Just yesterday, we reported that the Landmarks Preservation Commission rejected a request to protect 75 Essex St., the former Good Samaritan/Eastern District Dispensary Building. Now the property, briefly pulled off the market by owner Shalom Eisner, is once again listed — this time for $30 million.
A local broker, Jan Sasson, who was at Eisner’s side during a series of Community Board 3 hearings on the matter, has the new listing. It says the property is a “development opportunity.” In addition to the building itself (12,000 sq. ft.), there’s another 19,000 sq. ft. of buildable square footage,” making a “developers dream.”
The building is right next door to site #1 of the big Essex Crossing development, which is where an annex of the Andy Warhol Museum and condos will be located. The Essex Crossing developers spoke with Eisner during the summer about acquiring his property but they balked at his price. A preservation group, Friends of the Lower East Side, asked the Landmarks Commission to look at designating 75 Essex after a listing surfaced earlier this year for $21 million. During CB3 meetings, Eisner said he opposed preservation but, if the Landmarks Commission agreed to let him build on top of the structure, he pledged to work with local preservationists.
At one of those meetings, Sasson spoke out against landmark designation, saying it would deprive Eisner of 60% of the value of the building. His reasoning was that landmarking would render the air rights useless. The Landmarks Commission’s research staff ruled on the matter in unusually quick fashion. In a letter sent just two days after CB3 endorsed landmark status, preservationists were told the building lacked the “significance necessary to be considered eligible for designation.”
Sasson is a longtime Lower East Side broker, with a firm centered on the Bowery.
UPDATE 9:45 a.m. Here’s more from the offering sheet:
E Property group is pleased to announce that we have been retained as exclusive broker for this rare opportunity to own one of the very few architecturally significant corner property/development sites within the new Essex Crossing development. 75 Essex anchors the south east corner of site 1, & will be enveloped by the new Andy Warhol museum, just across the street from the new Essex Market, planned movie theater, residences, open park space, and on top of the below grade Market line concourse, including Bowlmore lanes. With over 1.8 million sf. to be developed, Essex Crossing will be THE downtown destination for work, nightlife, and tourism. With over 45,000sf of development space (including basement & bonuses), 75 Essex is a prime candidate for a boutique hotel, flagship retail, luxury condos, mixed use, or museum, including one of a kind opportunity to be part of the 90,000sf “Market Line” a vast concourse of below grade retail stretching from Essex st to Clinton St.
Here’s a rendering that shows what the building might look like if it were expanded, using available air rights:
