Leaving the Building Congress luncheon today, The Observer looked up to notice something we had never seen on the Midtown skyline before: One57! Garry Barnett's Central Park-towering apartment building is now totally a part of the city skyline, unavoidably peeking down on Columbus Circle. Read More
Yet another California-based multi-millionaire has sold an eight-figure New York pied-a-terre. Unlike the classics-loving viticulturists of wine country who recently sold their townhouse, the latest sellers hail from the sunny shores of Los Angeles. Robert Beyer, a finance muckety-muck of Southern Californian extraction, has sold his apartment at The Plaza, city records show. Read More
This is now officially the most-watched development in all of Manhattan.
As Extell's One57 climbs skyward, so do the prices, with the penthouse now asking an astronomic $110 million. Christian de Portzamparc, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect behind the project, discussed the inspiration for the tallest residential tower in the city with the International Business Times, where he revealed new details about the project as well as (and more importantly) new renderings. Read More
It looks like 3 Columbus Circle will not be a bust after all. SL Green has officially announced a deal for august ad agency Y&R to lease 340,000 square feet in the sickly cerulean tower, according to the Post's Steve Cuozzo. The ad men are renting floors 3 through 10 and 18 and 19, the latter of which will afford lovely views of Central Park. Read More
Sales opened today for Extell's giant glass tower, One57, the latest and greatest in Midtown developments. When completed, the building will stand 90 full stories (no, that's not a typo), and will be topped with a $98 million penthouse. The building, which will also include a "Five Star" Hyatt hotel (seems to be "five star" in the abstract adjectival sense, seeing as construction isn't even complete yet...), in addition to the 95 luxury condos which can be yours, all yours, starting at just $6.375 million. Any takers? OK, aside from foreigners? Read More
Last night, demonstrators who arrived in midtown to protest a Barack Obama fundraiser found themselves corralled into a "free speech zone" on 53rd Street and 7th Avenue. Reporters--like Josh Harkinson from Mother Jones and Meg Robertson from MSNBC --were not allowed near the penned-in demonstrators, despite Commissioner Ray Kelly's recent orders that the NYPD was to play nice with journalists covering OWS. This directive came after the events of the November 14th raid of Zuccotti and the Day of Protest on the 17th left 26 reporters arrested.
Read More
We were trying to make our way down 5th avenue this afternoon when traffic was literally stopped for ten minutes on 46th street. We paid our cabdriver and walked into the throng of people outside Barnes and Noble. Was it some sort of Occupy Wall Street protest of giant book corporations?
No, just two of the lesser Kardashians.
Read More
Office workers may want to look both ways before crossing the street on the way home tonight.
Transportation Alternatives released their first “crash map” today, which reveals that, at over 8,500 crashes involving pedestrians from 1995-2009, Midtown is not the place to go for a stroll. The map, based on the civic group's new CrashStat.org interactive index, charts motorist crashes involving pedestrians by community. Read More
The sun was glistening off the blue glass of 3 Columbus Circle last Thursday. A clutch of nattily dressed real estate executives standing on the 19th floor terrace had to squint against the strong light, reflecting off the high-tech carapace of the building formerly known as 1775 Broadway. Once the headquarters of Newsweek, and before that General Motors, the building began life in 1928 as a sturdy Art Deco brick box towering over Columbus Circle. One of the biggest buildings in the city at the time, it was a show of emerging industrial might in the heart of Manhattan.
But that was before GM moved to the other end of 59th Street, erecting its glass and marble monolith. That was before the arrival of the Trump International, the Time Warner Center and the Apple store on Fifth Avenue. Glass has become big business across the city, where brick and steel still sometimes rules—the Empire State Building is still our most recognizable landmark. Glass was what Joe Moinian, the Iranian-Jewish developer, former cook and now master of some five million prime square feet, decided to go with, then. It was the boom-boom new millennium: Why tear down a perfectly serviceable building when you could simply sheath it in a slick new suit, ask those $100-per-square-foot rents (the standard for a top-of-the-line tower) and cash the checks? Read More
For years now, the Drake Hotel site at the corner of 57th Street and Park Avenue has been one of the most closely watched developments in the city. A historic hotel was destroyed to make way for a mystery project that has grown all the more intriguing as it actually looks like it might get built. Mysterious California developer CIM teamed up with Harry Macklowe, the site's former owner and fifth-act maestro, and now details are dribbling out that make for some jaw-dropping possibilities. Read More
While it might not be as, uh, edgy as the Torre Verre, Hines unveiled another new Manhattan project today, one with a location even more enticing than next to MoMA. The Houston-based developer will construct a 28-story office tower at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 40th Street, across from Bryant Park. Read More
When Amanda Burden and the City Planning Commission cut Jean Nouvel's Torre Verre down to size, the architectural cogniscenti were dismayed. Hines, the project's developer, had sworn the project would be financially infeasible 200 feet shorter. At only 1,050 feet, it would no longer rival the Empire State Building on the skyline but instead share a midtown profile with the likes of the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center and the MetLife Building. Still, even in a downturn brought on by bombastic overbuilding, real estate has a way of persevering in New York. As The Observer revealed two weeks ago, Hines is currently pursuing a new set of plans for the oft-called MoMA Tower. And here they are.
Hines declined to release new plans, and initially suggested there were none. Through a public information request, The Observer has obtained copies of architectural drawings from the City Planning Commission. While they may not be as sexy as the kind of full-color renderings architects usually prepare to wow the media , they shed plenty of light on the new shape of the project. Read More
Robert Sammons of Cassidy Turley on where midtown Class A availability is headed:
Direct availability for the midtown Class A segment fell to just under 11.9 million square feet in July, its lowest level since January 2009, when it registered 11.4 million square feet and was on its way up. During the recent downturn, it reached a March 2010 high of 15.1 million square feet. Read More
It is one of the most mythic and elusive redevelopment projects in the city, the plan to restore at least some of Penn Station's former glory with a new station inside the old Farley Post Office. But this train could be delayed for good. Read More
Have you ever tried to get a decent meal in the heart of midtown, that dead zone between Park and Seventh avenues? It's all warmed-over pizza, overpriced hot bars or the Four Seasons, which a guy can only eat so much of. This is why a flotilla of food trucks, offering such inventive fare as Korean tacos and gay ice cream, have been decending on the neighborhood for years now. But, no longer. Read More
