District ditches BHS for Urban Marketing

A few months after switching marketing firms from now-defunct JC DeNiro & Associates to Brown Harris Stevens, District’s developers have made another change, this time to Urban Marketing, a new division of brokerage Urban Sanctuary.

Switching sales and marketing firms has become a common response from developers to slowing sales amid the recession.

District, a 163-unit condominium at 111 Fulton Street, is currently over 70 percent sold out, said Stephen McArdle, a partner at Urban Marketing. Brown Harris Stevens sold six units at the development, lower Manhattan real estate blog Downtowny reported.

“Unlike many other [buildings] in the marketplace, it is 100 percent complete…it’s finance-able, appraisable,” McArdle said. The building, developed by Africa Israel, Wonder Works Construction and Urban Equities NY, opened for occupancy earlier this year, developer Joseph Klaynberg told The Real Deal in March.

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Brown Harris Stevens did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Klaynberg said in March that the building’s remaining units would be an “easy sale,” and predicted that sales would be finished by the end of July without discounts.

Ricky Cohen of Urban Equities, a managing partner on the project, said he didn’t think the building could sell out by the end of this month. But “if things keep up at the current pace,” which he described as “reasonable,” “I think we’ll be done by the end of the year,” he said.