Media Mentions

A member of real estate's prominent Ashkenazy family has sold off a development site in the Bronx, where the buyer plans to build a mixed-use project using the state's 485-x affordable housing property tax incentive.

Developers Michael Ashkenazy, brother of Ben Ashkenazy, and Joshua Agus have sold 205 W. 230th St. in Kingsbridge to developer Andrea Gjini for $11.5 million, property records show. The site appears to have last traded hands in 2017 for $7 million, indicating the sellers made a tidy profit on the deal.

The sale was an all-cash transaction, said Lev Kimyagarov of Development Site Advisors®, who brokered the deal.

Agus declined to comment on the transaction, and Ashkenazy did not respond to a request for comment by press time. Gjini could not be reached.

Westorchard Management, a Bronx-based real estate firm, had already filed plans for a building at the site that would stand 12 stories and 124 feet tall and span about 70,000 square feet with 99 residential units. It was unclear if Gjini intended to move forward with this specific development or if Westorchard is still involved with the project.

Michael Ashkenazy is a partner at Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., according to his LinkedIn profile. Ben Ashkenazy leads the firm as its chairman and CEO, but he is not involved with the Bronx property, according to a spokesman for the company.

Developers of 118 buildings representing roughly 2,600 housing units had signed up to use 485-x, meant to incentive builders to create affordable housing, as of May 1, according to data from the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Although city officials described these figures as encouraging, all the projects contained 99 units or fewer, presumably as a way to avoid paying the $40-per-hour minimum wage that the program requires on projects with 100 or more units.