78 Irving Place upper

Renovation work has just commenced at landmark building 78 Irving Street, which is being converted from rentals into condominiums.

Located on the southeast corner of Irving Place and East 19th Street, the 16,000-square-foot building is seven stories tall, with 14 apartments. The property traded in June 2013 for $17.9 million, or $1,115 per square foot, The Real Deal reported. At the time of sale, the building’s apartments were leased for about $50 a square foot, 44 percent below market rate, according to The Real Deal. The seller, a partnership of two brothers operating under the name Renrose Realty, had owned the structure for more than 40 years.

Developer Irving Place Investors LLC filed plans in August 2013 to halve the number of units from 14 to 7, with PKSB Architects as the architect of record. The permits, partially issued last month, call for full-floor apartments from the second to fifth levels, with a duplex occupying the sixth and seventh floors. The address on the most recently filed permit corresponds to that of Martin Nussbaum’s Slate Property Group. A condo offering plan was submitted in July.

Construction and development services firm Hailey Development Group LLC began the gut renovation and full exterior restoration of 78 Irving earlier this month, according to the company’s Facebook page.

78 Irving Place  Hailey

Image: Hailey Development Group LLC

The building also comes with a 1,200-square-foot carriage house. The development is a block south of Zeckendorf Development’s 18 Gramercy Park, where the duplex penthouse went into contract in 2012 for $42 million, or $6,600 per square foot. The deal at 18 Gramercy Park set the record for most expensive home sale ever in Downtown Manhattan (which was topped earlier this year by a penthouse at Chelsea’s Walker Tower, which fetched more than $50 million).

Back to 78 Irving. On-site photos we took yesterday:

78 Irving Place carriage

78 Irving Place

78 Irving Place note

Communities featured in this article

More articles like this