CO-OP/CONDO BUYERS

In January we told you that the Jewish Theological Seminary had sold a chunk of its campus in Morningside Heights, plus limited development rights and an off-campus residence for $96 million. Now, the Commercial Observer reports, the developer Savanna has secured a $34.6 million loan from Pacific Western Bank to help fund its plan to erect a 250,000-square-foot luxury condo building on the former campus parcel on West 122nd Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway. The architecture firm Beyer Blinder Bell will design it.

Meanwhile, the seminary, which has hired the architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, is moving ahead with plans to use its windfall to build a performing arts space, as well as a residence hall above a new library that will house the school’s collection of rare Judaic books, manuscripts and scrolls.

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For the first time ever, New Yorkers say affordable housing is the most important problem they face, according to a new telephone poll conducted by NY1 and Baruch College. Twenty percent of respondents listed affordable housing as their top concern, followed by crime, jobs and the economy at 16 percent, and homelessness at 12 percent.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they believe they’re at risk of being priced out of their neighborhood in the next few years. Money provided little solace. More than half of the people who earn six figures – 53 percent – say it’s likely they’ll be priced out.

“Pretty much everyone thought they would be priced out of their neighborhood, everyone who’s under the age of 65,” Baruch College pollster Mickey Blum told Time Warner Cable News. “Even people who earn more than $100,000.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio has set a goal of creating or preserving 200,000 units of affordable housing in the next 10 years.

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Synagogues are doing it. Churches and chunks of college campuses are doing it. So why shouldn’t a drug and alcohol rehab facility do it? What they’re doing, of course, is turning into luxury condos.

The latest building to join the stampede is Phoenix House at 164-166 W. 74th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a landmarked building that’s headquarters to one of the largest drug and alcohol rehab nonprofits in the country. Greystone Development and Prime Rok Real Estate bought the seven-story building last week for $26.8 million, The Real Deal reports, with plans to turn the 33,000 square feet of space into 14 luxury condos. Prices are expected to range from $2.3 million to $6.5 million for the duplex penthouse.
Architect Barry Rice has been hired to design the interior. The facade will remain unchanged since the building is in the Upper West Side/Central Park West historic district.

Phoenix House, meanwhile, will relocate operations to its other New York properties, including one at 2191 Third Avenue in East Harlem.

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Haysha Deitsch, embroiled in lawsuits over his eviction of disabled senior citizens, is moving ahead with his latest project, a luxury condominium on Fourth Avenue, the so-called Canyon of Mediocrity that runs between Park Slope and Gowanus in Brooklyn.

If Deitsch’s demolition permit is granted, two auto repair shops, at 243 and 245 Fourth Avenue, will be razed and replaced with an 11-story structure containing 16 luxury condo apartments, DNAinfo reports. The architect Karl Fischer will design the building, which will include a pet spa, private roof deck and children’s playroom.

Meanwhile, Deitsch continues to fight a lawsuit brought after he evicted all but a handful of the senior citizens living in an assisted-living facility he owns at 1 Prospect Park West. Deitch’s sale of the facility for $76 million has been blocked until that lawsuit is resolved.

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The General Assembly's Committee on Housing is holding a public hearing on co-ops and affordable housing. Citizens can offer up to 10 minutes of personal testimony at the hearing, which will be held on Fri., Feb. 19 from 4 to 8 p.m. at the State Office Building (8th Floor), 163 W. 125th St. in Harlem.

The hearing will focus on three problem areas: co-op boards that disenfranchise shareholders; reserve funds that are dangerously low; and the high-dollar sale of co-ops that were intended as affordable housing.

If you wish to speak at the hearing, you can register by filling out this PDF.

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Adam America filed plans over the weekend to replace a gritty Long Island City taxi garage with a glittery 11-story, 175-unit condo building with nearly 5,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space. It’s the third major development on an industrial block near Court Square and MoMA PS1.

The plans for the 170,000-square-foot building at 22-12 Jackson Avenue – on a piece of land that fetched $43.5 million last summer – include a pool on the first floor, a gym and children’s playroom, and storage space for 91 bicycles, the Real Deal reports. 

Isaac & Stern Architects is designing the building, which will also include a rooftop “recreation area.”

