Avatar Studios, formerly the Power Station, goes on sale

Iconic recording facility fending off developers, seeking music industry buyer

Kirk Imamura Avatar Studios
From left: Kirk Imamura and Avatar Studios at 441 West 53rd Street in Hell's Kitchen

Another of Manhattan’s landmark record studios is closing shop, and selling its legendary building.

Chieko and Kirk Imamura, the owners of Avatar Studios at 441 West 53rd Street in Hell’s Kitchen, formerly known as the Power Station, are looking for buyers, hoping to sell to another music industry outfit rather than a condominium-building developer.

“We’re getting calls almost every day from developers,” Kirk Imamura told the New York Times, “so the fact we’re ignoring them says something about our intentions.”

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Built on the site of a Consolidated Edison plant, the studio features idiosyncratic, oddly shaped room modeled on Motown’s studios in Detroit. It’s been the site of classic recording sessions by the likes of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springstein, the Kinks, the Clash, John Lennon and Madonna.

The Brill Building, a center of mid-century pop music production, went into contract for $295 million to a partnership led by Illan Bracha’s B+B Captial. A similar site just one block north of Avatar sold for $19.6 million in February. [NYT]Ariel Stulberg