A landlord accused of harassing his rent-stabilized tenants at another Lower East Side building has filed applications for a 10-story residential project at 255 East Houston Street.
The L-shaped property between Norfolk and Suffolk Streets is currently home to an aging four-story commercial building, which was destabilized by the demolition of an adjacent building five years ago. Whenever the building bites the dust, it’ll be replaced by 53 apartments and community space. Those apartments will be divided across 47,020 square feet of residential space, and the average unit will clock in around 887 square feet.
The first floor will include 4,600 square feet of community facilities and indoor and outdoor recreation space. There are fewer, larger units on the higher floors, starting with eight units on the second floor and finishing with four units a piece on the eighth through tenth floors. The building will rise 112 feet into the air and encompass 51,623 square feet of interior space.
Stephen B Jacobs Group will design the project, and Samy Mahfar, headquartered in Great Neck, is the owner.
The 10,840-square-foot assemblage hit the market last year with the ambitious asking price of $36,000,000, and it ultimately sold for $16,500,000 in April. It included the lot on East Houston and a 46-foot-wide property at 171-173 Suffolk Street. The combined buildable square footage adds up to 54,896, according to the lot’s Massey Knakal listing, but the planned development doesn’t quite max out the allowed density or height of 120 feet.
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Samy Mahfar and SMA Equities have a (justifiably) terrible reputation as a landlord. They have no less than 4 cases against them in court right now for their treatment of tenants. They have failed many of their tenants – both market rate and rent stabilized tenants – by providing inconsistent and incompetent service, making false promises, and putting tenants in unsafe and hazardous conditions. They will virtually bulldoze their way through a building where tenants continue to live, will cut corners on renovations, and make renovations without permits and without proper mitigation. They are overleveraged by financial institutions while being utterly underwhelming as landlords. They are seemingly ruthless in their quest for more buildings and more profits while having little to no regard for the residents and businesses that occupy these buildings.