Mars Bar (David McGlynn)
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For $10 — less than the price of a movie ticket or a pack of smokes — some lucky East Village residents will be able to buy a brand-new apartment.
A developer plans to knock down two buildings at the corner of East 1st Street and Second Avenue — one is home to the famed Mars Bar — and erect a 12-story, 79-unit luxury apartment building in its place.
The developer, BFC Partners, agreed to accommodate the four current tenants of the buildings and make room for another nine “working-class” tenants in return for permission to build a larger project than zoning would normally allow.
Only the four current renters will get the $10 ownership deal.
BFC will also cover their rents in temporary quarters while the new building is being built.
All 13 “working-class” owners in the building will have to meet income requirements — their incomes must be no more than 80 percent of the city average, around $66,000 for a family of four.
The building’s remaining 51 units will be sold at market rates.
One of those set to get the $10 deal is John Vaccaro, 81, who since 1976 has lived in a 2,000-square-foot apartment upstairs from Mars Bar. He doesn’t mind that his new apartment will have about half as much space.
“At this time in my life, this place is too big,” he said.
Over the last 35 years, Vaccaro has watched the neighborhood change — and not for the better, in his view.
“This is not the Lower East Side I moved into,” he said. “All this down Second Avenue was all Jewish. Then the beats moved in, who were followed by the hippies.”
“I miss the old days, but what can you do?”
BFC is constructing the building under the city’s Inclusionary Housing Program, which establishes zoning areas where developers can build larger apartment buildings in return for accommodating low- or moderate-income people.
Zoning rules allow such housing to be built in all five boroughs.
The Mars Bar project is the first Inclusionary Housing Program building in which a developer has accommodated existing tenants, said Eric Bederman, a spokesman for the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
Those tenants will have to pay maintenance fees but the costs will be configured to be affordable to them.
And while they will enjoy new homes, they won’t be able to resell them for market prices, the city said.