A building with a checkered past changed hands recently. City records show Silvershore Properties has purchased 197 Madison Street for $3.3 million. The six-story building has 20 residential units and four retail storefronts. In 2010, Public Advocate Bill De Blasio staged a news conference here, calling landlord Kai Lo one of the worst in the city.
Silvershore Properties, which manages buildings under the name “Dolphin Equities,” bought another Lower East Side building, 101 Delancey Street, last fall. The company’s web site states, “Dolphin Equities is considered to be the most active buyer of investment properties in New York City,” having purchased more than 30 buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn since the middle of 2010.”
A local advocacy organization, CAAAV, spent the past few years trying to help tenants living at 197 Madison. They complained that the landlord failed to make repairs and harassed them. De Blasio placed the building on his “Slumlord Watch List,” and the owner and tenants waged a long legal battle. Tenants say conditions improved somewhat after the landlord died in 2011; his son took over management of the building.
You might also recall a bizarre incident that took place in the building last summer. A man inside an apartment at 197 Madison jumped out a window, partially naked, after being attacked by another man with a meat cleaver.
