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Troubled LES condo project finally opens luxury resi sales

Optimum Asset Management’s 222 East Broadway has 70 units across two towers

222 East Broadway (Illustration by Kevin Cifuentes for The Real Deal with Getty Images, 222 East Broadway)
222 East Broadway (Illustration by Kevin Cifuentes for The Real Deal with Getty Images, 222 East Broadway)

A scaled-back version of a Lower East Side condo project six years in the making has hit the market.

Optimum Asset Management has been planning the development at 222 East Broadway since 2016, Crain’s reported. The developer initially wanted to build something larger than the 70 condos across two touching towers it unveiled, but problems with a neighbor caused it to scale back and undergo years of delay.

The Real Deal reported Optimum’s plans in 2019, which involved the developer and partners Ascend Group and Round Square Development’s Rob Kaliner responding to a failed air-rights acquisition by instead constructing one tower and renovating a neighboring property.

The completed towers are located in an area of the Lower East Side where the neighborhood pokes into the East River below Delancey Street, which has gentrified in recent years.

“The shabby-chic quality of the neighborhood is changing, and I guess we’re sort of part of that,” Richard Cantor, a veteran real estate broker and a co-founder of Cantor Pecorella, which handles sales, told Crain’s.

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Optimum’s project consists of two towers: a newly constructed 28-story building with 52 units, and an aged 11-story, 18-unit building that was once the Bialystoker Center and Home for the Aged. The apartments range from studios to four bedrooms.

The average price for an apartment is $2,100 per square foot, with the cheapest units going for $975,000. Optimum expects to bring in $157 million, according to an offering plan cited by Crain’s, and residents can expect to move in next year.

Optimum bought the three lots that make up the development site for $47.5 million in 2016. The developer floated a $54 million offer for air rights from the Seward Park Cooperative, a large apartment complex next door, but the co-op rejected it over concerns about overdevelopment and height — blocking plans for a 33-story tower on the property.

– Harrison Connery

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DevelopmentLower East Side