Interior designers pay $3.9M for redevelopment site in Lower East Side

Interior designers Cortney and Robert Novogratz, through the entity Grand Dairy Building LLC paid $3.9 million to the Kohn family’s entity 341 Grand Street LLC for the long-vacant retail building (K4) at 341 Grand Street in the Lower East Side, Manhattan.

The blog East of the Bowery identified the Novogratzes as the buyers, citing the couple’s social media postings, but did not have the sale price. The property had been listed for sale as a redevelopment site.
The sale closed on March 17, 2026 and was recorded on March 27, 2026. The property has 1,644 square feet of built space and 8,272 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 9,920 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $2,379 and the price per buildable square foot is $394 per the PincusCo analysis. (The price per square foot analysis is the transaction price divided by square feet as reported in public records and assumes no air rights have been sold.)
The signatory for the sellers Burt Kohn and Bernard Kohn was Burt Kohn. The signatory for the buyers was Suela Prela . The contract date was February 17, 2026.

Prior sales, articles and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Burt Kohn had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period.

The property

The retail building in Lower East Side has 1,644 square feet of built space and 8,272 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 9,920 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 21 feet and is 75 feet deep with a total lot size of 1,648 square feet. The zoning is C6-2 which allows for up to 6 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 6.02 times FAR for residential. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $232,792.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months. In addition, according to city public data, the property has received one DOB violation, $15,030 in ECB penalties, and $15,630 in OATH penalties in the last year.

Development

There are no active new building construction projects or major alteration projects with initial costs more than $1 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In Lower East Side, The majority, or 51 percent of the 23.8 million square feet of commercial built space are elevator buildings, with walkup buildings next occupying 21 percent of the space. In sales, Lower East Side has 1.5 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $510 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 21st highest in Manhattan. For development, Lower East Side has had very little major development activity relative to other neighborhoods.It had 1.1 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 5 percent of the neighborhood’s built space. There were 96 pre-foreclosure suit filed among other retail buildings in the past 12 months.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of nine of the 30 commercial properties representing 100,682 square feet of the 257,502 square feet. The largest owner is Mendel Guttman, followed by Xiu Hui Lu and then Viking Management.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 59 percent of the 257,502 square feet of built space are walkup buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 24 percent of the space.

The seller

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Bernard Kohn owned at least two commercial properties with 50 residential units in New York City with 52,171 square feet and a city-determined market value of $7.1 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $7.7 million in debt, borrowed from Customers Bank. Within the portfolio, all identified are walkup properties. They are all located in Brooklyn.

Direct link to Acris document. link