The Ackerman Institute's longtime home.

Change can be therapeutic: seeking a different perspective, simplifying one's life, moving to a new part of town.

The Ackerman Institute for the Family's impending move isn't really a happy occasion. The famed family and couples therapy center needed to learn how to live within more modest means after it lost $3.3 million in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. But we certainly hope that the Institute can move past its former financial traumas and embrace the life that it is living now. A life that will, by the looks of it, be lived downtown in the Flatiron District.

The Institute has just just purchased two commercial condo units at 936 Broadway Avenue, according to city records.

The Institute listed its 10,000-square-foot townhouse for $16.9 million 2009 and has an agreement to sell its longtime home at 149-151 East 78th Street to Spruce 317 West 77th Street and 78 RPM Owner LLC.

The Ackerman Institute's new home?

City records show that the Ackerman Institute paid $5.78 million for building unit No. 200 and $1.9 million for No. 301, for a total of $7.68 million. The Institute did not return a call looking to confirm whether this address will be its new home.

That might seem like a lot of dough until you consider that the Ackerman Institute will likely get something in the $16 million to $17 million range for its Upper East Side manse.

The sellers of the two units were Bielow Realty Corp. and 3rd Floor BWY, LLC. Conceivably, the Institute could be buying commercial condo units for another purpose, but a source tells us that the townhouse sale agreement stipulates that the Institute be out by October 2013, so they do need to move somewhere very soon.

Moreover, Spruce 317 West 77th Street and 78 RPM Owner LLCs just closed on the two townhouses next door, so they may be eager to start doing whatever they're going to do with their 57-feet of street frontage and more than 40,000 square feet of air rights.

kvelsey@observer.com

A nice row of brownstones or a nice, big building site?

Is there a new housing development in the works for East 78th Street? We can't say for sure, but it definitely looks like some funny business is afoot on the block between Lexington and Third avenues.

The same buyer who snapped up a pair of townhouses at 153-155 for $12.2 million also has a purchase agreement for the property next door, according to city records. The 32-foot-wide townhouse at 149-151 East 78th Street belongs to the Ackerman Institute, a therapy center which put the house on the market in 2010 after losing $3.3 million to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

The buyer of all three properties is Spruce 317 West 77th Street and 78 RPM Owner LLC, who will have a total of 57 feet of street frontage on the block after the Ackerman deal closes (the buyer did not respond to a request for comment).

The Ackerman Institute, which listed its 10,000 square-foot townhouse for $16.9 million back in 2010, will need to relocate by October 2013, according to a source familiar with the deal. Institute director Lois Braverman has not yet returned The Observer's request for more details on the sale and the contract of sale does not have a purchase price attached to it. The property was pulled from the market in March of 2011.

Of course, we can't of course what this mysterious LLC plans to do with a 23,000-square feet of unused air rights plus the considerable 23,661 air rights of the five-story Ackerman Institute, we'd wager it's not the most massive brownstone renovation the block has seen in a long time. Especially considering that the LLC spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $29 million to put together this parcel.

We can, at least, surmise that Spruce's block holdings will not be growing: immediately to the east are five landmarked townhouses that were built in 1861 and to the west is a rental building with commercial frontage on Lexington Avenue.

kvelsey@observer.com