Brooklyn Developer Plans to Demolish Former Upper West Side Bank Building

A Brooklyn-based developer has filed plans to demolish a 105-year-old building on the Upper West Side that was once home to a branch of the now-defunct First Republic Bank.

Aleksandr Finkelshteyn bought the four-story building at 2160 Broadway in December for $8.5 million, property records show.

Yaker Engineering CEO Aleksander Yaker, the engineer on the site, submitted an application last week to tear down the 8,820-square-foot property, according to a filing with New York City’s Department of Buildings (DOB).

It’s unclear what Finkelshteyn plans to do with the site after it’s demolished, but JLL (JLL), which brokered the sale of the building, said in marketing materials that the site could accommodate a project of about 27,000 square feet.

Finkelshteyn could not be reached for comment, while spokespeople for Yaker and JLL did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Crain’s New York Business first reported the news.

Built in 1920, the building on the northeast corner of West 76th Street and Broadway was formerly home to an outpost of the Philadelphia-based First Republic Bank, which Pennsylvania regulators shut down in May 2023 over uninsured deposits, and which J.P. Morgan Chase acquired, as Commercial Observer previously reported.

The potential demolition site is about 10 blocks north of other projects on the Upper West Side, including Extell Development‘s two new residential developments on the former ABC television campus.

In December, Extell filed plans with the DOB to build two residential buildings on two separate sites at 30 West 67th Street and 7 West 66th Street with a combined total of 81 units, as CO previously reported.

If completed, the buildings would join Extell’s planned 69-story, 127-unit luxury condo tower at 50 West 66th Street.

Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.