built in 1928. Read more history here.

See more of the old-timey NYC photos at Curbed and Eater... and Jeremiah's Vanishing New York...

Photos by Samuel H. Gottscho
All photos from the Collections of the Museum of the City of New York.

PS
Two photos I took last month of the Christodora House that I didn't know what to do with...

Why there were fire trucks outside the Christodora House last night

Fire trucks lined up on Avenue B last night a little after 9... here between Ninth Street and 10th Street, in front of the Christodora House... Bob Arihood was on the scene ... he passed along the photos and a narrative...




"... apparently a burning cigarette lodged itself in a sidewalk expansion joint and started a smoldering fire in some combustable packing or form spacer material. Locating the smoldering smoke-producing ember which was kept burning by the natural upward draft of the tall Christodora building took some time. FDNY personnel finally located the burning ember and extingushed it."

Passing the torch?: The Rent on Kent truck parks next to the Christodora House

I saw the Rent on Kent truck tool around Tompkins Square Park yesterday... perhaps scouting for some "arty, young Lower East Side-type professionals" ... and, in a nice touch, the truck later parked on Ninth Street at Avenue B next to the Christodora House...

Day-glo lights in Christodora seen as 'something of a metaphor for neighborhood transformation'

I finally had time to sit down last night with the new issue of New York magazine... where there's a feature on this swanky loft in the Christodora ...



Per the article:

Architect Joel Sanders’s clients (a lawyer and an economic consultant) left New York for San Francisco a decade ago but knew they’d come back someday — preferably to an apartment below 14th Street that felt like a “well-designed hotel suite.” How about an East Village loft with LED fixtures that cast a Day-Glo aura on the walls? Perfect. After looking at more than 50 places, the couple found what would become their future retirement pad (and current pied-à-terre) — a one-bedroom in the Christodora ... The result: a 1,140-square-foot loft that — with the push of one of eight preset buttons — is bathed in pale neon pink, or warm gold, or lime green. Sanders sees the lighting design as something of a metaphor for neighborhood transformation. The Christodora, he points out, has had a tumultuous history, starting life as a twenties settlement house for low-income families before becoming an emblem of the East Village in the throes of gentrification. Two decades later, passions have cooled, but the neighborhood—and its dwellings — are still pretty colorful.

[Photograph by Peter Aaron/Esto]

Wonder if this explains those spooky red lights that I've seen in the past....?

Nightmare on Ninth Street: Is the megadorm project alive again?

When I noticed that the sidewalk shed at the former P.S. 64/CHARAS/El Bohio community center behind the Christodora on Ninth Street had been removed, I revisited previous posts on the topic... such as this one from last summer announcing the rebranded project: the University House at Tompkins Square Park.



You can read that post here.

The attempts to redevelop this space has a long, complicated history... Gregg Singer, the building's owner, unsuccessfully tried for years to get a megadorm project off the ground. In March 2009, Singer told The Villager that he's still an investor, but he had moved "onto other stuff." His megadorm was shot down by a judge two years ago.

I did a little more searching for the University House at Tompkins Square Park and this popped up ...



Whoa.

This is all probably part of the old plans (or a hoax!), except that it was, as I understand it, only branded University House at Tompkins Square Park last summer. And, interestingly enough, this is a standalone Web page that lives under the Singer domain, but you can't access it from the Singer Financial Corporation site. I found it via a Google search.

Regardless, this is the first time that I've seen the above rendering in about six years ... If anything, then maybe this can serve as a "what could have been" ... Here is some info from the Web site, which lists that the project will completed in July 2010/11... (You can find all the floorplans here.)

DESCRIPTION OF PROPERTY
A through block site just off Tompkins Square Park to be developed into a 23-story school dormitory in the East Village of Manhattan.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
University House will be a consortium of universities sharing a single state of the art facility. There are single room suites and double room suites, all of which have kitchens and bathrooms. The universities will be able to secure housing designed, operated and managed for students at affordable rents with amenities not found in apartment buildings or hotels.

This safe and affordable residence hall will provide beautiful views of Tompkins Square Park to the west and the East River to the east providing sun drenched living spaces for all its inhabitants.

AMENITIES
Amenities include wireless internet access throughout the interior and exterior common areas, an outdoor garden, basketball court, a world class fitness center with separate areas for weight training, cardio fitness, stretching and dance/aerobics, lounge, common and private study rooms hard wired with internet access outlets, music rooms, game room with pool tables and ping pong tables, TV screening room, laundry room, and bicycle storage room. Private offices for university staff.

Be curious to find out what, if anything, is going on here... No new work permits have been posted via the DOB. And for a crash course on the headlines through the years, here's a link to the East Village Community Coalition, who collected many of the articles on the project. (Mostly via The Villager!) And here are some from Curbed.

