A multifamily property with ties to artists has had a brush with the so-so market for building sales.
The property, 112 Waverly Place, a red brick, four-unit site near Washington Square Park, has sold for $12 million, more than 20% less than it was seeking in May 2023, when it hit the market for $15.5 million. The deal, which went into contract in November, closed in February and appeared in the city register Tuesday.
The property’s seller was Jack Zyman, founder of Berek, a Manhattan-based clothing line known for its bright prints. A former tenant of No. 112, Zyman bought both buildings in 1986 for about $900,000, records indicate, before undertaking a lengthy renovation.
The buyer, according to the property’s deed, was a shell company called BASP NY LLC, an entity represented by an accounting firm in Los Angeles County. An email sent to the firm was not returned.
A two-building, prewar site with a townhouse and carriage house, No. 112 was home in the early 1900s to painter Everett Shinn and his wife, illustrator Florence Shinn, practitioners of the Ashcan School of Art, which portrayed New York landscapes with nitty-gritty realism.
But the Shinns also dabbled in the writing and production of plays and eventually converted the carriage house into a small theater staging avant-garde productions for a troupe called the Waverly Street Players. Later, in the early 1960s, Lorraine Hansberry, writer of the hit play A Raisin in the Sun, lived at 112 Waverly. Zyman arrived a couple of decades later. Supermodel Kate Moss was reportedly once one of his tenants.
An effort to contact Zyman through Berek’s showroom on West 35th Street was unsuccessful by press time. And Randy Baruh, the Compass agent who represented Zyman along with Meris and Kenny Blumstein from the Corcoran Group, declined to comment.
The showstopper of the 22-foot-wide property, which has a small courtyard at its center, is probably the carriage house, a triplex with exposed brick walls, 17-foot ceilings and a skylight-topped living room with a wood-burning fireplace. Essentially a studio with two baths, the carriage house alone was asking $18,000 a month in 2023. The townhouse portion of No. 122 features a pergola-topped roof deck with Empire State Building views.
The entire property appears to have been delivered vacant, including without any rent-stabilized tenants. The presence of such renters, who enjoy more safeguards against rent hikes and evictions in the wake of the Housing Stability & Tenant Protection Act of 2019, has also depressed returns for investors in multifamily sites. The new owner of No. 112 could keep the property as a rental or convert it back into a single-family home.
Berek began in 1977 by selling vivid sweaters inspired by a trip Zyman took to villages in South America, according to the website for the company, which has since branched into handbags, pants and jackets.
C. J. Hughes , 2024-03-14 10:03:05
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