Yet another chapter has opened in the decades-long saga of the East Village’s beleaguered former P.S. 64.
Developer Gregg Singer, who has owned the 152,000-square-foot East Ninth Street building since 1998, has put the property forward for bankruptcy protection.
Singer decided to proceed on March 21, a single day before the badly decayed, H-shaped structure was set to hit the auction block as the cap on a drawn-out foreclosure fight with his lender, Madison Realty Capital, Crain’s reported.
The bankruptcy filing successfully stopped the auction, at least for now, buying Singer slightly more time to work on lawsuits, development plans and financing options for the hulking behemoth, according to his attorney Erica Aisner, the outlet reported.
The developer purchased the property — which ceased being a school in 1977 — more than two decades ago for $3.15 million at auction with a vision of transforming the space into dorms.
In pursuit of that dream, he controversially evicted the Lower East Side landmark’s only tenant, the Charas/El Bohio Community Center, in 2001.
In October, Singer quietly put the building — which has since severely deteriorated — onto the market, pitching it as a commercial campus and envisioning as much in glossy renderings and without a listing price, The Post previously reported.
“The redevelopment and historic restoration of this century-old landmark, former New York City elementary school, can be transformed into a variety of modern, amenity-rich opportunities,” the listing advertised, naming student dorms, an assisted living facility and a medical center among possible uses for it.
A sale — viewed as a similar last-minute effort to prevent foreclosure — was not successful, and a judge fated the building for the auction block.
As the legal battles wage on, the building has remained vacant — except for visits from urban explorers, graffiti artists and others who dare to enter its rotting shell.
“I’d been hearing for quite some time that there were parties and events being thrown inside, and that there had been a fire or two, and that the building was in serious disrepair,” photographer Stacie Joy told The Post in 2021 of her expedition into its depths. “I was walking by with a friend, and the door was open. So we went inside to investigate — and document.”