Om-M-G! Yoga instructor buys $1.2 million pad in the Christodora

Back in October, Curbed featured a recently renovated one-bedroom home in the Christodora House on Avenue B... $1.348 million was the asking price at the time. This unit at 4C was "gut renovated by Manifold Architecture Studio and published in 2008 as part of James Grayson Trulove's 25 book series," as Curbed noted. The price was reduced by 4 percent to $1,295 million on Oct. 31. It went into contract for the $1,295 million on Jan. 7.

Yesterday, BlockShopper featured the buyer:

Nisha Kewalramani, a yoga teacher with the Universal Force Healing Center in New York City. She earned her bachelor's in psychology from NYU and her yoga certification form The Ayurvedic Institute in Albuquerque, N.M.

And from the looks of this home, it should be enough to help achieve supreme awareness and enlightenment...

What's available at the Christodora House

Someone who sort of knows what he/she is talking about recently told me that apartments at the Christodora House -- everyone's favorite symbol of gentrification in the neighborhood -- rarely hit the market.

Really? So I took a look to see what might be available... According to StreetEasy, there is one unit for sale, one unit in contract and two apartments for rent.

First, the unit that's in contract. Curbed wrote about the newly renovated one bedroom apartment back in October.



The fourth-floor unit with 1,042 square feet was listed by Corcoran at $1,348 million last Sept 15. It was reduced by 4 percent to $1,295 million on Oct. 31. It went into contract for the $1,295 million on Jan. 7.

The other unit for sale in the building is a 400-square foot studio going for $535,000 on the ninth floor. (Good for $1,338 per square foot.) It just hit the market last Tuesday. Here's the listing with some lousy photos.

In addition, there's a 500-square-foot one bedroom apartment on the 12th floor that available for a short-term rental from March 1 to May 31. It's going for $2,750 per month. Here's your view, in part:



And lastly! There's a 1,000-square-foot one bedroom apartment that's now $3,600 a month (down from $4,500). Or you can buy it for $1,450 million. According to the listing, it can also be combined with the unit next door for 2,000 square feet of luxury.



By the way, the entire Christodora was sold in 1975 for $62,500.

[Sketch via Michael Casey]

A voice from the Christodora's past

Yesterday, a new comment appeared on an old post, The Lower East Side: There goes the neighborhood, from June 2008.

Yes, I paid $3M for the Christodora House and I borrowed $2M of that at 24% interest. What a great building! What fun it was to renovate. The Black Panthers had been the last occupants. It was TRASHED. While my flooring subcontractors were installing the last of the oak flooring in the building, someone stole the engine and back seat out of their car which they had parked across the street from the building. The neighborhood was off the charts. I loved it. Sam Glasser December 9, 2009 1:41 AM

I'm not sure if this is actually from the Sam Glasser, who's now developing property in downtown St. Louis. Or maybe Sam Glasser did stumble upon the post and wanted to reminisce...

And I'm not really sure what to make of the comment, real or not. Hey, it was great back then! Sorry that I ruined the neighborhood! Not to bring all this up again, but, you know, the Christodora House was viewed as a symbol of gentrification in the neighborhood, and later a focal point of the "yuppie scum" protests during the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riots. (Read more at The Shadow.)

And if you're interested in a little more of the Christodora's history, there are plenty of sources, including this more recent piece from the Times dated Aug. 26, 1988:

In the 1960's, according to a search of historical records conducted by the building's developer, the city rented Christadora House to a variety of community groups, including the Black Panthers. But it was eventually boarded up, and then sold at auction in 1978 to a private bidder for $63,000.

The building changed hands several times before it was purchased in 1984 by a group headed by Samuel Glasser, who oversaw its conversion into 85 modern condominium apartments, using a $6.5 million loan from Citibank and tax abatements and exemptions under the Government's J-51 tax program.

"Nobody really had the nerve to develop such a big building in the East Village because it wasn't a tested market," said Amos B. Harris, an executive in Mr. Glasser's firm, SMG Construction Inc. We took the plunge and it worked."

Offering most of the apartments for $114,000 to $495,000, Mr. Glasser sold the majority of the units in six months, Mr. Harris said.

During the protests, many demonstrators accused developers of exerting pressure on the city to impose a curfew on the park to encourage gentrification. But building residents and Mr. Glasser said they had made no effort to influence the city's policy.

Previously on EV Grieve:
The Lower East Side: There goes the neighborhood

The Christodora House circa 1934

Christodora House by M. A. Tricca
Born: Alanno, Italy 1880
Died: United States 1969
oil on canvas
30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum via Flickr