Curbed linked to scans of a New York Magazine article from May 28, 1984 examining the gentrification of the Lower East Side where in 1984: the "Christodora," a derelict 16 floor building on “Ave B facing Tompkins Square Park” that was “boarded up, ripped out, and flooded” and purchased for $62,500 in 1975 was sold eight years later for $1.3 million to Harry Skydell, a 26-year-old lawyer-cum-inchoate real estate developer of just four months.
In the context of today's and well, since 1984, real estate market in NYC, the article's naivety is downright quaint and almost charming if it wasn't so darn depressing to read in retrospect (and altogether predictable)! Here are a couple choice excerpts from the article:
Some people who have lived there for years are understandably unhappy, particularly many of the shop keepers who are unprotected by rent control. Others are mostly bemused. “I've lived in my rent-controlled apartment for years and pay $115 a month,” says one man. “I live on the Lower East Side. The young kids who just moved in upstairs and pay $700 a month for the same space -- they live in the East Village.”
[...]
The rents for redone apartments in bombed-out sections of Avenue B soared—sometimes even topping prices for equivalent space on the UES. On lower Second Avenue, a 1200-square-foot two-bedroom apartment was recently put on the market for $2,000 a month. On First Avenue and 1st Street, an 850-square-foot loft rents for $1,200.
And of course only one year and and a week after owning the Christodora, Skydell and his partners doubled their $1.3 million investment when they sold it to another developer for $3 million.
Today, apartments in the Christodora building are really fucking expensive.
Read more here.