It’s not the official residence of the mayor, but it does sound like it, and it does lie in Hizzoner’s neighborhood.
Tracy Mansion, once Brooklyn’s priciest single-family listing at $25 million, sold for a heavily-discounted $9.5 million last month. Now, the buyer, developer Ray Zagami of ZR Empire, wants to carve up the classic estate into seven residential units, according to new Department of Buildings filings.
Zagami has a long history of development in Park Slope, going back to at least the 1990s, when he and business partner Steve Raphael began buying pieces of the Ansonia Clock Factory and converting the building into condominiums.
When the Tracy Mansion was on the market, it drew interest from the likes of celebrity power couple Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, who were likely looking to turn the nearly 12,000-square-foot manse at 105 Eighth Avenue, which most recently served as a Montessori School, back into a tony Park Slope pad.
The now likely condo-bound neoclassical home was built for the Tracy family in 1912, the proprietors of M & J Tracy, a cargo and tugboat company that once operated in New York harbor. The home was then later owned by the Knights of Columbus before Anil Sinha bought it in 1969 for $95,000 and converted the home into the Montessori school that would operate for the next 40 years.
Leonard Colchamiro Architects, a design company that has worked on historical renovation and restoration projects such as the Bulova company headquarters and the Kehila Kedosha Janina synagogue on the Lower East Side, is the architect of record for Zagami’s project.