An East Village apartment building whose 1990s arrival augured a higher-end era for the neighborhood has a new owner.
Skyline Developers, a Wilf family real estate company, has sold 194 E. Second St. to local investor Benchmark Real Estate Group for $43 million, according to a deed that appeared in the city register Monday.
Skyline, whose president is Orin Wilf, paid $21 million for the 61-unit site in 2001, records show, the equivalent of about $37 million today when factoring in inflation.
The price of the 6-story, 77,000-square-foot corner site at Avenue B, whose large retail space has been leased for years by a Duane Reade pharmacy, works out to about $560 per square foot, which appears to be a slightly weaker rate than with recent similar deals.
Indeed, the median price of Manhattan multifamily properties in the fourth quarter of 2023, the most recent data available, was $630 per square foot, according to real estate data site PropertyShark. That figure represented a slight increase in a year even as sales volume plummeted by more than 60% in the same time frame.
Some landlords have attributed the drop-off in sales activity to a package of 2019 pro-tenant laws that limited how much owners could charge for empty and renovated units in rent-regulated buildings. State records indicate that 194 E. Second, whose name is The Villager, does have at least some rent-regulated units, but the exact amount is unknown.
And phone messages left for executives at Skyline and Benchmark were not returned by press time.
Completed in 1997 by developer Shaya Boymelgreen, The Villager replaced a site that had a shuttered gas station known in the late 1980s for open-air drug use and that later became a place to display ramshackle metal sculptures.
Though The Villager perhaps heralded a safer era for the rough-edged area, some critics saw it as embodying the negative side of gentrification, in that it helped push up housing costs. Other rentals popped up on long-vacant lots nearby in The Villager’s wake.
As of April 29, the building had no apartments for rent, according to Streeteasy. But earlier in the month, a two-bedroom, one-bath unit was listed at around $6,000.
Co-helmed by Jordan Vogel and Aaron Feldman, Midtown-based Benchmark is no stranger to the East Village, which it gravitated toward soon after its 2009 founding. Former holdings included a batch of prewar walk-ups, such as 318 E. Sixth St., 99 E. Seventh St. and 435 E. Ninth St., which were later sold to Kushner Cos. in 2012 as part of an eight-building, $58 million deal.
Benchmark has also made recent moves near the High Line, purchasing three side-by-side prewar rentals from Hidrock Properties last summer for $26.9 million, according to the register.
Skyline, meanwhile, is the New York arm of Garden Homes Development, a New Jersey firm co-founded by Orin Wilf’s grandfather in 1954 with a focus on single-family homes amid a boom in suburban housing. Skyline broke ground last year on 18 W. 55th St., a 26-story, 97-unit rental tower in Midtown.
C. J. Hughes , 2024-04-29 19:34:00
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