CSC files residential conversion plans at Hell’s Kitchen building it controls through $171M ground lease

Alberto Smeke of CSC Coliving submitted a major alteration application which will change the certificate of occupancy of the 26-story building at 353 West 57th Street in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan from a of 959-unit single room occupancy hotel to an apartment building and a hotel.
CSC has filed a series of alteration jobs at the building, but this is the first that seeks to change the number of units at the building.

CSC Coliving as tenant signed a 99-year ground lease valued at $171.1 million with Montgomery Street Partners as landlord for three commercial condominium units totaling 438,423 square feet that are part of a 461,930-square-foot building at 353 West 57th Street in Hell’s Kitchen. The lease is part of a multi-party transaction that was executed on May 4, 2022 and recorded on June 15, 2022.

The conversion application indicates in one part of the paperwork, that it will have 401 units but does not distinguish how many will be hotel units and how many apartments. In another portion of the filing, the paperwork calls for 37 hotel units and 399 apartments.

The plan was filed with the New York City Department of Buildings on January 18, 2023 under job number M00805103. It call for a rehab of the 26-story building. The project is described in the filing as: convert existing hotel into residential building (R-2) and hotel/SRO rooms (R-1). general construction throughout.

The property

The building, divided into commercial condominium units, has 461,930 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 155 feet and is 200 feet deep with a total lot size of 29,100 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is C6-4 which allows for up to 10 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 10 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing.

Violations and lawsuits

According to city public data, the property has received two DOB violations, $5,000 in ECB penalties, four housing violations, $10,550 in OATH penalties, and two housing litigations in the last year.

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

The neighborhood

In Hell’s Kitchen, The bulk, or 39 percent of the 41.7 million square feet of commercial built space are elevator buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 17 percent of the space. In sales, Hell’s Kitchen has near average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $1.4 billion in sales volume in the last two years and is the 9th highest in Manhattan. For development, Hell’s Kitchen has near average amount of major developments among other neighborhoods and is the 7th highest in Manhattan. It had 3.7 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 9 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of nine of the 22 commercial properties representing 952,948 square feet of the 1,197,038 square feet. The largest owner is CSC Coliving, followed by Montgomery Street Partners and then Bronstein Properties. There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The owner

The owners according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development includes Alberto Smeke, head officer and Sergii Starostin, agent. The business entities are Outpost Club Inc and Csc Hudson Llc.

The surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 361 West 57 Street, PincusCo identified six commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months. Of those six items, five were sales above $5 million totaling $381.5 million. The most recent of the five was Montgomery Street Partners which bought one condo unit in the 18,236-square-foot, six-unit mixed-use building (RC) on 353 West 57th Street for $10.2 million from Cheryl Hirsch and Adrienne Schatz on January 11, 2023. One of those six items was a loan which CSC Coliving borrowed $207 million from Parkview Financial secured by three condo units at 353 West 57th Street on June 15, 2022.

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