Arnold Warwick’s apartment is 1,200-square-foot, and at $331.76 a month, it might be one of the very best deals in New York City. “I don’t plan on dying, because I don’t want to give up a rent-controlled apartment,” said Mr. Warwick, who is 80 and has lived in one of the apartments above the Cherry Lane Theater for half a century.
Mr. Warwick’s apartment, which has four small bedrooms built up around an open living room, isn’t just cheap. It is also a fabulous apartment.
A two-bedroom apartment in the area rents for an average of $4,745 per month, and just down the block, at 17 Commerce Street, a 2,200-square-foot federal-style town house is currently for sale for $4.975 million.
The apartments above the Cherry Lane Theater are owned by Angelina Fiordellisi, the executive director of the theater. She bought them in 1996, with the help of her husband, Matt Williams, a successful television writer and producer whose credits include “The Cosby Show,” “Roseanne” and “Home Improvement.” Ms. Fiordellisi bought the eight apartments on Commerce Street because they came with the theater, not because she wanted to be a landlord. “I wasn’t interested in making any money off the apartments,” she said. “I was just hoping they would pay for themselves. "The apartments bring in about $65,000 in rent a year, she said, and between property taxes and the cost of heat, water, maintenance and management, they just barely break even.
Another of those apartments is rented by Ms. Campbell and her husband, Adam Rosen. They do not have a rent-regulated unit, but they pay only $2,500 for a glorious three-bedroom. The reason for their bargain is not blackmail but sentiment. Mr. Rosen’s grandmother Kim Hunter, a founding member of the Actors Studio and an Oscar winner, lived in that apartment for about 50 years. When she died of a heart attack in 2002 — in the apartment — her children asked Ms. Fiordellisi if they could keep the place in the family. She said yes, and they agreed on a rent that the couple, with their young son, could afford. “Four generations in the same apartment!” Ms. Fiordellisi wrote in an e-mail. “I love it!”
Source: New York Times Real Estate
