After Landmarking, 70 Lefferts Back in Play
After its surprise eleventh-hour landmarking last month, the Italianate manion at 70 Lefferts Place (which hasn’t always been yellow, as the photo from NYC archives shows) is back on the market. Unable to proceed with the condominium development he had been planning, developer Chris Morris (who, to be fair, got pretty shafted in all this)…
After its surprise eleventh-hour landmarking last month, the Italianate manion at 70 Lefferts Place (which hasn’t always been yellow, as the photo from NYC archives shows) is back on the market. Unable to proceed with the condominium development he had been planning, developer Chris Morris (who, to be fair, got pretty shafted in all this) is looking either to sell the property outright or partner with someone with the vision to do something profitable within the envelope of landmark rules. Given that he’s got a $2 million mortgage, the house is probably costing him $12,000 to $15,000 a month to carry — reason enough to seek a swift solution. We looked at the house last Spring but were unable to convince a developer we know to put up the dough to buy and renovate it. And while the potential returns of dividing the existing structure into a handful of condo units may not provide the sky-high returns that many pros target, we still think there’s decent money to be made from doing a historically respectful conversion. You know, if 100 readers put of $10,000 each, you’d have more than enough equity to see this through.
1854 Italianate Villa [Craigslist] GMAP P*Shark
BREAKING: 70 Lefferts Place Landmarked! [Brownstoner]
Anon 8:15: The house has been a multiple dwelling from when it was renovated in 2001 until the new owner evicted the tenants and cut off the sewer and water lines. I believe it had 4 or 5 units.
If by “whore houses” you mean the Lefferts Hotel, that was closed down for prostitution last year after a lot of pressure from the police, city council and block association. It’s re-opened now under heavy scrutiny, and so far seems to be operating clean. Block associations are not government agencies, and have no power at all in the official sense, except as a way of organizing people to improve and take care of their neighborhoods.
This house cannot be converted to any kind of multable dwelling because it is a frame house. What owner occupant is going to buy this as a 1-2 family for more than 2 million plus another $4-500,000 to restor it to Landmarks specifications, and live with whore houses on the block?. If the Lefferts Block Assoc is so powerful, why are the whore houses still there?
I think it is outragous that the City can with the flick of a pen devalue someones investment without copensating them.
9:07, you need to know it’s not very convincing when you are so completely 100% on one side of the issue. I’m sure you can find one little tiny thing the Landmarks Commission, the community, or the previous owners of the house did wrong. Can’t you? You’re even blaming the guy who owned the house for mere months, for the ugliness of its renovations over the decades. You’ve drunk the kool-aid. Try getting some objectivity. Otherwise how will the community to learn how to handle these situations better in the future, if nobody is going to admit any flaws or take any responsibility whatsoever? You sound like you work for the city. All defensiveness and passing the buck.
That’s right 9.07 – and if the developer had taken the time to look into the area, he’d know that the zoning will likely be changing this year which would limit the height of any proposed development, that this street is part of a district listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and that in the next year or so it will likely be incorporated into the Clinton Hill Landmark district. All easy to find out if he did a bit of homework. He simply decided to try to move quickly before those changes occurred and the community noticed it and brought the case to the Landmarks Commission.
A very basic rule of investment is knowing what you’re investing in, and being prepared to deal with the possibility it may not pay off. Investment is a gamble, by definition. This developer speculated in the hope of making a large, fast profit, and nobody who does that, whether by building condos or day-trading, is guaranteed success. The wise investor gets an in-depth knowledge of what he’s buying before he puts out the $$, but this guy never made any attempt to learn the community’s attitude toward what he was doing until he’d already bought the property–at considerably over market price.
And there was nothing “Keystone Cops” about the landmarking process–the procedures for getting a house landmarked are specific and fixed, and the property owner is given considerably more opportunity to make his case than those in favor of landmarking. The Commission moved quickly in this case because demolition permits had already been filed, and another few months of consideration weren’t an option.
And the only ugliness about the house is the lack of maintenance since the developer bought it. His best chance to realize a profit on his investment is in the best possible renovation and maintenance. Take a look at the former Graham Old Ladies’ Home on Washington north of Lafayette for a successful example of this approach.
But 8:54, what if he hadn’t been a rich man? What if he had been a smaller developer, or an individual who just wanted an investment property? Something like this could quite literally ruin someone financially. I’m all for protecting historical structures, but I found this whole process disturbing. It was very keystone cops in the way it was done, too. If the building was so important than it should have been declared protected ages ago, like before it was ruined by bad renos for one thing. It’s become an ugly house.
The arena site is one mile away if you walk down Atlantic avenue. It would take about 25-30 minutes to walk there from this house on Lefferts Place.
Those who play the world’s saddest song on the world’s smallest violin over this developer’s financial ruin at the hands of the Landmarks Commission might want to remember that in the NY Times profile of him a couple of months ago, he boasted of having $15,000,000 worth of property in the Atlantic Yards area just waiting to skyrocket in value. If this is true, the landmarking of #70 Lefferts is more of an inconvenience to him than a tragedy.
ok, not 2 blocks from the nets arena, but walking distance, right? if I were jason kidd or one of those guys, I’d totally buy it…