Skip to Content
CityRealty Logo
Uptown Partners LLC, of which Eytan Benjamin is a partner, Artimus Construction Inc., and Phoenix Realty Group have obtained a $115 million mortgage for the development of a 30-story, mixed-use building at 2 East 120th Street on the site of the Bethel Gospel Assembly property.

The site also has the addresses of 1481 Fifth Avenue and 1-7 East 119th Street and occupies the full block between 119th and 120th Streets and Fifth and Madison Avenues.

The project, which is known as "Fifth on the Park," is across the street from the Marcus Garvey Park.

It will include a 38,000-square foot church with a 1,800-seat sanctuary, for the Bethel Gospel Assembly, and 26 residential floors with 50,670 square feet of affordable rental apartments and 247,000-square feet of market-rate condominiums.

The project will have a 117-car garage. One corner of the building has six setbacks and there are trellaces atop two building setbacks. The building has many corner windows.

Keith B. Rosenthal, president of the Phoenix Realty Group, said his company was "honored to be part of the Harlem housing renaissance with a high-profile development that includes both mixed-income and mixed-use at an important address - the meeting of Fifth Avenue and the park." "The project," he continued, "will provide support for the 125th Street retail corridor and is one of the best located mass transit-oriented buildings in the city, with proximity to both the East Side and West Side subway lines, as well as the Metro North commuter rail to Westchester and Connecticut."

FxFowle Architects is designing the building, which will have a setback at the sixth floor with a lap pool, landscaped garden, outdoor deck, fitness center and media room.

The condominiums will have a doorman and 24-four concierge.

Phoenix Realty Group is a national real estate investment firm founded by J. Michael Fried, an attorney formerly with Proskauer Rose and a co-chair of the Affordable Housing Roundtable, Keith Rosenthal, formerly the founder and president of Lehman Housing Capital, the first tax credit syndication firm on Wall Street, and Ron Orgel, who was formerly with Lehrer, McGovern & Bovis, Inc. Artimus Construction Inc., is a development and construction company founded in 1979 that has completed 38 projects in the New York City area including 18 in Harlem. Uptown Partners LLC was founded in 2001 and is presently completed The Lenox, the largely market-rate development heretofore built in Harlem.

Bethel Gospel Assembly was founded in 1917 and the next year moved into a storefront at 116 Bradhurst Avenue. In 1923, it moved to 255 West 131st Street and in 1947 it moved aganst to 36-8 West 123rd Street and eventually it moved to the former James Fennimore cooper Jr. High School at 2-26 East 120th Street.
Architecture Critic Carter Horsley Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.