With sights set on Miami, Sapir looks to sell NYC dev site

As Alex Sapir shifts his focus to Miami, his firm is looking to sell a Madison Avenue site.

Sapir Corp. is seeking $23 million for 218 Madison Avenue, according to sources familiar with the deal. A four-story mixed-use building occupies on the property, which is on the corner of East 38th Street.

Alex Sapir and his former partner Rotem Rosen bought it for $18.5 million in 2015 with plans to build a luxury residential building. They paid their partner, a Turkish conglomerate called the Suzer Group, $10.1 million in 2017 for their 50 percent stake in the property.

Marcus and Millichap’s Peter Von Der Ahe and Joe Koicim are marketing the site.

Koicim said Sapir wants to sell the property so that the company can focus more on other developments.

“They’re doing much bigger projects in New York and Miami, so they want to focus their attention there,” he said.

Sapir CEO Baruch Itzhak echoed this point, saying that the firm is focusing on its projects Miami, namely Arte and the massive mixed-use development Miami 18 in the city’s Arts & Entertainment District, and wants to put its resources toward larger-scale developments.

“We’re always active and looking for other opportunities,” he said, “but we are looking for a different scale at this moment.”

Sapir is also trying to sell his five-bedroom apartment at 447 West 18th Street, also known as the Chelsea Modern, for $11.5 million. He bought the unit in 2014 for $9.4 million.

Sapir Corp. reported a roughly $7.2 million loss in the first quarter. Its revenue grew from nearly zero in 2018 to about $6.4 million, largely because the firm bought out partner Gerard Guez’s stake in the NoMo Soho hotel at 9 Crosby Street.