loft pioneering as late as 1998 / 62 Orchard St NY Times
story + back story from the Lower East Side
Fascinating article in Sunday’s Habitats section of the NY Times real estate section about a California couple who found “exactly the vision of what we thought a New York City loft would be”, A Loft Built on Vision and Sweat.
As with so many happy loft stories, this couple had the guts to take a shot in a ‘fringe’ area, they got a bit lucky, they had a vision, and they invested a huge amount of sweat equity. One result provides the punch line (and last line) of the article: the friends who declined to join with them to buy a dilapidated and under-utilized seven-story Lower East Side building (only the ground floor was being used when they saw it): less than a year after they bought it
“They [the friends] stood and gaped,” Ms. Weinstock said. “They were like, ‘Why didn’t you tell us it could look like this?’ ”
A little research reveals that these folks live at 62 Orchard Street – between Hester and Grand, you can’t get much more Lower East Side than that. They formed a coop with the original building owner and four other pioneers, then set out to build the loft they envisioned (the ‘before’ picture is here; ‘after’ is here). Their 3rd floor 2,400 sq ft cost $275,000 to buy in 1998, gave the rest of their money ($35,000) to a contractor who then fled the country, and ended up doing the demolition and renovation themselves.
“Our existence was this: we’d come home from our jobs at 6 or 7 and work until midnight. Then we’d go down to the local bar and have a Scotch and a cigarette. I don’t even smoke! It was just our ritual, the one moment of the day we could look forward to.”
Not many people have the combination of courage, motivation and skills to pull off this kind of project, then or now. Kudos to them!
It almost seems tacky to assess the market value of what they have accomplished, so perhaps it is fortunate that there are no recent sales in the building to provide comps. The only sale I see was the 4th floor four years ago, which had an asking price of $1.25mm.
© Sandy Mattingly 2007
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