Toll Brothers Buying Brandon Miller’s Former Chelsea Property

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A long-vacant development site near the High Line once owned by Brandon Miller has found a buyer, almost a year after the developer’s tragic death.

Toll Brothers is in contract to buy 118 10th Avenue in Chelsea from Benny Barmapov, a source familiar with the deal said. The contract price is $53 million.

The Pennsylvania-based homebuilder could not immediately be reached for comment.

Adirondack Capital Partners brokered the deal for the 12,000-square-foot undeveloped parcel, which includes two adjacent properties. Miller had hoped to build a 10-story, 100,000-square-foot office building with ground-floor retail on the property, but it now appears to be poised for residential development.

Miller’s Real Estate Equities Corporation bought the leasehold for 118 10th Avenue from Barmapov in a January 2017 deal valued at $21 million. But their office project was never built and the leasehold changed hands again two years later when an entity tied to GDS Development Management and Swedish real estate firm Klövern AB took it over.

Plans for an office building were again stalled by Covid and the leasehold was transferred back to Brandon Miller in December 2023. Miller stopped paying the ground lease in early 2024.

Before his July 3 death, Miller pledged his equity interests in the entity controlling the property to a company called DIA Family Holdings, which later filed for bankruptcy protection. Barmapov took the property back and collapsed the ground lease. He put it up for sale this past February.

Toll Brothers, founded by Robert and Bruce Toll in 1967, is one of the largest homebuilders in the United States and a Fortune 500 company. The company’s net income was $1.57 billion.

Its high-rise condominium division, Toll Brothers City Living, has completed construction on more than 7,200 luxury units across more than 40 buildings. In New York, it built the Pierhouse in Brooklyn Bridge Park in partnership with Starwood Capital Group, as well as 1110 Park Avenue and 121 East 22nd Street.