After Condo Try, LES School Will Be Reborn As Artsy Rentals

What might be the most wackily named condo project in the entire city—The Madison Jackson—is officially dead. Developer Thomas Sung put the kabosh on luxury apartment sales before anyone even moved into the converted elementary school on the Lower East Side's Madison Street back in 2012, and it's taken until now for the project to be revived. Modern Spaces is now leading marketing and leasing efforts, and CEO Eric Benaim told Curbed on Tuesday that 117 loft-like rentals, many of them duplexes, will be hitting the market in June. When condo plans were abandoned, the building was almost complete, but the apartments and common spaces are currently getting finished up to appeal to a different audience: "creative types." "What we're planning on doing is targeting an audience that is getting priced out of certain areas like Williamsburg or Dumbo or Long Island City or some areas downtown," Benaim explained, "and offer them great loft apartments on the Lower East Side." Amenity spaces, which were basically complete before the project stalled, include an almost-Olympic-sized pool, a gym, bike storage, laundry facilities, two courtyards and a roof deck. There's also a 5,000-square-foot room that will be transformed into a residents' lounge.

P.S. 12 has been in the conversion process for a long time—Sung bought the building for just $535K in 1983—but Benaim promises that the apartments will be ready for rent soon, with leasing starting on 20 to 30 units at a time and move-ins expected as early as June 15. They will start at $2,950/month.

More details: there are one- and two-bedroom options, with the smallest totaling 928 square feet going up to as big as 1,700-1,800 square feet. Some of them have around 20-foot-high ceilings, Benaim said, like units carved from the part of the school that used to be the auditorium. There will be a doorman. That 5,000-square-foot amenity space will serve multiple functions, including for gaming, with pool and ping pong tables, as a screening area for movies, and as a lounge area for people who work from home or want to host a party.

Oh, and as for a name? Now that the pretentiously presidential Madison Jackson is scrapped, Benaim said they are working on a new one, but it's not release-able yet. All he could say was: "We're giving it a whole new image."
· New Broker Takes Over Rentals at 371 Madison St. [Lo-Down]
· All 371 Madison Street coverage [Curbed]