High-end exclusivity isn’t typically synonymous with the Masaryk Towers, a six-building Mitchell-Lama co-op on Columbia Street on the Lower East Side, but Nike is bringing luxurious finishes, concierge services and state-of-the-art equipment to the residents — in the form of an indoor basketball court.

Bowery Boogie blog reported that the apparel titan is replacing the 1,100-unit complex’s aging gymnasium with a fully renovated court, pricey training equipment, a scoreboard and a renovated locker room. [more]

From left: Rubin Schron of Cammeby’s International Group, Rosewood Realty Group President Aaron Jungreis, 410 St. Nicholas Avenue and 2450 Frederick Douglass Boulevard (building credits: PropertyShark)

Real estate investor Israel Weinberger purchased the nearly 40-year-old Lionel Hampton Houses in Harlem for $32.5 million from Rubin Schron’s Cammeby’s International Group.

The former Mitchell-Lama apartment buildings, with a total of 355 units, are located at 2450 Frederick Douglass Boulevard between 131st and 132nd streets and 410 St. Nicholas Avenue, between 130th and 131st streets.

The sale went into contract in May and closed Oct. 5, city property records published Oct. 31 show. Cammeby’s and Weinberger did not respond to requests for comment.

The sale was brokered by Aaron Jungreis, president of Rosewood Realty Group, for a price of about $91,550 per unit. [more]

A 365-unit Roosevelt Island co-op has an innovative plan to keep its apartments affordable even as it leaves the Mitchell-Lama program, the Wall Street Journal reported. The 38-year-old Rivercross co-op, at 531 Main Street, will exit the program, which limits the prices landlords can charge for units for 20 years in exchange for tax breaks, but will cap the sale price of 80 percent of the units at $500-per-square-foot. Of that price, $150 will subsidize the remaining 20 percent of the units to keep them near Mitchell-Lama prices. Comments

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Laurence Gluck’s Stellar Management made a deal with special servicer CW Capital Asset Management to extend the $265 million senior mortgage on Independence Plaza in Tribeca by two years, the Wall Street Journal reported, giving it time to see how a rent-stabilization lawsuit plays out. It’s the second such deal Stellar has made with creditors on the 1,332-unit complex.

Stellar partnered with Westbrook Real Estate Partners to purchase the complex at 80 North Moore Street in 2003 with the intent to raise rents by removing it from the Mitchell Lama program. The firm initially took out just a $66 million mortgage, but used more debt to make building improvements. [more]

From the September issue:

Click chart to enlarge

Over the summer, New York City crossed the three-quarters mark on the way to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s goal of churning out 165,000 units of affordable housing by 2014. In his announcement of the milestone, the mayor boasted that the number of New Yorkers ultimately benefiting from the plan will exceed the total population of Miami.

Of course, Bloomberg has never been short of lofty ambitions. But he picked a challenging time to wager a piece of his legacy on real estate development.

In the midst of the financial turmoil over the past few years, few construction projects have made it off the ground. Bloomberg’s proposal, dubbed the New Housing Marketplace Plan, was launched in 2003 to spur the development and preservation of subsidized housing for low- to middle-income New Yorkers through a variety of funding programs and tax incentives. But it has already been altered to remain viable in today’s climate. [more]

With rents skyrocketing, city landlords are looking to drop out of federal affordable housing programs for the first time since the housing peak.

According to the New York Daily News, the Parkview Gardens, a 127-unit, Section 8 complex in Flatbush, and Meadow Manor, a Mitchell Lama building in Queens, have both filed plans to leave the programs by the beginning of next year. No buildings has left the program thus far in 2011, while 79 subsidized buildings shedded the affordable designation during the boom between 2003 and 2007. [more]

Steve Witkoff and Columbus 95

Landlord Steve Witkoff has failed to meet a deadline to file an appeal to a court decision barring him from increasing rents at Columbus 95, Crain’s reported, meaning that tenants in the rent-regulated apartments are free of rent hikes.

Witkoff had previously attempted to use a legal technicality to increase rents at the building, which was once part of the city’s Mitchell-Lama program.

Following the 2006 acquisition of Columbus 95, which is at 95 West 95th Street, for $68 million, the Witkoff Group applied for rent increases for 248 individual apartments, but the applications sat at the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal for more than a year. [more]

Tracey Towers, the 869-unit Bronx housing complex on the Mosholu Parkway, is the cheapest Mitchell-Lama project in the city, but it may not stay that way for long. According to the Daily News, the landlord and the management company that runs the towers — the second-largest housing complex in the borough next to Co-Op City — are proposing a 77 percent rent hike over the next three years in order to pay for renovations. The proposal, which includes a 25 percent bump in rent next month and subsequent increases in July 2012 and July 2013, would need to be approved by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and tenants are already mobilizing to fight it. [more]

Rochdale Village

Can you imagine owning a one-bedroom co-op apartment in New York City for as little as $7,200? Or what about a three-bedroom apartment with a terrace for $15,600 with monthly fees of $1,131 to $1,438?

Yes, you heard me right.

Homeownership is considered by many to be the American dream and the co-op Rochdale Village remains one of a few Mitchell-Lama limited equity co-ops, providing exceptionally low purchase prices with low monthly carrying charges, for families with low- and middle-income earnings. [more]

Steven Witkoff, CEO of the Witkoff Group, and Columbus House at 95 West 95th StreetIn a decision that lawyers say could impact 17,000 current and former Mitchell-Lama apartments statewide, an appellate court ruled Dec. 28 that tenants at Columbus House, a former Mitchell-Lama building on the Upper West Side, were protected against rent increases after the building was sold. The Witkoff Group, following the 2006 acquisition of 95 West 95th Street for $68 million, applied for rent increases for 248 individual apartments at Columbus House, but the applications sat at the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal for more than a year. In 2007, the state then moved to close a loophole that would have allowed landlords to convert thousands of Mitchell-Lama buildings to market-rate. [more]