222 BROADWAY PURCHASED FOR CONVERSION
The Real Deal reports that GFP Real Estate — the Gurals — has purchased 222 Broadway — Fulton to Ann, with the entrance now on Fulton — for a conversion to condos. From The Real Deal: “That’s less than a third of the $500 million the bank paid for the 31-story building in 2014, and the latest indicator of how office prices have fallen… At about 778,000 square feet, 222 Broadway could be converted into somewhere between 600 and 800 apartments [well, that seems e. The office portion is only 31-percent occupied after Bank of America, which had leased the majority of the space, let its lease expire.”

CELBRATING JAMES FUENTES GALLERY
I haven’t even caught up to James Fuentes Gallery, but already Surface Magazine has a story on its inaugural show with Kikuo Saito — “the latest in a rush of thrilling new arrivals to Tribeca’s gallery scene.”

THE LOST PINE OF 443 GREENWICH
When she saw the story about the owners at 443 Greenwich suing the building’s developer and architect, J. dug up this story from the Times — she remembered seeing the old beams leaving the building. Curious. From The Times in 2015: “The only way to find original-strength longleaf pine these days: Mine it from buildings like the Domino Sugar Factory or 443 Greenwich Street in TriBeCa, the brick and mortar vertebrae of northern cities’ industrial might. ‘It’s a Southern tree that has been a part of New York City for 150 years,’ Alan Solomon, the owner of Sawkill Lumber, who hunts down old lumber, from the Coney Island boardwalk to a Western Beef supermarket in the Bronx, said during a recent expedition to the TriBeCa building. ‘The city’s always reinventing itself. Stuff’s always getting knocked down.'” The story said that it to Solomon and his team a year and a half to strip the 1883 building of all its pine.

THE PRIVATE CLUB TREND
The Times also has a story on the resurgence of private clubs in the city, referencing Casa Cipriani at the Battery Maritime Building, Soho House, and Maxwell, the new private club on Washington. From The Times: “In recent years, a new wave of clubs has proliferated, varying in price point, exclusivity and amenities. These clubs have risen by filling two voids left by the pandemic: the loss of “third places,” or locations distinct from work and home that can foster a sense of community, and the abundance of empty office space amid a new work-from-home culture.”