For years now there has been talk of doing something with the derelict community space in the Christodora House on Avenue B.
There were plans 10 years ago to turn the space into residential units, but the Christodora House board reportedly eventually withdrew the application to receive a zoning variance. (The pool, gym and other adjacent rooms are zoned for community use.)
In any event, the gym and pool area arrived for sale yesterday at Massey Knakal. Here is the listing:
Located on the northeast corner of Avenue B and East 9th Street, the subject property consists of 2 community facility condominium units located on the ground floor and lower level of 143 Avenue B a/k/a the Christodora House. The ground floor unit was a former gymnasium with ceiling heights of approximately 22'. There is a small outdoor terrace to the north and two doors on East 9th Street that have been boarded up. Both doors could be reopened and collectively serve as an exclusive entrance for the two units. The lower level is a former pool and could either be put to use or filled in for an alternative use. The two units have a 501C filing status (Not-for-profit) and are therefore restricted to community facility use only. The building sits directly across from Tompkins Square Park and adjacent to the former Public School 64 which closed a number of years ago and is currently being converted into a mixed-purpose building including dormitories for the Joffrey Ballet School and Cooper Union.
Price: $2.5 million.
For starters, the former PS 64 and CHARAS/El Bohio community center is NOT "currently being converted into a mixed-purpose building." That is developer Gregg Singer's wish. The city has yet to approve any of those plans.
As for the gym and pool…
Here is the pool as it looked in 1928 … via the Collections of the Museum of the City of New York.
… and here are photos that we happened to have of the pool and gym taken much more recently…
Scoopy at The Villager got a look at pool back in 2008. Here's part of his description: "It was 8 feet deep at one end and sloped up from the center to a shallow depth at the other end. From the looks of it, it hadn’t been used for 50 years."