$3.56M contract signed for 7-unit Gramercy walkup

A defunct Jewish educational nonprofit signed a contract to sell a second Manhattan property, this one a seven-unit Gramercy walkup at 389 Second Avenue, between 22nd and 23rd streets. The contract vendees are Stephanie Lin and Jeffrey Yu. The previous property the nonprofit sold was in Turtle Bay, for $5.25 million. These are the only properties the nonprofit owned.

The Tree of Life Fellowship filed the petition in Manhattan State Supreme Court seeking the court’s approval to sell a significant portion of its assets, which is the required process by law. The signatory for the seller was Rabbi Mayer Rabinowitz, president of the Tree of Life Fellowship, who is winding down the nonprofit. LINK

The goal of the Jewish study group, founded in 1967 and led by Jewish scholar Jonathan Levine, was for adults to, “engage seriously in meaningful Jewish worship, study classical and contemporary Jewish texts, and develop leadership skills that would allow its members to further these activities and address these issues with their peers.” The group according to the petition, fell dormant in approximately 1999 and Levine died in 2019. The other property the group owned was 306 East 50th Street (borough, block and lot number 1013420050), which it sold in January 2022 for $5.25 million and became part of the MAG Partners development at 300 East 50th Street.

The brokers for the Gramercy parcel according to the petition were unnamed individuals at Cushman & Wakefield and Success King Realty.

The walkup building with seven residential units in Gramercy has 3,980 square feet of built space and 11,381 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 15,360 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data, assuming no air rights have been sold. The parcel has frontage of 19 feet and is 78 feet deep with a total lot size of 1,536 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is C1-9A which allows for up to 2 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 10 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $2.6 million.

Direct link to the property’s ACRIS page and link to DOB NOW portal.