UPDATED: Tuesday, Mar. 27 @ 6:00 p.m.: The owners of the Cassa Times Square Hotel are backing out of an initial plan to convert the 12-story building to condominiums, according to a withdrawal filed with the New York State Attorney General’s office last month.
A trio of investors, consisting of Chetrit Group, Assa Properties and Read Property Group, had planned 108 below-market apartments at the 515 Ninth Avenue address.
“Assa Properties and its partners plan to keep the units at Cassa Times Square as rentals for now,” a representative for the company told The Real Deal. “There are 108 extended-stay, both furnished and unfurnished, rental residences covering eight floors, crowned by a rooftop garden terrace.”
Meyer Chetrit first filed the conversion plan last May, which came with a projected total sellout price of $117.5 million, or just over $1 million per unit. The most up to date information with the AG lists Read Property Group’s Robert Wolf as the project’s sponsor, however.
Assa bought the site from Rosedale Equities in 2006, paying $36.3 million and later bringing on Chetrit and Wolf as investors. They completed the hotel and rental building in 2014. Assa also developed the Cassa NYC Hotel on 45th Street, which it sold to HNA Group, and in 2017 sued a Florida developer for using the “Cassa” name.
Other notable scrapped condo projects in recent years include CL Investment’s $300 million conversion of 287 Park Avenue and Chetrit Group’s $1.4 billion plan for the Sony Building at 550 Madison Avenue.
This story was updated to include comment from Assa Properties.