ABOVE: exterior of the Museum of Modern Art. MoMA announced recently that during its recent renovations, it also purchased adjacent land and will develop it at some future date.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York recently bought a swath of property directly on its west side with an eye for expansion, The Art Newspaper is reporting today. The purchase was apparently made while the museum was still closed for its latest renovations, which cost about $850 million. When the Museum’s board of directors found out that the property to the west was for sale, one of their directors reportedly offered this sage advice, cribbed from a Japanese proverb: “When your neighbour’s property is for sale, buy it,” which has to be about the most idiotic deciding factor cited in a multimillion-dollar New York property deal thus far this year.*

MoMA director Glenn Lowry wouldn’t say how much the property was purchased for, but it can’t be cheap. The Art Newspaper says that the museum took everything west of its current location as far as 6th Avenue. The New York City Property Assessment Roll lists a 39-storey building at the northeast corner of West 53rd St. and Avenue of the Americas, owned by Despa Real Estate, and gives it an estimated market value for 2005-2006 of $144 million, but has assessed it for tax purposes this year at just $55.3 million. That sounds like a sale and redevelopment to us, but then, we live in a refrigerator box and don’t know anything about real estate. The article says that the purchase includes all air rights, so conceivably the foundation will build a museum on the bottom and condos or office space up top, just like they did with the Museum Tower during their 1985 reno.

(* aside from “gee, I’d really like to live in the Time Warner Center!”)

LINK: The Art Newspaper > MoMA to expand again, but not for a generation