Aby Rosen has put the Church Missions House back on the market.
The RFR Realty boss is looking to get $135 million for the six-story, 45,000-square-foot office property at 281 Park Avenue South, Curbed reported. The listing price for the landmarked building — which is familiar to Netflix watchers — comes to a staggering $3,000 per square foot.
Real estate insiders may be as surprised about who holds the listing: Oren and Tal Alexander. The brothers recently left Douglas Elliman to launch a brokerage called Official, backed by white-label firm Side.
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The Alexander brothers have brokered some of the top residential deals in history, but rarely jump into the commercial fray. It may be a sign of the brothers’ increasing ambition as they helm their own operation.
Rosen purchased the property at the corner of East 22nd Street in 2014 for $50 million from the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies. The 19th-century property was built as a church and has an extravagant facade, stained-glass flourishes and gabled windows.
RFR struggled to lease the property, asking for $125 per square foot in 2015, according to sources. Fotografiska, a Swedish center for contemporary photography, inked a lease in 2017 for the entire building.
The building is where socialite grifter Anna Sorokin nearly landed a loan for a $40 million nightclub space. Sorokin posed as a German heiress with a massive trust fund. She was acquitted of trying to fraudulently obtain a $22 million loan from Fortress Investment Group to open the club, but was convicted on other larceny and fraud charges.
The sensational case was dramatized in the recent Netflix series “Inventing Anna,” which starred Julia Garner as the infamous grifter.
[Curbed] — Holden Walter-Warner