A conservative-leaning local nonprofit that focuses on public policy research, higher education and the arts, has acquired commercial space on the Lower East Side for about $15 million, records show.
The Rosenkranz Foundation was founded by Robert Rosenkranz in 1985, and has since donated millions each year to global initiatives and think tanks such as the Manhattan Institute, The Federalist Society and Policy Exchange, as well as museums and hospitals. It recently purchased two retail condo units, one of which used to be a food hall, inside 1 Essex Crossing at 202 Broome St., according to documents that appeared in the city register Friday.
Robert Rosenkranz, who is also chairman of the investment firm Delphi Capital Management, based on Madison Avenue, signed the deed on behalf of the buyer, records show. The two units are the Market Line and Broome Street Garden units, which are located on the subcellar, cellar and ground-floor levels, as well as on portions of the second floor of the 15-story development, according to city and state records.
The roughly 35,000-square-foot Market Line unit was previously occupied by a food hall of the same name that closed last year. The Broome Street Gardens unit, meanwhile, spans roughly 6,000 square feet, about 2,250 square feet of which is designated as public space, according to information from the project’s offering plan filed with the state attorney general’s office.
Completed in 2021 between Norfolk and Suffolk streets, 1 Essex Crossing contains 83 residential condos on the upper floors and two additional retail units. The property is part of the nine-building, roughly 1.9 million-square-foot project called Essex Crossing, which was developed by a joint partnership between L&M Development Partners, BFC Partners, Taconic Investment Partners and Goldman Sachs.
To that end, the seller of the two retail units is the entity Site 3 DSA Gardens LLC. The signatory was Andrew Zlotnick, general counsel and executive vice president of Taconic Partners, records show.
It’s unclear what the Rosenkranz Foundation has planned for the units, including whether or not it will occupy them itself. Neither the Rosenkranz Foundation nor Taconic Partners responded to requests for comment by press time. And attorney Talia Englander, a partner at Midtown-based firm Loeb & Loeb, which represented the buyer in the transaction, also did not return a request for comment by press time.
