While not directly on Eighth Avenue, The Link is one of several new high-rise projects that have significantly spruced up the once seedy and tawdry boulevard. The glass-and-aluminum-panel tower is 498 feet high.

It is two blocks to the north of World Wide Plaza, the full-block, mixed-use development on the former site of Madison Square Garden by the Zeckendorf Organization that pioneered the renaissance of the avenue in the late 1980s. The pyramid-topped office tower of that complex remains the most dominant building on the avenue but it took well over a decade for its influence to bear fruit.

First came the angled reflective-glass-clad hotel designed by Arquitectonica on the northeast corner at 42nd Street, then the new Hearst Tower designed by Sir Norman Foster on the southwest corner at 57th Street that was completed in 2006, then the new New York Times Building designed by Richard Rogers on the southeast corner at 41st Street that was topped out in 2006.

The long vacant east blockfront on the avenue between 41st and 42nd Street was acquired in 2006 from the Milstein family by SJR Properties and Prudential Real Estate Advisors for the construction of a 40-story office tower designed by FXFowle, the architectural firm that designed many of the large office towers at the south end of Times Square.

Meanwhile, several new apartment towers sprouted in the 50s along the avenue and several more were announced in 2006 for the 40s.

The Link’s site is to the west of the former Howard Johnson Hotel that fronts on the avenue and is known now as a Hampton Inn. The Link’s mid-block site not only offers considerably less traffic and noise than one on the avenue, but also provides it with better and less obstructed views.

The Link is on the former site of the low-rise SIR Studios Building that was purchased in 2005 for about $43 million by the El-Ad Properties, of which Miki Naftali is a principal, from Vikram Chatwal s Hampshire Hotel Group, which owned the Howard Johnson Hotel abutting the site. The sale included air-rights from the hotel.

El-Ad, the developer of The Link, emerged as a major real estate player in the city with its residential conversions of The Plaza Hotel, the former Gift Building at 225 Fifth Avenue and the former O’Neill Building at 655 Avenue of the Americas.

Costas Kondylis and Partners and Gal Nauer Architects were the design team for The Link, whose top is illuminated.

Most of the apartments at The Link have three-pane, floor-to-ceiling windows, and the lobby has two bamboo groves.

The tower, which has about a dozen façades, has many corner windows as it is not a pure slab. Its "cube" entrance is set in a plaza and there is a 6-story wing that is part of the project on the west side of the site that contains two townhouse units with three-bedrooms and three bathrooms, and a terrace.

The Link has 209 apartments, all individually wired for multi-phone lines, high speed Internet and digital TV, and custom kitchens by Poggenpohl feature bluestone counter tops, Sub Zero refrigerators and Bosch dishwashers and cook tops.

The building has a doorman, a fitness center, private storage and two landscaped gardens accessible only to the building.

The building also entered a partnership with Troy to offer residents 26- or 30-piece furniture suites at a cost of $65,000 or $79,000 for their apartments.

Apartments ranged initially in price in mid-2006 from about $955,000 to $2,300,000.