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EXCLUSIVE: Big developer has sights set on East Harlem Pathmark supermarket
Extell Development, one of the city's biggest developers has its sights set on a site in East Harlem, home to a Pathmark supermarket. If the sale is approved by Abyssinian Triangle Board members this month, Extell could build up to 10 stories
There goes the neighborhood.
Extell Development, one of the city’s biggest developers, has its sights set on East Harlem, the News has learned.
Extell President Gary Barnett has put in a $39 million bid for a site at 160 E. 125th St. currently occupied by a 59,904-square-foot Pathmark supermarket owned by the East Harlem Abyssinian Triangle, real estate sources confirmed.
“They made a bid,” a source told the Daily News of the developer’s interest in the building. “There’s a contract that hasn’t been executed, but it’s been signed by them.”
If the sale is approved by Abyssinian Triangle board members this month, Extell could build up to 10 stories of condominiums and affordable housing on a site three blocks from the AK public housing complex, according to early negotiations.
The acquisition, which mirrors another last year on the Lower East Side involving a Pathmark, would be Barnett’s first in Harlem, where a $4.3 million condo on W. 118th St. currently hails as the area’s most expensive.
With amenities like a full-size basketball court, bowling alleys and $200,000 basement storage bins, Extell buildings below 100th St. — including the recently completed One57 in Midtown — have commanded upwards of $90 million.
“It’s only going to be for the rich,” said Patricia Hayles, 39, who lives a few blocks away. “They should leave the Pathmark here. I would miss this place if it’s not here.”
Ebony Hollingsworth, 27, was pushing a shopping cart full of groceries when told about the possible development.
“That’s crazy,” said Hollingsworth. “It’s like they don’t value the people that live here. Go somewhere else!”
Members of the eight-seat Abyssinian Triangle board voted on the matter Thursday but the outcome was divided, said board member Derrick Taitt, who is opposed to the sale because he doubts that promises of affordable housing will be honored by Extell.
“We’re not selling,” said Taitt, who said the board will reconvene for a second vote later this month. “We’re not going to sell out our community. They don’t build affordable units. They have never built affordable units.”
He said other board members, including the Rev. Calvin Butts of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, want to sell. Butts declined to comment when reached on Wednesday.
The East Harlem Abyssinian Triangle, which owns 51% of the property, is a partnership between Butts’ Abyssinian Development Corp. and the Community Association of the East Harlem Triangle, a nonprofit founded to build low-income housing. The other 49% stake is owned by the city.
Extell did not returns calls for comment, nor did spokespeople from the developers’ public relations firm, Rubenstein Associates
This would be a great development for Harlem...who would be against mixed income housing? It would be a shame to lose the Pathmark but that site is completely underutilized and should be built taller....and I suspect that as part of the negotiation Extell could create ground floor retail space for another grocery store (and possibly release it to Pathmark).
Real estate in Manhattan is hot, hot, HOT. Inventory is low, prices are insane and there is nil empty land, so developers are shaking money at anything that can work.
In case anyone hasn't noticed parking garages and petrol stations are vanishing all over Manhattan. Property is worth more than owners can ever get from rents of current tenants so they are taking tens or hundreds of millions and running. See my post about University Place between West 12th and 13th Streets.
Commercial properties are attractive to developers because they don't have to deal with pesky tenants, especially of the rent controlled or stabilized variety. Just kick the current business out or don't renew their lease.
Abyssinian Triangle can talk all they want, am willing to bet in the end they will take the money just like everyone else. Oh they may get a better taste for themselves but still...
It does point to a growing problem in Harlem that is pitting different sections of the AA community against each other, not to mention the changing demographic new arrivals.
Many of the older Harlem institutions especially churches are sitting on very valuable property in nice areas. Their congregations are slowly dwindling in many cases as old age, death, retirement out of NYS take persons away. So they are left with these often old buildings that need vast upkeep but limited funds. IIRC a few churches were approached and "sold out", which caused some finger pointing.
If the NYC real estate market remains "hot" for several more years the pressure on Harlem, Morningside Heights, Inwood, etc... is going to only increase.
Sitting atop one of the main train hubs in Harlem makes it an ideal site for a supermarket, something New York has a dramatic shortage of.
How silly to put housing there when they can go 4 blocks in either direction and buy up a derelict block and build their super-tower.
With Pathmark gone the area will revert to a dreary state of overpriced "bodega-shopping" for food. How dreary.
"Abyssinian Triangle?" That sounds like some organization that Demian Lewis is infiltrating on Homeland.
Real estate in Manhattan is hot, hot, HOT. Inventory is low, prices are insane and there is nil empty land, so developers are shaking money at anything that can work.
In case anyone hasn't noticed parking garages and petrol stations are vanishing all over Manhattan. Property is worth more than owners can ever get from rents of current tenants so they are taking tens or hundreds of millions and running. See my post about University Place between West 12th and 13th Streets.
Commercial properties are attractive to developers because they don't have to deal with pesky tenants, especially of the rent controlled or stabilized variety. Just kick the current business out or don't renew their lease.
Abyssinian Triangle can talk all they want, am willing to bet in the end they will take the money just like everyone else. Oh they may get a better taste for themselves but still...
It does point to a growing problem in Harlem that is pitting different sections of the AA community against each other, not to mention the changing demographic new arrivals.
Many of the older Harlem institutions especially churches are sitting on very valuable property in nice areas. Their congregations are slowly dwindling in many cases as old age, death, retirement out of NYS take persons away. So they are left with these often old buildings that need vast upkeep but limited funds. IIRC a few churches were approached and "sold out", which caused some finger pointing.
If the NYC real estate market remains "hot" for several more years the pressure on Harlem, Morningside Heights, Inwood, etc... is going to only increase.
According to that article most of the board already wants to sell. One member who didn't was doing the speaking in that article. If already most of the board wants to sell it will be sold in the not too distant future.
Well, good riddance to that Pathmark. It's big , but still one of the trashiest supermarkets I've ever been into with some of the most ignorant and rudest staff I've ever met. A new building there will inevitably have some sort of retail on the ground floor because the corner gets a lot of foot traffic from the subway, bus stops, and Metro North station on Park Ave. Anybody who lives nearby should pray that one of the new retailers will be a cleaner, better-run grocery.
I favor the mixed-income housing idea, though that intersection (125th and Lex) is probably the seediest in all Manhattan and I'm not sure how you'd lure market-rate tenants to buy or rent in a neighborhood full of derelicts. It really is close to a skid row there, with buses to the homeless shelters and jails on Rikers, plus several residences for the homeless, mentally ill, or recovering drug addicts nearby --and those people are often hanging out on that corner. I think it might be a hard sell for Extell to get the prices they usually do here. You couldn't pay me enough to live on that corner.
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