Kinsmen and SK Development secure $203.5M for 184-unit East Village rental

Kinsmen Property Group and SK Development secured $203.5 million in construction financing on Monday for a 184-unit rental building at 50 Third Avenue in Manhattan's East Village, Commercial Observer reported.

The floating-rate, interest-only loan was arranged through Ironsand by a Walker & Dunlop team, according to the report. A land use application filed with the city's Department of City Planning last week describes 184 rental apartments and ground-floor retail at the corner of Third Avenue and East 11th Street, with roughly 20 percent of the units, or 37, designated permanently affordable.

The filing describes two buildings on separate tax lots that would stand as a single structure with a shared lobby and roughly 17 stories. The south building would hold 99 apartments and 5,967 square feet of retail; the north would hold 85 units and 3,812 square feet. Amenities listed include a fitness center, yoga studio, sauna, cold plunge, golf simulator and coworking space.

Building the two-building project requires Landmarks Preservation Commission approval and an air-rights transfer of about 26,100 square feet of unused air rights from St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery. The transfer would come from the church site at 165 Second Avenue, and proceeds would fund the church's restoration and ongoing maintenance, according to the separate application filed last week. The filing ties the two-building layout and the use of the 485-x tax incentive to that approval.

If the Landmarks Preservation Commission declines, the developers have described an alternative in the filing: a single market-rate building with the same 184 units. The affordable homes appear only in the two-building plan.

SK Development filed plans in March for a 13-story, 69-unit building at 122 East 11th Street, and Kinsmen filed a 322-home Bowery plan in August, per our earlier reporting.