WHO OWNS THE BLOCK Landlord concerns over federal marijuana ban ease as another pot shop opens up in the city

New York has continued its legal weed rollout with the opening of a second cannabis dispensary on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village

BY C. J. HUGHES

Because marijuana is still illegal at the federal level, landlords who have mortgages with federally chartered banks would seem potentially at risk by having pot stores as tenants, as doing business with a drug dealer, essentially, runs afoul of the law.

But even though federal officials haven't said outright that they won't enforce the law, some landlords seem unfazed, as in Greenwich Village, where the city's second legal dispensary opened Jan. 24.

"My only concern is: Is marijuana legal? And is the state of New York behind it? And the answer to both of those questions is yes," said Herman Gans, an owner of 144 Bleecker St., which is home to the new cannabis shop, Smacked Village.

In 2011 Gans and his co-investors borrowed $6.8 million against the 4-story mixed-use building, which cost $4.2 million in 2001, records show. The lender was New York Community Bank, which is based on Long Island and holds $66 billion in loans for properties across the country.

A message left with the bank asking for an explanation of its position on working with landlords with cannabis-selling tenants was not returned by press time.

Cooper Katz, a broker with ABS Partners Real Estate who handled the Smacked Village deal, said it's his understanding some financial institutions are advising landlords to tread carefully.

"Some of the banks are saying, 'We're OK with it,' and others are not," said Katz, who was the fifth agent to market 144 Bleecker, a 5,600-square-foot two-level space that had been empty since a Duane Reade closed in 2019. "But it's definitely a conversation we're having."

184

THOMPSON ST.

In 2005 Broad Street Development purchased this 1970 red-brick rental building for $54.5 million, records show, before converting it into a condominium. Today the 9-story building with a doorman and elevator has 144 apartments, some of which sport small, angular terraces. Broad Street, which is headed by Raymond Chalme, has been active in the area. Its most recent project was at 40 Bleecker, a groundup luxury development that has 61 apartments. No. 184 hugs what was once a musical intersection; one of No. 184’s tenants in the 1980s was Lush Life, a popular jazz club. In later years, a Capital One branch was in the spot, though the Covid-19 pandemic seems to have done it in. Another retail space once housed Surya, a “colonial Indian” restaurant that recently gave way to Madam Ji, which serves similar dishes.

In 1896, after this corner of the Village had transitioned from an affluent to a middle-class area, philanthropist Darius Ogden Mills developed this 11-story structure, Mills House, as a sort of dormitory for single men, with 1,554 rooms, according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Today the upstairs portion, now a condo-op, has 190 apartments. One, a studio, was for sale late last month for $455,000, though many of the units appear to be functioning as rentals, including some as extended-stay hotel rooms, based on ads. No. 160’s downstairs floors had brushes with history, too. In 1958

Art D’Lugoff opened the Village Gate jazz club in one section; John Coltrane performed regularly. After the club closed in 1994, a CVS pharmacy took its place. Le Poisson Rouge, a 700-person music venue, also has a Village Gate piece. In 2015 another retail berth welcomed an outpost of Li-Lac Chocolates, a 100-year-old company that began at 120 Christopher St.

510 Laguardia Place

If there were an award for most name changes, this street might win. Once Laurens Street, then South Fifth Avenue (1870) and then West Broadway (1899), it took on its current moniker in 1967 in honor of former Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. A statue of the well-liked politician is down the block. A 5-story commercial condominium from 1872 that was home to the Gemstone, an experimental theater, in the 1970s, it today offers GMT Tavern downstairs. A second retail space, once home to Le Souk restaurant, is empty. The three towers across the street are University Village: Two are for NYU faculty housing, and the third is a limited-equity cooperative. Built as part of a 1960s “slum clearance” project, all are protected landmarks today.

If some federal lawmakers have their way, those conversations won't be necessary for much longer. In 2020 the House of Representatives approved the More Act, which would decriminalize cannabis on a national level. And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has said he expects his chamber to take up the bill soon.

"I never thought I would see the day," Gans said. ■

In 2014 the City Council approved this block for inclusion in the South Village Historic District, a 13-block, 250-building area that was one of the city’s “most important and famous centers of artistic, social and cultural movements,” the council said. It’s still lively: The Red Lion bar at the base of this 6-story 1903 building boasts live music every night of the week. Above are 40 apartments. Owner Shellville Realty, a shell company, bought the 27,000-square-foot structure in 1995 from Salvatore and Mary Longo for about $3 million, records show.

149

In the 1830s this block was called Carroll Place. Like nearby St. Mark’s Place, it was developed as an exclusive neighborhood-within-a-neighborhood for the well-to-do. Carroll featured 15 elegant, Federal-style row houses on both sides of the street. This building has hung on since the 19th century, although there have been changes along the way. By the 1960s, it was sliced up with a pair of retail spaces on its lower floors. Village Oldies, a record store from Robert “Bleecker Bob” Plotnik, occupied one in the 1960s. Another ‘60s retail tenant was the Crazy Horse, a drag bar that officials once targeted for being too rowdy. “The only instruments that can be played are the piano, organ, accordion, guitar or any other stringed instrument,” a 1964 New York Times story said, but “bongo drums and other noisy instruments are used.” Today the second-floor space has Terra Blues, a 32-year-old music club; traditional watering hole Wicked Willy’s is below it.

144 BLEECKER ST.

THE CORNER OF W. HOUSTON AND LAGUARDIA

This green strip and similar ones to the north are remnants of an extra-wide continuation of Fifth Avenue through Washington Square Park that was proposed by planner Robert Moses but never completed. The idea was to give drivers on the avenue a direct route to a new cross-Manhattan freeway. In 1978 environmental artist Alan Sonfist turned the 1,000-square-foot parcel into the site-specific piece “Time Landscape,” a re-creation of the woodsy landscape that graced Manhattan before Dutch colonists arrived. “The existing trees were struggling with the environment, so my plantings included more species that were better adapted to warmer climates but were still indigenous to the site,” Sonfist wrote on his website of the fenced-off installation, which the city’s Department of Transportation still owns.

Two retail spaces line this 4-story, 10-apartment walk-up. One contains New University Pen and Stationery, a 15-year tenant that just renewed its lease for a decade, landlord Herman Gans said. As of Jan. 24, the other space offers Smacked Village, a cannabis dispensary owned by Roland Conner, 50, who spent time behind bars in 1991 for a weed offense. The state has prioritized awarding cannabis licenses to people who have been incarcerated on marijuana charges. The store, in a bare-bones space, is scheduled to operate until Feb. 20, then close for a renovation that could cost $1 million, according to news reports. In 1831 the structure was actually two sideby-side townhouses. The owner of Mori’s, an Italian restaurant, combined them in 1920. An avant-garde movie house, Bleecker Street Cinema, showed flicks from 1962 to 1990, and a Duane Reade came later. Four brokers marketed the Smacked space, including to comedy clubs, before ABS Partners found a taker.