Business

Naftali plops $23 mill on E. 23rd St. props

The ambitious Naftali Group has nailed down its next residential development site: 234-238 E. 23rd St., between Second and Third avenues, where it plans to build a 20-story condo tower.

Company CEO Miki Naftali, who spearheaded the $675 million purchase of the Plaza Hotel and its restoration and partial condo-ization when he ran Elad Properties, just bought two adjoined four-story tenement buildings on an 86,000-square-foot site for $23.125 million.

The project is to break ground this year and have 62 apartments and ground-floor stores. Units will have one to three bedrooms. Resident amenities will include a fitness center and rooftop terrace-lounge.

The site currently houses retail users, including a Chinese takeout place with a “C” grade in the window, all on short-term leases.

The new building will advance polyglot 23rd Street’s ongoing evolution, including the advent of high-end residential developments symbolized by towering One Madison Park at the spot where Madison Avenue is born.

Naftali said his company’s new site “was a complicated deal because we had to buy the buildings from two different owners.”

He’s bullish on the 23rd Street corridor, where the Toll Brothers’ 160 E. 22nd St., which runs through to 23rd, is reportedly commanding prices of more than $1,800 a square foot.

The diverse block is home to several educational institutions, including the School of Visual Arts and PS 47, the New York City Opera Thrift Shop, delis, hairstylists and a branch of the New York Public Library.

Naftali hasn’t decided on asking prices for his condo project yet and declined to estimate its development cost because it’s still being planned.

After leaving Elad in mid-2011, he formed Naftali Group, which is involved in 10 projects comprising more than 650 residential units, including 33 Beekman St. downtown and 200 Franklin St. in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.Steve Cuozzo