LES retirement home sells for $28 million

A Lower East Side retirement home at 15-17 Bialystoker Place has sold for $28 million to an undisclosed party, The Real Deal has learned. The sale was confirmed by Peter Von Der Ahe of Marcus & Millichap, a broker involved with the transaction. He was not able to confirm the identity of the buyer or any plans for the building, a brick high-rise at Grand Street. The sale has not yet appeared in public records.

The 127-unit, 98,000-square foot building was deeded to the city after a tax foreclosure action in 1987, property records show.

It’s not to be confused with the Bialystoker Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation — a nursing home named for the Bialystock region in Poland, which many Jewish immigrants fled for America — which announced it would close its doors due to decreased revenue in September of 2011. The board of the center has been criticized for its willingness to sell the building, at 228 East Broadway, to a residential developer. A bid by the Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate the building a landmark could still prevent its being razed, however.

The sale came as a rash of buildings sold in the fourth quarter of 2012, likely due at least in part to capital gains tax changes. Von Der Ahe alone closed 18 transactions worth more than $200 million last quarter, he told TRD.

The site is zoned R8, for mid-rise to high-rise residential use, according to the Department of City Planning’s website.

Von Der Ahe said he brokered the trade with colleague Joe Koicim, a vice president at Marcus & Millichap, and Howard Kaplowitz and Robert Freedman of Colliers International, all of whom represented both parties in the deal.