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Wow These Nice Luxury Apartments Will Really Clean Up The LES
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Apr 23, 2016
Modified Apr 23, 2016
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Apr 23, 2016
Modified Apr 23, 2016
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I know what you’re thinking: the Lower East Side doesn’t need another glass apartment building. But I think you will find this glass apartment building to be the best glass apartment building you have ever seen.
The building is called 150 Rivington, and it will be located at 150 Rivington Street. The glass will be state of the art glass. There will be a gym, bike storage, storage, and a 1,750 square-foot roof terrace. One-bedroom apartments will start at $975,000, but that is not even the best part.
The best part is that human beings with souls used to inhabit this building in the form of Streit’s matzo factory—that means when you live there, you will have souls too!
The New York Times Real Estate Section with the Exclusive:
The condo’s design, with 13,000 square feet of retail, will be clad in glass, a modern break from the brick buildings that stood there before. Developers plan to decorate the lobby with memorabilia from the original building.
Imagine coming home every night and seeing that memorabilia and knowing that everything is going to be all right.
“You have to try to preserve at least some link to the past,” said Arthur R. Stern, the chief executive of Cogswell Lee Development, which is developing 150 Rivington Street with Gluck+, which is also the architect for the project. “That’s ultimately what made the city what it is.”
Oh yeah, you’ve got to have some link to the past. In this case, it’s the memorabilia.
On an unseasonably warm afternoon last month, about three dozen people, mostly employees of the development team, gathered on the factory’s rooftop for a ceremony to commemorate a place where matzo had been made since 1925. A feng shui expert, R. D. Chin, blessed the property with a bowl of vodka-soaked rice, orange peels and incense. “It’s very important to acknowledge the changing of the hands,” he said.
Can you imagine that there are people out there who live in glass boxes out that haven’t been christened with orange peels?
Developer Ben Shaoul is building his own glass boxes on Orchard and Houston Streets that “start at $1.275 million for 657 square feet."
Shaoul tells the Times he is going to christen them with pure evil.
“You call it gentrification, I call it ‘cleaning it up,’ ” said Mr. Shaoul, who has been buying properties on the Lower East Side since 1998.
Tagged
ben shaoul
gentrification
Lower East Side
streit's matzo
that roof terrace better have cauldrons of boiling oil
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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