New 23-Story Building Coming To Upper East Side, Plans Show

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A low-rise building on Second Avenue will be replaced by a new 23-story tower set to be constructed on the Upper East Side, city records show.

Plans were filed last month for a new building at 250-252 East 83rd St., which sits on the avenue's southwest corner. The building will be 272 feet tall, containing 106 apartments — including an unspecified number of affordable units — as well as some commercial space.

The listed owner is Hersel Torkian of the Torkian Group, a developer whose other projects include rental buildings in Midtown and Lower Manhattan. (The developer has also faced a lawsuit from the city, alleging it operated illegal short-term rentals through Airbnb.)

The site was most recently home to a five-story walkup building constructed in 1910, containing 23 apartments. The same address includes a one-story building on East 83rd Street formerly home to the Italian restaurant Erminia, which closed last year.

Plans were filed in 2019 to demolish the corner building, which is also known as 1597 Second Ave. Property records show the Tarkinian Group purchased it for $8 million in 2005, along with the adjacent building at 1595 Second Ave., as was first reported by Crain's.

The fate of that adjacent building, also a five-story walk-up, is unclear, as no new construction plans have been filed for the site.

The architect for the new building will be SLCE, a firm that has designed a slew of residential buildings in Manhattan, including the new Beckford Tower on East 80th Street.