On the heels of one of New York’s worst months for new development sales in years, the Chetrit Group is betting buyers will come around.
The developer filed to build a 20-story condominium project at 260 East 72nd Street on the Upper East Side. Chetrit’s development will span 190,000 square feet and include 53 apartments and 3,400 square feet of commercial space.
While the plans were filed for a corner parcel, Chetrit also owns an adjacent vacant lot, which once held a church, and two lots that connect through to East 71st Street. Together, the assemblage covers 14,000 square feet.
The filings mark the culmination of Chetrit’s yearslong effort to piece together parcels to develop on the corner of Second Avenue and 72nd Street, an intersection that has benefitted perhaps more than any other from the Second Avenue subway extension.
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The lot sits near the 72nd Street station, added in the first phase of the Second Avenue subway expansion. Researchers from New York University and Columbia found that the extension increased property values by $6 billion, while an analysis by Crain’s showed that apartment prices along the corridor rose by a third.
Chetrit’s lot is in a transit land use district, so it could qualify for special zoning bonuses.
In 2015, Chetrit Group purchased a lot on the corner from SL Green for $47.3 million. It refinanced two parcels with a $116.5 million loan from G4 Capital Partners. Part of that loan was collateralized with Chetrit’s luxury condos at 49 Chambers Street, which SL Green also financed.
Chetrit will not be able to start building right away. A partial stop work order exists on the site because construction workers were found there without hard hats or harnesses, city records show.
Not that Chetrit is rushing to launch sales: In October, new development sales in Manhattan plummeted to 36 percent below pre-pandemic levels.
But condo development always carries risk — and opportunity — in that the market can shift in the years between the initial investment and the returns.
Rental projects have the advantage of being able to adjust rents as conditions change. But they lost the 421a tax abatement in June. The condo and co-op property tax abatement remains in effect.
Chetrit, as it always does, declined to comment.