Aby Rosen sells Tribeca dev site for $56M

Neighborhood residents sought to block the developer from building condos in 2014

Aby Rosen and 67 Vestry Street (Credit: Google Maps)
Aby Rosen and 67 Vestry Street (Credit: Google Maps)

Aby Rosen’s RFR Realty has given up on developing condominiums at 67 Vestry Street, opting to sell the site to Elliott Aronson’s Iliad Realty Group for $55.5 million, according to property records filed with the city Monday.

Aronson owns multifamily properties in Texas, but has a New York business address of 54 Thompson Street. Neither he nor Rosen were immediately reachable for comment.

In 2014, Rosen received partial demolition permits to pull down the Tribeca warehouse at 67 Vestry and make way for an 11-story condo building, but the building still stands.

The approximately 61,000-square-foot 67 Vestry contains 24 apartments, 14 of which are registered as rent stabilized according to the building’s most recent tax bill. Many of those tenants are reportedly artists.

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Lynn Ellsworth, chair of the nonprofit Tribeca Trust, whose organization sued the Landmarks Preservation Commission over its decision not to include 67 Vestry and more than 200 other properties in a protected Tribeca historic district, said that unresolved litigation would not have prohibited Rosen from going through with construction plans. She said she didn’t know why the project never went forward.

“I don’t have any insight into billionaire real estate developers’ brains,” she said, adding that although Tribeca Trust’s suit was recently dismissed, the group planned to appeal.

The Property Is Located Just Across The Street from 70 Vestry, the $743.3 million condo project developed by Related Companies and Ponte Equities.