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No city can have too many billionaires. So the world of high-end New York City real estate is understandably aflutter that new federal rules are scaring away buyers of super-luxe Manhattan condos.

Beginning on March 1, the U.S. Treasury Department is requiring that title companies disclose the true names of people who pay more than $3 million in cash for Manhattan condos, and more than $1 million in Miami. Such purchases were traditionally made by faceless Limited Liability Companies, or LLCs, which fed governmental fears that rich international buyers were laundering ill-gotten gains in high-dollar American real estate.

Shivers are already being felt along West 57th Street, Billionaires’ Row, according to Curbed. “Additional regulation is the last thing we need to hurt potential business that really creates jobs for American workers,” says Gary Barnett, president of Extell, a prime developer on Billionaires’ Row. “This is another layer of difficulty that is going to potentially hurt further development.”

There is good news for all those poor rich people: the federal disclosure rule runs only until August 27. Which led Jonathan Miller, president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel, to make a prediction: “A wealthy individual isn’t going to risk ending up on a list somewhere. They can wait six months.”

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Bank buildings are doing it. Synagogues are doing it. Now a former farm for the aged poor is doing it too: converting to condos.

Last week the New York City Council gave its blessing to a plan to turn a derelict 96-acre campus on Staten Island, known as the Farm Colony, into 344 condo apartments for residents over the age of 55. Thirty-four of the apartments will be set aside as affordable – that is, for families with incomes under about $150,000.

The council approved a plan by the city’s Economic Development Corp. to sell 45 acres to Raymond Masucci, a Staten Island developer, for $1 million. At a cost of $91 million, Masucci will rehabilitate five buildings, tear down five others, and preserve a 112-year-old dormitory as a “stable ruin.” He will also build three six-story apartment buildings and 14 townhouses on a property that was once a working farm for the aged poor.

The Farm Colony closed in 1975 and fell into decline. The new development, inside Staten Island’s first historic district, will be called Landmark Colony.

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Their long nightmare is finally over. Years of litigation between a developer and the residents of three luxury condo developments in the Financial District and Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood came to an end last week.

New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced that the developer, Africa Israel Investments, Ltd., must resolve numerous construction defects at the three buildings, surrender control to the condo boards, and pay a $2 million penalty to the city for improperly taking 421-g tax breaks, as reported by The New York Times. The agreement also calls for Africa Israel, owned by Lev Leviev, who broke his partnership with Shaya Boymelgreen, to put an undisclosed sum into escrow for bilked buyers.

Among the defects at the buildings – located at 15 Broad Street (across from the New York Stock Exchange) and 20 Pine Street in Manhattan, and 85 Adams Street in Brooklyn – were brown tap water, leaky walls, buckling floors and incomplete fire-proofing.

“Today’s settlement is a warning to property developers in New York state,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “Those who collect the enormous profits that flow from offering real estate securities in New York will not be allowed to shirk their obligations to purchasers and the public.”

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In-house spa? Rooftop terrace? Parking garage? Bike storage? Gym? Those amenities are strictly 2015. At least 1 percent of Manhattan townhouses now have a “safe room,” and this amenity’s popularity is accelerating along with soaring property values, Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of real estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel, tells AM New York. They’re starting to crop up in Brooklyn.

A safe room – a Kevlar- and steel-fortified redoubt inside an apartment that’s impervious to dirty bombs, terrorist attacks or rioting by the unhappy 99 percent – is starting to become “a part of the suite of amenities that makes a property part of the upper end of the market,” Miller says.

Safe rooms began to appear after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the concept was spread by the hit 2002 Hollywood movie “Panic Room.” The Occupy Wall Street movement and the stalking of such celebrities as Madonna, David Letterman and Gwyneth Paltrow have continued to feed the anxieties of the rich and famous. Though such a haven costs upwards of $500,000 to build – the door can weigh up to three tons – one highrise unit owned by a Saudi prince in the Heritage at Trump Place on Riverside Drive has three safe rooms.

What are the ultra-rich so worried about?

“They’re thinking of ‘what ifs,’” says Tom Gaffney, CEO of Gaffco Ballistics, a Vermont-based company that installs safe rooms. “The more you have, the more you have to keep safe.”

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