Toll Brothers Buys 118 10th Avenue for $53M
Site formerly owned by Brandon Miller to become housing
By Larry Getlen June 25, 2025 10:43 am
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Toll Brothers has agreed to pay $53 million to buy the 12,000-square-foot development site at 118 10th Avenue in Chelsea from developer Benny Barmapov, according to The Real Deal.
The vacant property, located between West 17th and 18th streets, was once owned by Brandon Miller, the real estate developer who died by suicide in July 2024.
Adirondack Capital Partners brokered the deal, which also includes two adjacent properties and is expected to house a residential development.
Barmapov initially purchased the site in 1990, according to public records. Miller’s company, Real Estate Equities, paid $21 million to buy a 99-year ground lease on the site from Barmapov in January 2017 that covered two properties: 118 10th Avenue — which then housed a 13,760-square-foot one-story building, according to TRD — and the two-story, 4,485-square-foot building next door at 124 10th Avenue.
Miller intended to build a 10-story office building across the two sites, and filed plans with the Department of Buildings the following year for a 10-story, 87,000-square-foot office building with ground-floor retail to be designed by German architect Annabelle Selldorf, as Commercial Observer previously reported. Two years later, though, the leasehold was purchased for $22.6 million by GDS Development and Swedish firm Klovern AB. The firms engaged Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to design an office building of 135,000 square feet.
The COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to the firms’ plans, and Miller took the property back in December 2023. But TRD reported that Miller stopped paying the ground lease in early 2024, having pledged his equity interests in the property to DIA Family Holdings, a firm that subsequently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection that summer. It is unclear how Barmapov came to own the site once more.
Toll Brothers did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Adirondack Capital Partners declined to comment until the sale is finalized. Benny Barmapov could not be reached for comment.
Larry Getlen can be reached at lgetlen@commercialobserver.com
