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About 200 Chambers Street
This handsome apartment tower in TriBeCa is just to the north of another apartment tower on Warren Street that began construction shortly after this project.
Both towers face West Street and the north end of Battery Park City and are a few blocks north of Ground Zero.
This 30-story tower contains 258 condominium apartments ranging in size from 573 to 2,300 square feet that were initially priced approximately from $500,000 to $3,000,000.
The building, which has a 7-story wing on the sidestreet, has 24-hour doormen and concierges, a health and fitness center with a sky-lit swimming pool, a social lounge, a children's playroom, a conference center, a garage with direct elevator access to the lobby, and a 5,000-square-foot public terrace.
Jack Resnick & Sons is the developer and had originally commissioned Sir Norman Foster, the famous British high-tech architect, to design a 40-story tower for the site, which was subsequently reduced to 30 stories.
After considerable wrangling with community groups, Foster decided to withdraw from the project and was replaced by Costas Kondylis who modified the designs somewhat and lowered the building's height to 30 stories.
The project's massing is not dissimilar from the project just to the south, 101 Warren Street, that was being developed by Edwin J. Minskoff and designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and was also known for a while as 270 Greenwich Street. Surprisingly, the clean lines of 200 Chambers Street are more akin to the typical modern lines of SOM and 101 West Street has an atypically heavily textured façade design.
The Minskoff project, which originally called for a 700-foot-high commercial building, includes a 35-story tower with 420 apartments, about 170,000 square feet of destination and local retail space including a Whole Foods supermarket, and parking for up to 400 cars. In the past, the Minskoff site had been studied for an office tower for the now-defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert financial firm, and for a new building for the Mercantile and Commodities Exchanges.
The tower at 200 Chambers Street was topped out in mid-2006 and is across Chambers Street from the very attractive pedestrian bridge to Battery Park City and it is just to the west of P. S. 234, the city's most attractive public primary school that is distinguished by its great fence with nautical designs at the southwest corner of Chambers and Greenwich Streets. This project is also across Chambers Street from the Washington Market Park tennis court.
Both of the new apartment towers commissioned Thomas Balsey Associates, the landscape architectural firm that has designed Riverside Park South.
In January 2002, the 40-year-old Washington Street Urban Renewal Plan, which limited the height of development on this site to 135 feet, expired. The Washington Street Market was the city’s main fruit and vegetable district until the 1960s when it was moved to the Hunts Point section in The Bronx.
At 200 Chambers Street, there is a garden with a fountain that is visible from the lobby whose floor is covered in "chinchilla mink” marble.
Kitchens have Balastina lava stone countertops and high-gloss birch cabinetry with glass-paneled upper cabinets accented by aluminum framing, SubZero refrigerators, Bosch dishwashers and Viking ovens and cook-tops. Bathrooms have Calacatta marble and Crema Marfill tiling, rectangular sinks and oversized Zuma soaking tubs.
Other major residential projects in the city by Jack Resnick & Sons include Symphony House on the northeast corner of Eighth Avenue and 56th Street and the Gershwin at Eighth Avenue at 50th Street. They also developed the very handsome One Seaport Plaza office building near the South Street Seaport.
In addition to apartments, this project has 14,000 square feet of retail space, parking for about 75 cars, including about 10,000 square feet that will be leased for at least 10 years as an annex to P.S. 234 and a 27,600-square-foot community facility that is expected to be operated by Manhattan Youth.
While both of these apartment towers do not directly overlook the Hudson River as do many at Battery Park City, they are also more convenient to "mainland" Manhattan by being on the east side of West Street.
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