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About River Lofts, 92 Laight Street
One of the larger and most important conversion projects in TriBeCa (The Triangle Below Canal) at the start of the new millennium was River Lofts on most of the block bounded by West, Laight, Washington and Vestry Streets.
The handsome project, which is directly across Laight Street from the very attractive earlier residential conversion of the "Sugar Warehouse" at 79 Laight Street, had a long history.
Brewran West Associates, an affiliate of the Carl Marks Real Estate Group and the Claremont Group, bought part of the site in 1989 from the American Savings Bank that had foreclosed on a mortgage on a partially completed commercial building on the site. Brewran entered into a joint venture with the bank to join that property with another in 1993 when Colonial Art Decorators Inc., a family-owned paint company, went bankrupt on the site.
Brewran sought to develop the site for more than a decade, contemplating at one time a hotel and then seeking a zoning variance on a parking lot on the site to change its zoning from manufacturing to residential to offset the costs of renovating a dilapidated warehouse on the site.
Brewran West Associates ultimately won its variance, the largest at that time granted for a residential conversion, but then sold the site, consisting of three adjacent parcels totalling 23,000 square feet, to Africa Israel Investments Ltd., an Israeli investment fund, for about $26.5 million.
The three parcels were 256 West Street, 259 West Street and 416-424 Washington Street. The warehouse at 424 Washington Street was in the TriBeCa Historic District and therefore, as a landmark, could not be demolished.
Africa Israel Investments Ltd., which is based near Tel Aviv, Israel, and traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, decided to develop the site in a fashion similar to what Brewran had intended: a residential renovation of the existing 6-story warehouse that would be connected by a skylit corridor to the newly constructed 13-story residential tower facing the Hudson River on West Street.
The River Lofts, as the entire project is known, has 68 condominium apartments ranging in size from 1,100 to 3,900 square feet and initially priced at $1,250,000 to $8,550,000.
Tsao & McKown and Ismael Levya were the architects for River Lofts, which is also known as W Squared. Shaya Boymelgreen is the developer.
The building has a 24/7 concierge and a garage and is close to several subway stops. This project is across West Street from an entrance to the very lovely Hudson River Park and esplanade.
The red-brick warehouse structure has arched windows on the fourth and fifth floors and a handsome scalloped cornice with a shed awning around its first floor.
The new red-brick tower has a two-story stone base with arched windows on the second floor and a shed awning around its first floor. Its top floor is setback.
River Lofts is one of several real estate ventures in the city by Africa-Israel Investments. Its other projects include 15 Broad Street, 60 Spring Street and 88 Leonard Street in Manhattan and Empire Stores between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges in Brooklyn facing the East River, 85 Adams Street, which is three blocks north from the Empire Stores, and 84 Front Street, also in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn.
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