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The Archdiocese of New York is aiming to sell another church site, this time in the East Village.
St. Emeric, a Catholic church-and-school campus at 181 Ave. D that closed more than a decade ago, is in contract to be sold to the development team of Spatial Equity Co. and Community Access for up to $68 million, according to a new court filing. The archdiocese, as a nonprofit, must get court approval to sell its real estate.
Under the terms of the deal, which was reached in January, the developers would create 570 all-affordable units on the 60,500-square-foot site between East 12th and East 13th streets, according to the filing, which appeared Monday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
The apartments would be split between two towers, one which would measure 240,000 square feet and the other, 570,000 square feet, and up to 60% of the units would be reserved for the homeless, including those with special needs, the documents show, though further details about services, configuration, design and affordability thresholds were not spelled out.
The deal also has a bit of a work-in-progress feel, because the site requires a change in zoning. If the church handles the rezoning, which will need to happen through the universal land-use review procedure, the developers will pay $68 million for the property. But if the developers have to handle that time-intensive and costly process themselves, they will fork over $58 million instead.
The site, which is currently occupied by the vacant church, a closed school and a large parking lot between them, sits across the street from a towering Con Edison power plant. Part of the church site is polluted because of the plant, whose oldest section dates to 1926, but the tainted soil is now being cleaned up, filings indicate.
Spatial Equity, helmed by principal Teghvir Sethi, is an upstart “minority-owned, social-impact real estate developer,” according to LinkedIn. Its few projects include Shepherd-Glenmore, an 8-story, 123-unit all-affordable development in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, that’s supposed to open this year.
Community Access, meanwhile, is a 50-year-old nonprofit that has developed several affordable projects nearby, including a 45-unit, prewar conversion on Avenue D for the formerly homeless, and the 123-unit Gouverneur Court affordable complex on the Lower East Side.
Located across from the Riis Houses public housing complex, St. Emeric opened in 1953 in part to give residents of the 13-building complex a place to worship. Prior to the construction of the complex in 1949, the neighborhood was an industrial area called the Dry Dock District, known for ship-building and boat repairs. St. Emeric was named for the son of the first Christian Hungarian king, St. Stephen, who was killed in a hunting accident in 1031 at the age of 24.
But a shrinking congregation forced the archdiocese in 2013 to close St. Emeric and to merge its parish with that of St. Brigid on nearby Avenue B.
In the past few years St. Brigid’s has played a major role in the migrant crisis, serving as a place for asylum-seekers to apply for shelter, and long lines have frequently formed outside the church, which is across from Tompkins Square Park.
How the archdiocese plans to use the proceeds from the St. Emeric’s sale are unclear. The filing says the money will go toward the payment of general expenses and “enable [the] petitioner to carry on its proper corporate religious activities and purposes.”
Earlier this year the archdiocese sold St. Elizabeth’s, a church and rectory site on East 83rd Street known for its ties to the city’s Hungarian community, to Brooklyn developer Robert Saffayeh for about $12 million.
A spokesman for the archdiocese said it could not comment on a pending deal. And Christopher Lacovara, the chief financial officer with Community Access, did not respond to a call for comment. Sethi did not return an email by press time.
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C. J. Hughes , 2024-06-04 19:43:04
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