A house of God is taking on new life.
Timber Equities plans to put up two 14-story residential buildings at 335 and 345 West 25th Street in Chelsea, according to plans filed with the city. The developer purchased the former site of the St. Columba campus in August for $48.25 million.
The towers are slated to hold 197 rental units — 98 in one and 99 in the other — and each will span roughly 100,000 gross square feet, according to Timber Equities principal Mitch Perle. The development will make use of the city’s 485x tax abatement and universal affordability preference density bonus, Perle said in an email.
The plans were filed by Hill West Architects principal David West.
The Catholic Archdiocese of New York put the property on the market over the summer, which also included a school, a convent and rectory with 200 feet of frontage on 25th Street.
Marketing materials for the site boasted the 200 feet of frontage on West 25th Street, a site zoned for residential as-of-right and the possibility of qualifying for the 485x tax break.
Timber Equities has a number of completed and in-progress rental projects around the city, most of them in uptown Manhattan or the Bronx. Timber Equities completed work on its 60-unit luxury rental building in Inwood this year on the parking lot site once owned by drug kingpin Manuel Geovanny Rodriguez-Perez.
It’s been a big year for religious conversions, of the residential real estate variety.
Kalel Companies and the Masjid Abdul Muhsi Khalifah mosque on Thursday announced plans for a 94,000-square-foot mixed-use building with 144 senior housing units in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
In May, The Vanbarton Group closed its acquisition of the Catholic Church’s former Manhattan headquarters at 1011 First Avenue for $103 million. And in the summer, the Archdiocese agreed to sell 181 Avenue D in the East Village to Spatial Equity and Community Access for a minimum of $58 million with plans to turn the lot into a 570-unit, fully affordable housing community.
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