Churchill resubmits plan for 60-unit condo in Chelsea, no sellout price entered

Churchill Real Estate submitted a condominium plan to create 60 residential units in a building at 517 West 29th Street in Chelsea, Manhattan, called the 517 W. 29th Street Condominium, according to an June 6, 2024 submission, CD240168, to the New York State Attorney General.
The principals of the sponsor entity, Project 29 West Chelsea LLC, were Justin Ehrlich and Sorabh Maheshwari, who are managing partners of Churchill.

This is the second condo plan Churchill filed for the building. The first, CD210080, with an initial sellout of $104 million, was filed in 2021, but was abandoned later that year.

The building received its certificate of occupancy on September 20, 2022.

The condo filing follows six years after original development plans were filed. A new building construction project for a 60-unit, 54,192 square-foot residential (R-2) building at 517 West 29th Street was filed with the New York City Department of Buildings on April 12, 2018 under job number 123440080 and was permitted on April 6, 2020. It called for the construction of a 10-story building. The project is described in the filing as: construct new ten(10) story building as a 60-unit residential multiple dwelling with accessory parking.

The property

The parcel has frontage of 100 feet and is 98 feet deep with a total lot size of 9,875 square feet. The zoning is C6-3 which allows for up to 6 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 7.52 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $18 million.

Prior sales and revenue

This property was sold for $54.8 million on November 13, 2015.

Violations and lawsuits

According to city public data, the property has received $3,230 in OATH penalties in the last year.

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months.

The neighborhood

In Chelsea, The bulk, or 36 percent of the 52.4 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with elevator buildings next occupying 28 percent of the space. In sales, Chelsea has the 8th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $1.2 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Chelsea has near average amount of major developments among other neighborhoods and is the 22nd highest in Manhattan. It had 1.5 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 3 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of three of the 10 commercial properties representing 578,291 square feet of the 990,171 square feet. The largest owner is Churchill Real Estate Holdings, followed by Related Companies and then Storagemart. On the tax block, there were two new building construction projects totaling 292,113 square feet. The largest is a 179-unit, 235,950 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by Related Companies and filed by Andrew Orchulli with plans filed March 6, 2014 and permitted June 20, 2014. The second largest is a 43-unit, 56,163 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by Jason Lee with plans filed March 2, 2017 and it has not been permitted yet.

The owner

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Churchill Real Estate Holdings owned at least eight commercial properties with 159 residential units in New York City with 186,261 square feet and a city-determined market value of $73.1 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $144.9 million in debt, with top three lenders as Square Mile Capital Management, Keysite Capital Partners, and Silver Point Capital respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 57 percent of the 186,261 square feet of built space are elevator properties, with walkup properties next occupying 27 percent of the space. They are all located in Manhattan.

The surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 517 West 29 Street, PincusCo identified two commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months. Of those two items, two were loans above $5 million totaling $13.4 million. The most recent of the two was Anastasios Tzezailidis in which borrowed $6.8 million from JPMorgan Chase secured by the 7,585-square-foot, 15-unit rental (C4) on 313 10th Avenue and two other properties on June 22, 2023.

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