[Via Google Street View]
It looks like the corner site that houses B Bar & Grill, which helped usher in a new upscale era on the Bowery when it opened in 1994, will yield to a new development with the help of air rights from nearby parcels.
Public records show that Charles Blaichman's CB Developers, whose portfolio includes multiple projects along the High Line, purchased an interest in 358 Bowery, which is owned by downtown hotel impresario Eric Goode, for $59.5 million.
Goode bought the property on the Bowery at Fourth Street in 2004 from the Cooper Union for $5.5 million. According to PincusCo, Goode, whose multiple interests include the Jane Hotel, the Bowery Hotel and the Waverly Inn, has been assembling air rights to build a larger project on this corner space.
In January and February 2017, Goode filed records with four additional parcels into a single zoning lot which would allow for a larger building on the site. In addition, Goode paid Granite Management, which owns two of those buildings, $1.6 million for 4,670 square feet of development rights and Goode paid $1.8 million to a small cooperative building at 32 East 4th Street for 4,012 square feet of development rights.
In reporting on the deal, @TradedNY speculated: "Office dev coming soon?"
The transaction will likely also mean the end of B Bar & Grill, whose arrival at the site of a former gas station was marked by controversy in 1994.
Per Forgotten New York: "The NoHo Neighborhood Association, Community Board 2 and the SoHo Alliance were concerned that this conversion would change the character of the neighborhood and mounted a lawsuit, arguing on the basis that the neighborhood was dominated by light industry and artists. The area had 47 one-story buildings, and there was a fear that precedent would be set for conversion of many these buildings into clubs." (The Times had a report here in 1994.) The plaintiffs withdrew the lawsuit in 1995.
To date nothing has been made public about the B Bar & Grill's future.
