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An Upper West Side private school that has struggled to make mortgage payments, according to a recent lawsuit, has moved to sell its property. The story was first reported in Crain’s New York Business.
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The news broke about a month ago that Manhattan Country School at 150 West 85th Street (between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues) was being sued by its lender, Flushing Bank, and facing foreclosure due to an alleged failure to honor the terms of a forbearance agreement. The bank says Manhattan Country Day owes $3 million.
According to publicly available tax records, the school lost more than $2.5 million in 2023. The school has lost money almost every year since 2010, when records are first available, though it netted a profit of more than $13 million in 2016 following the $20 million sale of the school’s former Upper East Side home.
The school is now attempting to sell its UWS home for $39.8 million about nine years after purchasing the property for $28 million. The more than 40,000 square foot campus includes six stories with 20 classrooms and a three-story atrium, according to Crain’s.
A representative from Denham Wolf, the firm brokering the sale for Manhattan Country Day, told Crain’s that the decision to sell the UWS campus came before the Flushing Bank lawsuit and subsequent foreclosure. “They’ve been proactively trying to address this,” Wolf said.
Crain’s reports that the school will either execute a sale-leaseback option and remain at the UWS campus, or fully sell the property and move to another location. The school has a secondary campus on a farm in Roxbury, NY which it says is key to its curriculum.
Manhattan Country School was founded in 1966 and states on its website that it is an “innovator in progressive education, cultivating a safe space for children to uncover and shape their identities” and is “one of the most diverse educational institutions in NYC.”
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Why did the school sell its UES building and move to the UWS?
And who on the board made out on the deal?
I wonder how many people remember that this building started as the Mannes School of Music.