Earlier this year, Bowery Boogie connected the dots regarding some recent land and air rights sales at the corner of East Houston and Orchard Street, on the block housing the famous Katz’s Deli. They speculated that Ben Shaoul’s Magnum Real Estate Group was behind the deals, buying up a number of taxpayers and the air rights above Katz’s to assemble a development site at the corner.
Now, a new building permit application has been filed for a project at the site, with Ismael Leyva listed as the architect.
The 10-story building would rise 120 feet (the height limit for this part of the Lower East Side, which was rezoned along with the East Village in 2008). It would be predominately residential, with 83 apartments, along with 13,500 square feet of ground-floor retail (replacing the slew of one-story commercial structures that will likely be demolished to make way for it) and nearly 5,000 square feet of community facility space (in the form of a second-story “physical culture establishment,” which is New York bureaucratic speak for a gym or yoga studio, or something of the like).
With 83 apartments spread over 95,000 square feet of residential space, the units are large enough to be condos. Marc Ravner, who is a partner along with Ben Shaoul at Magnum, is listed as the owner on the permit, though we could not get in touch with either Ravner or Shaoul to learn about any details of the project.
While it’s a bit unclear how many properties on the corner Magnum owns that could contribute to the project, they control at the very least the three lots starting at the corner of Houston and Orchard and going south.
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