NYU Buys 35 Cooper Square for $69.2M

New York University students won’t have to pack up from a Cooper Square dorm building.

The private university bought the 12-story student housing development at 35 Cooper Square — which it had been renting for a year — from Arun Bhatia’s Bhatia Development and Sherwood Equities for $69.2 million, according to property records made public Thursday.

The 45,082-square-foot building, developed in 2011, is listed as a residence hall on the university’s website. It will continue to be a home for NYU students this fall now it’s part of NYU’s 14 million-square-foot Manhattan portfolio, according to NYU spokesperson John Beckman.

The building “is in a very convenient location for our Washington Square campus,” Beckman said in a statement.

NYU Executive Vice President Martin Dorph, who oversees the university’s real estate, and spokespeople for Bhatia and Sherwood did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Bhatia and Sherwood acquired the site, which held an 1825 Federal-style row house, in 2010 for $8.5 million, according to property records. Preservationists lost a battle to save the historic building, and it was demolished in 2011 to make way for the student housing development.

Marymount Manhattan College signed a 10-year lease in 2012 for the entire building at the corner of East Sixth Street and Third Avenue, according to property records. 

The small private college still lists information about the residence on its website. It’s unclear if Marymount has retreated to its Upper East Side campus or if it continued to use  a portion of the building after NYU leased it.

A spokesperson for Marymount did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

There were no brokers involved in the deal, according to Beckman.

Abigail Nehring can be reached at anehring@commercialobserver.com.