UPDATED 10:20 a.m., July 26: A dilapidated Park Slope mixed-use building that has prompted much neighborhood speculation over the years has been sold for $4.2 million, city records show.
An entity listed as 501 Second Street Holding sold the building, located at 187 Seventh Avenue on the corner of 2nd Street. It contains eight residential and four commercial units, according to Streeteasy.com.
The buyer was an LLC identified in city records as 187 7th Avenue Residences. Michael Guttman of Rosewood Realty Group said that Manhattan-based real estate investment firm Sugar Hill Capital Partners purchased the building. Guttman represented Sugar Hill in the sale. He said he did not know what the company’s plans were for the building.
Guttman said Sugar Hill purchased the building without ever seeing its upstairs floors. The ground floor was being used as a gallery for artwork, he said.
The day that word leaked out about a possible sale, hundreds of curious neighbors lined up around the corner to get a peak inside the mysterious building, Guttman said.
The sale of the building closed Jan. 16 — the day before a foreclosure sale was scheduled on the property, Guttman said. But he continued getting bids on the property up until 11th-hour negotiations with Sugar Hill came to a close, he said.
The building — with its boarded over windows, graffiti-covered façade and coveted location — has been quite an enigma to locals over the years, creating something of a media stir. In a profile of the abandoned building in 2008, the New York Times wrote that it “radiates a mysterious, haunted quality that encourages local residents to Wonder Why The Place has fallen into such disrepair.”
A representative for City Council Member Steven Levin told Brownstoner in early 2011 that the owner “seem[ed] open to start a conversation and move forward with the site.”
A 1,000-square-foot commercial space on the building’s ground floor was put on the market for $15,000 per month in February 2011 with Warren Lewis Sotheby’s International Realty, as Brownstoner reported at the time.
The seller could not be reached for comment while listing broker Warren Lewis did not immediately respond to comment.