Developer Grabs Chelsea Lot Between Two Holdout Carriage Stables

A developer has acquired a lot wedged between two of the three remaining carriage horse stables in Manhattan, leading to speculation that any future construction could further shrink an already-under-fire industry.

Mack Real Estate Group obtained the lot—listed as 545 W. 37th St.—from Chetrit Group in a $94-million title transfer last month, as first reported by the blog W42St. Chetrit’s plan to build a 131-unit high-rise building on the lot never went forward, with the firm eventually defaulting on a $85-million loan provided to them by Mack’s credit arm, leading to a lawsuit that resulted in the title transfer.

The two low-rise stables, Central Park Carriage and West Side Livery Stables, are located diagonally across from each other and front West 37th and 38th streets. The lot that Mack has just acquired covers the vacant space separating them, abutting their respective properties.

In 2012, after buying the lot for $26.5 million, Chetrit knocked down approximately four commercial buildings that existed there previously. As W42St. notes, this “triggered added costs to brace the adjacent carriage-horse stables with steel beams to prevent a collapse,” leading to fears that Mack’s new acquisition could cause a similar scenario to play out.

Christina Hansen, a spokesperson for the Transport Workers Union local that represents the city’s carriage workers, told the blog that they had concerns about Mack rendering the two stables “uninhabitable” after “accidentally” (or otherwise) damaging them.

Indeed, concern about the actions of developers is hardly a new preoccupation for TWU Local 100, which has argued that real estate interests were behind a heated legislative push that nearly saw the carriage trade banned in NYC last year.

A bill known as Ryder’s Law, which would have banned the longtime carriage trade in New York City, died in committee last November. It had backing from an advocacy group known NYCLASS (New Yorkers for Clean, Livable & Safe Streets), and was named after a carriage horse that collapsed and died on West 45th Street back in August 2022.

TWU Local 100 sued NYCLASS during the legislative push, arguing that the nonprofit was defaming carriage workers by portraying them as animal abusers, rather than diligent caretakers; Ryder’s carriage driver, Ian McKeever, was famously put on trial for—and acquitted of—abuse charges, after he was seen whipping Ryder in an apparent effort to get the animal back on its feet.

McKeever’s defense team noted that the animal had been suffering from an undetected illness at the time of its death, much like another horse that died on Eleventh Avenue in August 2025, which reignited the rage of animal rights activists and NYCLASS.

Crucial to TWU’s lawsuit, however, was the second contention, that NYCLASS had its eye on the prime real estate occupied by stables such as Central Park Carriage and West Side Livery Stables.

The suit included a leaked 2009 document from the advocacy group, during a period when it was pushing the adoption of something known as “e-carriages,” which stated: “Replacing horse-drawn carriages with the green 21st-century Horseless Carriage will create a windfall for the carriage industry from the sale of its multimillion-dollar stables alone.”

There are no known links between NYCLASS and Mack Real Estate Group, not to mention Chetrit Group.

“It’s never been more abundantly clear that real estate is the true motivation behind the nearly two-decade effort to ban carriage horses, not animal welfare,” TWU President John Samuelson said in a statement provided to Chelsea News.