300 loft apartments, condos in the works
by Teya Vitu on Mar. 29, 2006, under LocalBuilders have lofty ambitions
The former Catholic school and convent at 15th Street and Sixth Avenue is being converted into high-end lofts. The former St. Joseph's Academy building was constructed in 1886. This building has 25 lofts for rent and 11 for sale.
Nearly anything can become a home.
James Bond creator Ian Fleming turned a former Baptist chapel in London into his bachelor pad long before he gave license to 007.
And now Steve Fenton has turned a church school and convent at Sixth Avenue and 15th Street into the Academy Lofts. In the coming weeks, the lofts will become home to 36 renters and owners who relish the “nuances” that come with an 1886 stone-and -brick structure.
The nuance for Michelle Quinn will be a post in the middle of her garden level (read half underground) loft that once served as a school theater.
“I like it,” said Quinn, whose grandfather and grandmother went to school there when St. Joseph’s Academy filled the three-story building.
Quinn’s other nuance is a couple of very small windows allowing little daylight into her loft.
“I’ve always wanted to live in a loft, the whole chic thing. You see it on TV,” Quinn said. “I like the openness of it.”
A loft is where the kitchen, living room and bedroom are all in a single room, usually with high ceilings. The Academy Lofts is the second of about a half-dozen loft projects slated for the downtown area, said Ann Vargas, downtown housing planner for Rio Nuevo.
Vargas also has dibs on renting the Academy Lofts penthouse (the former chapel), with a 22-foot-high ceiling and 10-foot-high windows.
Another loft has a rectangular niche in one wall and an original cabinet next to the front door.
“Anything we could leave (from the 19th-century features), we left,” said Fenton, managing partner of Academy Lofts LLC. “There’s a similarity among all the lofts, but they all have nuances.”
Original oak floor planks remain in place on the top two floors. Some lofts have exposed brick walls, revealing imperfect slathering of concrete years ago.
The academy in the 1930s became the convent for the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart, who lived in the building until Fenton acquired it for $750,000 in early 2004.
Twenty-five of the 36 lofts will remain rental units for at least five years, which is a requirement for qualifying for a 20 percent federal tax credit as a certified rehabilitation of a historic building. Fenton also received a $27,500 Back to Basics grant from Mayor Bob Walkup to install replica historic street lighting.
The Academy Lofts fits into the bigger picture of getting more people living downtown – a vital first step necessary to encourage more businesses. A half-dozen other projects could bring another 300 or so lofts downtown.
Most of these will be built from the ground up, but 44 East Broadway makes living space out of a former federal courthouse expansion and the Ice House Lofts is converted from a former ice factory and food storage building. The loft concept stems from converting former industrial space in Manhattan into living space.
Converting a former school and convent into a loft falls right into that tradition.
“We are reprioritizing the type of housing that is available,” Vargas said. “It’s a different way of redefining space.”
Michelle Quinn, soon to be a resident, gets a peek at the renovation.
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Academy Lofts, 35 E. 15th St.
• 18 one-room rental lofts
• 5 one-bedroom rental lofts
• 2 two-bedroom rental lofts
• The monthly rents range from $825 to $1,400
• Prices for the 11 loft condos range from $200,000 to $325,000
• For rental/purchase information, call 797-6700
Other downtown lofts in the works
Other downtown lofts in the works
• 44 East Broadway – 28 lofts
• The Lofts at Fifth Avenue – 117 lofts
• Mercado District of Menlo Park – 60 lofts
• Presidio Terrace – 60 to 90 lofts
• The Post on Congress – 40 lofts
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