Historic Bronx General Post Office is for sale again after food market plans dissolve
Via Wikimedia
The historic Bronx General Post Office on the Grand Concourse is once again for sale, Welcome2TheBronx reports. The familiar neighborhood landmark was purchased from the postal service in 2014 by developer Young Woo & Associates and the Bristol Group for $19 million, as 6sqft previously reported. After suggesting a new life for the 80+-year-old building as “a crossroads for community, commerce and culture” including a food market that could become a dining/drinking/shopping destination, the developer has put the building up for sale for an undisclosed price.
Though the developer painstakingly restored the interior lobby’s 13 Ben Shan murals from the Works Progress Administration of the New Deal Era and moved the post office facility to the north of the building, Youngwoo has not been forthcoming about renovations that were supposed to be wrapped up in time for a grand reopening in spring 2017 (later pushed to 2018).
There is some speculation that the developer needs the money to develop a 22-story, nearly 220,000-square-foot commercial site at 2420 Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan, for which a hotel, office and retail space are planned.
Bryan Woo, a principal at Youngwoo and Associates, told Welcome2TheBronx that the group would not comment on the sale. In an email, Woo told the site: “We can state without hesitation that we believe in the present and the future of the Bronx and we are committed to continuing to bring great projects like the Bronx Post Office to this vibrant community.”
The resemblance to another high profile property trade in the South Bronx–developers Rubenstein and Chetrit had been planning market rate rental towers with thousands of units in Port Morris, then sold the site for $165 million–has caused concern. And some in the community fear that, like the Old Bronx Courthouse, the Bronx General Post Office will sit vacant for years, its fate unknown.
[Via Welcome2TheBronx]
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