Rise in the East

When Orange Management, co-developer of 123 Third Ave., purchased the site on the southwest corner of 14th Street in 2007, it was a two-story commercial building that contained a tanning salon, a porn shop and a deli.

“There was also a juice shop that had gone out of business,” says Andrew Bradfield, a principal of Orange Management.

Now it’s a 19-story high-rise with 48 condos and a Capital One on the ground floor. Since hitting the market in September 2010, the building has unloaded all but the four penthouse apartments, which are on the market for between $3.6 and $4.525 million, around $1,800 to $2,000 per square foot. Whether they achieve these prices is anyone’s guess, but that they exist at all represents a significant shift of use from a tanning salon and a porn shop.

TWO-BEDROOM CONDO, $2.95 MILLION: This penthouse, owned by John Legend, at 52 E. Fourth St., is 1,359 square feet with two bathrooms, direct elevator access, surround sound and rooms designed by Andres Escobar. The doorman building has a swimming pool and garage. Agent: Jason Walker, Prudential Douglas Elliman, 212-965-6090

These penthouses are not the only East Village apartments with eye-popping asking prices. At 525 E. 11th St., there’s a 1,040-square-foot penthouse on the market for $1.7 million. And John Legend has his 1,359-square-foot two-bedroom in 52 E. Fourth St. listed for $2.95 million — more than $2,000 per square foot.

“In terms of new development, I just don’t see a ton on the horizon for the East Village, but there are a lot of strong resales there,” says Ari LeFauve, senior vice president and associate broker at MNS. “When a developer does have the wherewithal to build a new condo, it will sell really quickly as the last few have.”

By Bradfield’s own account, 123 Third Ave. was one of the last projects to get financed before the market took its nose dive and the banks stopped lending.

“We got our construction financing in August of 2008. For a year to a year and a half after, starting in September of 2008 after the Lehman bankruptcy, there was no financing to build condos,” Bradfield says.

This left much of the neighborhood, like the rest of the city, in a state of arrested development. But now, also like the rest of the city, buildings are beginning to come to life.

One just-announced condo building is 211 E. 13th St., an 82-unit, eight-story development between Second and Third avenues — at a longtime vacant-lot eyesore — which is slated to break ground in the summer and be finished in late 2013. Prices are still to be determined for the project’s studio and one-, two- and three-bedroom units, developed by Ironstate Development, Abe and Scott Shnay and Charles Blaichman. (Ironstate also recently partnered with Andre Balazs to buy the East Village’s Cooper Square Hotel, which is being transformed into the Standard East Village.)