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A slender townhouse on East 83rd Street has sold for $8 million, and its new owners could be among the first to test the limits of the city’s updated zoning rules.
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The five-story, 18-foot-wide property at 37 East 83rd Street was purchased by Nory and Cheryl Hazaveh, a husband-and-wife development team with a background in casino and hospitality design, Crain’s New York Business reports. The seller was Taconic Partners, which began assembling control of the building in 2013.
For years, narrow sites like this one were largely barred from high-rise development due to zoning restrictions enacted in the 1980s. But the city’s “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity” initiative, passed in December, has loosened height limits on small lots—potentially allowing a structure up to 15 stories at the address, even if the site looms over its neighbors.
ALSO READ: Developer to Knock Down Low-Rise Buildings on East 79th Street
Marketing materials for the property, handled by Compass broker Jason Haber, highlighted these recent zoning changes. Haber also included renderings of a glass tower rising above the surrounding buildings to show prospective buyers its height potential. “With an additional 12,630 square feet of unused air rights, the total buildable space reaches up to approximately 18,390 square feet,” the listing description states. “The flexible mixed-use zoning allows for a wide array of possibilities.”
Built in the 1920s, the building operated as a rental for decades before becoming a nine-unit co-op in 1980. Taconic Partners eventually converted it back to a rental and attempted to sell it in 2017 for nearly $10 million before re-listing it last year at a lower price.
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No permits have been filed and some tenants do remain in the building, but the saleraises the possibility of new life for sliver sites under the City of Yes framework. However, some preservation advocates and planning officials say that soaring towers on narrow lots are unlikely to proliferate due to other zoning regulations which aim to preserve neighborhood character.
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