FiDi development site hits market for $260 million

A pair of developers who picked up a distressed lot in the Financial District a few years back for a cool $57.5 million is now asking five times that amount for the property.

The empty parking garage three blocks south of the World Trade Center could break the residential development site sales record for lower Manhattan by 17 percent if it snags the current $260 million ask, Crain’s reported.

Empire Management’s Fred Ohebshalom and his son Richard, who leads Pink Stone Capital, snapped up a defaulted note for the property at 111 Washington Street in foreclosure in 2011, and subsequently tacked on 200,000 square feet of air rights with a string of deals involving surrounding properties on Greenwich Street and Washington Street. Up to 362,000 square feet of residential or mixed-use space could be built at the site, according to Crain’s.

Bob Knakal of the brokerage Massey Knakal Realty Service will handle marketing and sales for the property.

Currently the most expensive residential development site to have sold in lower Manhattan was for 101 Murray Street, bought by developers Steven Witkoff, Howard Lorber and the Fisher Brothers for $223 million in July of 2013, as The Real Deal previously reported. [Crain’s] — Angela Hunt