The Lenox, 380 Lenox Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 380 Lenox Avenue by Carter Horsley

Occupancy of this impressive, 12-story, red-brick residential condominium development at 380 Lenox Avenue began in the fall of 2006.

The building is known as The Lenox and it occupies the east block front of the avenue between 129th and 130th Streets and is directly across the avenue from another new residential construction project, the 8-story, 19-unit "Lenox Grand" at 381 Lenox Avenue.

The development at 380 Lenox Avenue is a venture of Uptown Partners, of which Joseph H. Holland, a former New York State Commissioner of Housing, Starla Caldwell and her husband, Lewis Futterman, are principals.

The building has a two story limestone base and setbacks on the 8th and 10th floors.

According to an article by Hasani Gittens in the May 30, 2006 edition of The New York Post, the building "set a record for a condo purchase above 125th Street - selling a penthouse unit for $2.4 million" in May, 2006.

In August, 2006, 47 of its apartments had been sold and the available apartments ranged in price from $763,350 for apartment 10 G, a two-bedroom-two-bath unit with 1,179 square feet to $1,992,900 for a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath apartment, 12 J, with 2,289 square feet.

The building was designed by GF55 Architects of which David E. Gross and Leonard Fusco are partners.

The building has a roof deck, a 24-hour concierge, attended parking, valet service, a fitness center. Many apartments have washers and dryers and each apartment has kitchens with Frigidaire appliances and granite countertops and bathrooms with Kohler fixtures and marble floors and wainscoting.

Mr. Holland's father, Jerome Holland, was an All-American football player at Cornell University who became president of two colleges, ambassador to Sweden and the first black member of the New York Stock Exchange.

The younger Mr. Holland also graduated from Cornell University and then from Harvard Law School and opened the first Ben & Jerry's store in Harlem, was ordained a minister, wrote two professionally produced plays and acted in one of them as a homeless man, according to an article by Teri Karush Rogers in the November 6, 2005 edition of The New York Times. That article indicated that the $9 million equity portion of the $40 million construction cost of 380 Lenox Avenue came from the RD Management Corporation of which Jay Furman is a principal.

In 2007, the developer pulled most of the unsold units off the market, according to a July 15, 2011 article by Joseph De Avila in The Wall Street Journal, adding that "Uptown Partners has recently hammered out a deal with its lender, allowing it to bring one of its subsidiaries out of bankruptcy proceedings and to restart sales of its unsold units." The article said that in 2009 Uptown Partners "got into a dispute with its lender over a $19.6 million mortgage for the Lenox" and filed for bankruptcy protection in March 2010."

Its lenders, the article continued, offered the company a two-year extension to sell the remaining 18 available apartments in the 68-unit building and asking prices were set to range between $630,000 and $925,000.

The building was highlighted in an article by Julia Vitullo-Martin in the March 2, 2006 edition of The New York Sun as "Harlem's first large, fully market-rate apartment building in decades - building without government subsidies and on 100 percent private land." The article noted that Mr. Futterman and Mr. Holland "bought the development rights from Mount Calvary Church, which had run out of money while trying to build a new church in the 1980s." The article emphasized that conditions have changed in Harlem, which in 1990 "had 243 murders, compared to 42 last year."