UES Garden Dreams Dashed As Empty Lot Is Sold To Developer

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The empty, decrepit First Avenue lot that became the unlikely focus of a campaign for more neighborhood green space has been sold to a developer, likely dooming dreams of opening a community garden there.

The lot, on the southwest corner of First Avenue and East 78th Street, was sold Thursday to the California-based investment firm Carmel Partners for $73.5 million, a person familiar with the deal told Patch. It was first reported by The Real Deal.

Starting late last year, a group of neighbors who first met as volunteers for Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign began brainstorming ways to transform the lot, which had attracted residents' ire for being filled with rodents, overgrown with weeds, and boarded up with plywood since around 2013.

Their idea to open a park or garden, taking advantage of the lot's dense vegetation, caught the attention of U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney and City Councilmember Julie Menin, who began talks with the owners about opening up the space.

The owners were the Chou family: relatives of the local developer Robert Chou, who in 2010 began demolishing the brick buildings that once stood on the site to make way for a 12-story tower that never materialized.

Though the Chous agreed to cut down the lot's trees in an effort to mitigate the rat problem, Menin said they were resisting calls to open the space to the public, since they still planned to develop it one day.

Susan Gitlin, a neighbor who had helped lead the green space push, said news of the sale was "such a disappointment," adding that her group would meet soon to discuss next steps.

"I don’t think we’re going to give up," she told Patch on Monday.

Indeed, the campaign had already begun to broaden its scope even before the sale, and Menin has said she is compiling a list of city-owned properties around the neighborhood that could be converted to community gardens.

"I have been actively working with the Parks Department to identify sites in our district for community gardens and will have some exciting news to share in the coming weeks on this," Menin told Patch on Monday.

"Our District has a dearth of open space and is one of the densest in the entire city so it is one of my top priorities to identify these new spaces," she said.

Carmel Properties did not immediately return a request for comment about its plans for the First Avenue site, which has an official address of 1487 First Ave. But the source with knowledge of the sale said the site has 153,000 square feet of buildable space without zoning changes, with more space possible through the city's inclusionary housing program.

Related coverage:

• Imagined UES 'Green Space' Cleared Of Trees After Complaints
• Rat-Filled UES Lot Should Become Green Space, Neighbors Say
• Menin Plans New School, Open Spaces & More As UES Council Member