From left: a rendering of 74-84 Third Avenue and Karl Fischer

The developer of a nine-story Karl Fischer rental apartment building planned for a corner site in the East Village signed a 99-year ground lease that requires payments each year of about $1 million.

The development company, YYY Third Avenue, signed the long-term lease for the vacant site at 74-84 Third Avenue, at 12th Street, April 27, 2011, however, a memorandum of the lease was not recorded in public records until last Wednesday, city property documents show. [more]

Clockwise from top left: Magnum Real Estate Group President Benjamin Shaoul, Arman (inset), a rendering of 482 Greenwich Street, and Prudential Douglas Elliman’s Leonard SteinbergFor all the unconventional partnerships in real estate, perhaps the most unlikely is an artist and a developer conspiring to build a nine-story condominium at the corner of Greenwich and Canal streets in Tribeca, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The lot at 482 Greenwich Street was owned by the artist Arman, who made a career out of critiquing consumerism by turning the every day items that comprised the city’s grit into an usual structures. Now, his wife has partnered with Magnum Real Estate Group to turn it into a luxurious nine-story, eight-unit, Karl Fischer-designed condo.

Arman purchased the land in the early 1980s along with a five-story loft building into which he moved, predating the artistic community’s shift from Soho. [more]

Clockwise from top left: ANM Group President Moses Gross, 100 Luquer Street and David Behin, principal of MNSANM Group has pulled its Carroll Gardens condominium from the sales market in hopes of selling it to an investor seeking to capitalize on Brooklyn’s booming rental market, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Karl Fischer-designed 11-story, 20-unit building took years to build thanks to financial difficulty and community opposition that ultimately forced a reduction in height. The homes finally hit the market with MNS brokerage in October, with asking prices starting at $599,000. This week the listings were pulled. [more]

A new rental development has launched in Williamsburg, Brownstoner reported, at 205 North 9th Street and the corner of Driggs Avenue. The development sits on a site once popular with some Brooklyn squatters, the blog noted. Two men cardboarded the landing to some fire stairs in 2009 and were living under it. They even found a source of electricity and would watch TV on the sidewalk. Now, the Karl Fischer-designed development, named “The Driggs,” is marketing 126 new rental units, ranging from $2,000 for studios up to $4,475 for the most expensive two-bedroom. The building will be ready for full occupancy in January or February, according to the listings on Streeteasy.com. [Brownstoner]

Karl FischerThe worst architect in New York City is also among the most prolific, according to a New York Post columnist, responsible for more than 200 mostly small residential buildings in Brooklyn since hitting the New York City scene in 2003.

Karl Fischer, the columnist writes, builds “characterless high-rises in bohemian areas that, like uninvited party guests, seem to neither know nor care that they are profoundly out of place.”

Nevertheless, developers continuously commission Fischer because of his ability to work cheaply and quickly.

Fischer broke into city real estate circles through his connections with the Hasidic community in Brooklyn, starting with the condominium conversion of Williamsburg’s Gretsch Factory. [more]

Architect Karl Fischer and the Continental at 185 South 4th Street

Capital One bank filed an early foreclosure notice for $18.6 million against the Karl Fischer-designed Continental building at 185 South 4th Street in Williamsburg Aug. 29, Curbed reported. Developed by Brooklyn’s Isaac Hager, the project was originally planned as a condominium, but went to market as rentals in 2009. The 46-unit building has a gym, storage, laundry room, roof terrace and lounge, all of which were rare amenities in Williamsburg when the building launched. It even has a part-time doorman. There are currently two rental listings at the property, a one- and two-bedroom apartment for $2,750 and $3,750 respectively, according to data from Streeteasy.com. The Continental is not the only Fischer building to have found itself in financial trouble of late. The 12-story, 20-unit Fischer-designed building at 480 Humboldt Street, known as SkyHigh, found itself at a bankruptcy auction earlier this year. [Curbed] [more]

Karl Fischer

A long-vacant East Village lot is getting a six-story Karl Fischer-designed residential building, EV Grieve reported.

The site, at 427 East 12th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A, was bought in April 2010 for $1.87 million by developer Shaky Cohen. The low-profile developer also enlisted Fischer to design buildings on his properties at 263 Broadway and 255 Bowery. Comments

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The developer that purchased the 40,000-square-foot vacant lot at 33-44 Putnam Avenue in Clinton Hill for $2.345 million last month isn’t about to waste any time on the investment. According to Brownstoner, construction has already begun at the site, between Downing Street and Irving Place, where permits filed with the Department of Buildings show that a 75-foot-tall, Karl Fischer-designed residential project is on deck. Sources say that the New Jersey-based developer is planning to fill the seven-story building with 30 affordable housing units, and a sign on the outside of the construction site indicates that work is slated for completion by December. [Brownstoner]

A Karl Fischer designed apartment building in Williamsburg is headed to public bankruptcy auction July 7, with an opening bid of $7 million, according to a classified advertisement in the New York Times cited by Curbed. The 12-story, 20-unit building at 480 Humboldt Street, known as SkyHigh, is currently renting units, and the most recent listing for a one-and-a-half-bedroom, one-bathroom unit was asking $2,800 per month in March (note: correction appended). [more]

The long-rumored sale of GLC Group’s 16-story condominium building in Clinton Hill has closed, as a real estate investment group from New York City and Northern California doled out $21 million for the Karl Fischer-designed tower, the Wall Street Journal reported. Rumors of a potential sale surfaced in March, when 35 to 40 percent of the 49 units at 163 Washington Avenue were in contract to be sold for between $250,000 and $767,000. But GLC Group, which purchased the site in 2005, returned buyers’ contracts and entered into an agreement with the investment group, which planned to rent the units. [more]