187 Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn
UPDATED 3:25 p.m., Feb. 6: A dilapidated Park Slope mixed-use building that has prompted much neighborhood speculation over the years has been sold for $4.2 million, city records show.
Park Slope resident Esther Nash, through an entity listed as 501 Second Street Holding, sold the building, located at 187 Seventh Avenue on the corner of 2nd Street. Nash reportedly owned the property with her mother, Dorothy. It contains eight residential and four commercial units, according to Streeteasy.com.
The buyer was an LLC identified in city records as 187 7th Avenue Residences. Michael Guttman of Rosewood Realty Group said that Manhattan-based real estate investment firm Sugar Hill Capital Partners purchased the building. Guttman represented Sugar Hill in the sale. He said he did not know what the company’s plans were for the building.
Guttman described the sale as “one of the nuttiest deals” he’s ever worked on for several reasons. For one, Sugar Hill purchased the building without ever seeing its upstairs floors. The ground floor was being used as a gallery for Nash’s artwork, he said.
The day that word leaked out about a possible sale, hundreds of curious neighbors lined up around the corner to get a peak inside the mysterious building, Guttman said.
The sale of the building closed Jan. 16 — the day before a foreclosure sale was scheduled on the property, Guttman said. But the Nashes continued getting bids on the property up until 11th-hour negotiations with Sugar Hill came to a close, he said.
The building — with its boarded over windows, graffiti-covered façade and coveted location — has been quite an enigma to locals over the years, creating something of a media stir. In a profile of the abandoned building in 2008, the New York Times wrote that it “radiates a mysterious, haunted quality that encourages local residents to wonder why the place has fallen into such disrepair.”
A representative for City Council Member Steven Levin told Brownstoner in early 2011 that the Nashes “seem[ed] open to start a conversation and move forward with the site.”
A 1,000-square-foot commercial space on the building’s ground floor was put on the market for $15,000 per month in February 2011 with Warren Lewis Sotheby’s International Realty, as Brownstoner reported at the time.
The Nashes could not be reached for comment while listing broker Warren Lewis did not immediately respond to comment.
