Coney Island Developer Pursues Luxury Tower in Lenox Hill

A Coney Island-based developer is pursuing bold plans to transform a modest three-story townhouse on East 62nd Street, which used to serve as the headquarters for a prominent religious organization, into a 20-story luxury residential building.

As first reported on by New York Business Journal, Rybak Development hopes to demolish 248 E. 62nd St. and in its place erect a 214-foot-tall tower, which would contain only 16 luxury apartments. As Crain’s Business notes, the slim number of units indicates that they’ll be condominiums rather than typical apartments, with some set to be duplexes or triplexes.

There will reportedly be a sauna, steam room, and fitness center on site—as well as something called a snow room, which essentially replicates the experience of being surrounded by a “winter wonderland” of sorts, even when the snowflakes aren’t coming down outside.

The East 62nd Street building was sold to Rybak earlier this year, by the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, for $9.7 million. Rybak used a $5.8-million loan from Bank Hapoalim to help secure the sale. The Catholic Near East Welfare Association is a papal agency established in 1926 and works out of displacement zones or areas stricken by extreme poverty; they maintain operations in Europe, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and India.

Since the Catholic Near East Welfare Association is a nonprofit, the sale to Rybak was only finalized in September after getting an okay from the NYS attorney general. The current three-story building, erected in 1910, has a broader history of serving as the home base for religious advocacy—it also once housed a branch of the Mission Helpers of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic women’s congregation with roots in Baltimore.

Much akin to the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, the Mission Helpers of the Sacred Heart are organized around providing help to the poor and have a history of serving the Black community.

So far, such a sharp change at 248 E. 62nd St.—from modest charitable operating base to sky-high luxury mecca—has not seemed to draw concerted local opposition. However, Rybak itself has received some bad press elsewhere in recent days, with an Oct. 29 Gothamist report drawing attention to circumstances around the firm’s acquisition of a city-owned lot in Coney Island.

The report points out that Rybak, under the stewardship of CEO Sergey Rybak, was “an early supporter of [Eric] Adams’ mayoral bid, eventually compiling more than $28,000 from company employees, subcontractors and associates for Adams’ 2021 campaign.” However, Gothamist added, “he was not registered as a “bundler,” or intermediary, as is required by campaign finance law.”

In other words, some are questioning whether the city granting Rybak Development the bid is related to Sergey Rybak’s (potentially improper) donations to Eric Adams, whose recently quashed five-count corruption indictment had included claims of illegal campaign contributions from straw donors.

President Trump ordered his Department of Justice to drop the charges with prejudice, meaning they cannot be resurrected at a later date, in what many observers deemed a quid-pro-quo in return for cooperation with federal immigration policy.

Manhattanites will have closer examples of Rybak Development’s work to use as a reference. The firm recently finished an 18-story luxury condo building at 660 Lexington Ave. in Midtown, which contained only 31 units. According to YIMBY, the apartments there are quite tony: “All units will be full-floor apartments, with the exception of the penthouse, which will span three stories. Homes come with 11-foot-high ceilings, Miele appliance package, Isenberg bathroom fixtures, and oak herringbone floors.”