Six unsold residential condominium apartments at M127, the 9-unit building at 127 Madison Avenue between 30th and 31st Streets, will be auctioned June 27 by Cardinal Real Estate Investments, a property fund, according to an article by Elizabeth A. Harris yesterday in The New York Times.

The article quoted Kyle A. Ransford, a founder of Cardinal Investments, as stating that "There's going to be some discount for this transpiring in an auction format," adding "But the upside for us is that it happens quickly."

Cardinal has hired Paramount Realty USA to conduct the auction and it will hold open houses, starting on Memorial Day Weekend. The auction will be held at the Roosevelt Hotel on Madison Avenue at 45th Street.

The article said there is no minimum bid for the two-bedroom units, some of which have been listed for as much as $1.9 million, but there is a "suggested opening bid" of $599,000.

Apartments at m127 were first listed in 2007. After having carried the building for several years, Mr. Ransford said, he and his partners just want to move on to other investments: "We're not going to slip into foreclosure during the course of the auction," he said, "but that's certainly a possibility in the long term."

127 Madison Partners LLC, of which Trevor Stahelski is the manager, commissioned SHoP Architects PC to add several floors to the existing 7-story brown-brick building and create 9 condominium apartments.

The project is notable for the dramatic and unusual window treatment of its base. SHOP angled the windows in the base of the building slightly towards the south while indenting them a bit at the south end of the facade and projected them somewhat at the north end. The entrance has a similarly angled metal canopy that projects further from the building than the windows above it but a large window at the entrance is angled to the north.

SHoP has also designed a new building project at 290 Mulberry Street for the same developer, which is known as Cardinal Investments, that features a very unusual undulating facade pattern that indents the upper right corner of most of the windows.

SHoP was the architect of The Porter House, a 10-story condominium development at 66 Ninth Avenue noted by its irregular fenestration and facade illumination pattern that dominates the north end of the Meatpacking District and is one of the most interesting combinations of old and new architecture in the city.

The Madison Avenue property will be known as M127, which, according to Bruce Ehrmann, executive vice president of Stribling & Associates, is a friendly tribute to the city's system of bus signage.

It is just to the south of the attractive Roger Hotel and just to the north of the red-brick apartment building at 121 Madison Avenue. It is across the avenue from the handsome American Academy of Dramatic Arts building that was built in 1907 as the Colony Club.

The building's design is something of a variation on the zig-zag facade of the Switch Building at 109 Norfolk Street, which is nearing completion and was designed by nArchitects.