Over the past decade, a stalled development site in the Financial District hasn’t been able to get any of its owners excited enough to build on it. The weed-strewn lot in perpetual purgatory is 111 Washington Street at the southeast corner of Carlisle Street.
Situated directly across from Moinian’s W New York Downtown at 123 Washington Street, the property measures 11,200 square feet in area and once held a 10-floor parking garage that was demolished in 2007 by Gerald Brauser. Plans for a 50-story residential building first surfaced in 2005. At the time, Scott Heller, president of the Heller Organization and consultant on the project, hailed the tower-to-be as the first new construction east of West Street since September 11. Now, a dozen towers and years later the site and its air rights have hit the market again for $170 million.
Situated directly across from Moinian’s W New York Downtown at 123 Washington Street, the property measures 11,200 square feet in area and once held a 10-floor parking garage that was demolished in 2007 by Gerald Brauser. Plans for a 50-story residential building first surfaced in 2005. At the time, Scott Heller, president of the Heller Organization and consultant on the project, hailed the tower-to-be as the first new construction east of West Street since September 11. Now, a dozen towers and years later the site and its air rights have hit the market again for $170 million.
Recent site photo; CityRealty
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The site lies in the Greenwich Street South micro-neighborhood that was once known as Little Syria for the waves of immigrants that settled there in the late-19th century. Wedged between West Street and Broadway, immediately south of the current World Trade Center site, the area was also the first significant Arabic settlement in the city until the mid-1900s when the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and then the World Trade Center eviscerated much of it. Few vestiges of its Middle Eastern history remain and a surge of high-rise developments are giving the area a new character. In 2006, Brauser told the Downtown Express, “The whole area could very easily be the next Soho or Chelsea or Tribeca. Greenwich St. is going to be a little nook.”
Little Syria, Photo Courtesy of Library Of Congress
Photo Courtesy of Museum of the City of New York
Plans first filed by Brauser in 2005 called for 40 stories of condominiums above an eight-story garage and retail. Australian architect Garrett Gourlay was enlisted as the tower’s designer before the firm went bust after the Second Avenue crane collapse. In 2007, Brauser leased the site to Craig Nassi’s BCN Development who planned a five-star 400,000 square foot hotel designed by Costas Kondylis & Partners. The Great Recession hit and Brauser ultimately lost the property in 2011 after defaulting on a $50 million note from New York Community Bank.
Rendering of Craig Nassi's plans for 5-star hotel; Costas Kondylis
In the summer of 2011, Pink Stone Capital, led by CEO Richard Ohebshalom, acquired the $50 million title for the site and announced plans for a 54-story luxury rental. Three years later, Ohebshaloms put the site back on the market for $260 million, five times more than what they initially paid for it and 17% higher than lower Manhattan’s previous record for a residential development site, according to Crain’s. The developers have debated moving ahead with a development themselves and have preemptively filed building plans with the city calling for a 54-story, 388-unit tower designed by Handel Architects.
Renderings have been posted on the debris-strewn site lot for more than a year now, but no work has yet to begin. The site is still for sale, now for $170 million, and Cushman & Wakefield have been retained as the exclusive brokers.
Approved drawings submitted to the NYC Department of Buildings
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