Caspi Development Looks to Flip 135 Bowery for $25M

It’s quite sad that 135 Bowery has gone from historic Federal-style row house to little more than another Lower East Side speculative property. Its current owner of roughly two years – Caspi Development – is now looking to unload the property for $25 million. If the price is right, that’s a $9 million profit.

Cushman & Wakefield is the exclusive broker of 135 Bowery. Below is an excerpt of the broker-babble. The “high end restaurant” mentioned in the copy is Tang Hotpot, an offshoot of the East Village noodle bar, The Tang.

With approximately 21,308 rentable square feet across single floor retail and office units, the subject property represents an ideal opportunity for an investor to acquire a newly built mixed-use office building with stable in-place cash flow in a rapidly growing neighborhood.

The 8 story building with two elevators consists of one retail unit on the ground floor with 20’ ceilings plus a mezzanine, as well as seven full-floor office units with 10’ slab-to-slab ceiling heights above.

The retail space is leased to a soon-to-open, high-end restaurant owned by an established New York restaurateur. Six of the seven commercial units are occupied, leaving the penthouse unit vacant for potential purchasers to either occupy themselves or lease. 

The turn-key, loft office spaces are fitted with reclaimed wood details, custom kitchenettes, conference rooms, and efficient LED lighting. 135 Bowery has been WiredScore Certified Silver ensuring its data infrastructure will more than meet the demands of New York City’s growing tech tenant base. Demand for full floor office space has skyrocketed as a result of the recent workplace shift to open collaborative floor plates, especially within the creative and tech sectors. Each unit is individually metered and contains its own HVAC package unit, and two of the units feature private outdoor space.

As chronicled, 135 Bowery was previously home to a wood-framed, Federal-style row house dating to 1818. Unfortunately, the de-landmarked structure was leveled in 2011 (thanks to Councilwoman Margaret Chin), leading to construction of the eight-story office building now on the block. Developer First International Bank initially intended to use much of the space for its offices, but unsurprisingly backed out and sold out.

Caspi Development acquired the rebuilt property for $16.2 million in October 2015, and bet big that this nook of the Bowery would become a high-tech sibling of Astor Place (it’s not fuckin’ Midtown South). Not so much, it seems.