It and the Time Warner Center give the northern boundaries of Midtown major visual anchors.

The project, which is directly south of the full-block, low-rise Bloomingdale’s store, occupies the former site of the low-rise Alexander’s store and it was the first significant new construction project in the city of Vornado Realty Trust, which is headed by Steven Roth.

Although Vornado demolished the Alexander’s store in 1998, it took a while for Mr. Roth to decide to move ahead.

The 870-foot-high tower has 105 luxury condominiums on the 30th to 55th floors of the project’s tower on Lexington Avenue, about 700,000 square feet of offices for Bloomberg L.P., another 200,000 square feet of offices, 160,000 square feet of retail space. The commercial entrance is at 731 Lexington Avenue but the residential portion is entered through the project’s large, elliptical driveway at 158 East 58th Street.

The project was designed by Cesar Pelli & Associates, the architect of the World Financial Center at Battery Park City and the Museum Tower on West 53rd Street.

One of its retail tenants is Le Cirque, the famous restaurant.

Description

The top of One Beacon Court is a 6-story, rectilinear illuminated crown. A few occasions in 2010 the crown’s illumination was colored.

The façade of the building has floor-to-ceiling windows, and each floor is separated by a string-course, a thin, projecting façade element, that during construction, was covered with blue paper that gave the tower very handsome accents. The paper peeled off revealing a steel element that was nearly as handsome.

The "court" is located slightly east of the block’s center and the eastern wing has an angled roofline along the side-streets.

The courtyard has 110-foot-high walls that are canted inward 7 degrees, creating the effect of an "upside-down bowl."

Because 59th Street is one of the main approach streets to the Queensborough Bridge to the east there is heavy traffic, and Bloomingdale’s, of course, attracts a lot of shoppers.

There is a subway stop at Lexington Avenue and 59th Streets. There are numerous restaurants nearby, especially on 58th Street, between Third and Second Avenues.

Although the building technically only has 55 floors, the apartments have stupendous views.

Amenities

The building has 24-hour doormen, a concierge and valet parking.

Residents have access to The Beacon Club on the 29th floor, which includes a fitness center, entertainment suite, children’s playroom and a business center.

Richard Johnson, of Page Six of The New York Post, reported November 30, 2003 that "Future residents of One Beacon Court, the luxury condo apartments rising on top of the Bloomberg offices at 731 Lexington Ave., got the use of the building’s concierge as soon as they signed their contract, even though they might not be able to move in for a year or more," adding that the developer had hired Quintessentially, the London-based upper-crust firm run by Camilla Parker Bowles’s nephew, Ben Elliot, to handle the residents of One Beacon, its first U.S. client.

Kitchens are very sleek with white, double-stacked cabinetry with lighting underneath, as well as stainless steel utensil racks, Brazilian Pannafragoia granite floors, Italian Basaltina stone countertops, Sub-Zero 600 series refrigerators, Wolf ranges and Miele dishwashers and washers and dryers.

Bathrooms have Absolute Black granite floors, framed in a Buttucino Fiorito marble, and set into a Yellow Ramon limestone borders, Buttincino Fiorito marble wainscots, and Kohler water closets.

History

One Beacon Court was many years in the planning, as the developer, Steven Roth, chairman of Vornado Realty Trust, studied many schemes, and waited for a major tenant long after Alexander’s had closed its low-rise, marble-clad building, which was demolished in 1998.

As the site was directly south of the full-block occupied by Bloomingdale’s, some observers wondered why Mr. Roth did not consider an even larger project that might have bridged 59th Street, and provided a new "home" for Bloomingdale’s which could have utilized its substantial, unused "air rights."

In a June 12, 2003 article in The New York Times, David W. Dunlap wrote that the architects of this project said that its courtyard "received the blessing of Michael R. Bloomberg before he became mayor." Mr. Bloomberg visited the Pelli office in New Haven to see the project’s renderings and models.

"Bloomberg himself was quite captivated by the idea of the space," said Rafael Pelli, a principal in the firm that bears his father’s name. "No one knew how he’d react, because it came at the cost of larger floors. But he loved it. He saw how it could bring personality to the project," Mr. Dunlap wrote.

At one point, a hotel was considered as a component of the mixed-use plans, and major auction houses also considered the site.

In a November 25, 2003 New York Post article, Steve Cuozzo wrote that it took Mr. roth "a decade to develop the old Alexander’s site - a decade in which he put up with sniping from all sides over his seeming indecisiveness."

In an interview, Mr. Cuozzo asked Mr. Roth if he felt "vindicated":

"As head of a huge, publicly traded REIT with shareholders to think of, Roth said: ’We’re business people. We do things methodically and by the numbers. We knew we had a great asset at a unique spot, and we weren’t going to do transactions prematurely that wouldn’t get us the values we eventually expected to get....Notwithstanding pressures to do things prematurely, I have pretty strong convictions about what’s right arithmetically."

The arithmetic of 731 Lexington includes its $630 million development cost and a $490 million construction loan from Hypo Vereinsbank. According to Vornado’s SEC filing, Bloomberg, under a 25-year lease, paid a base annual rent of $34.53 million for each of the first four years - about $49.68 a foot. Bloomberg’s decision to take nearly 700,000 feet got the project off the ground.

Roth, with some amusement, said, "We still have 100 models of different buildings as the ideas changed - the tower on Third Avenue vs. the tower on Lexington; multiple towers and much lower buildings with no towers at all."

So why was the tall tower put near Lexington? "Two reasons," Roth said. "It’s a better office address. And it’s 400 feet closer to Central Park" - no small issue for buyers of the apartments on floors 30 to 54, atop the offices.’"

Some reactions to the final renderings for the project were a little disappointing, as it initially seemed to be a "boxy" tower. As it began to grow out of the ground, however, the project was met with widespread enthusiasm, as its sleekness and impressive scale became a gleaming new and major component of the midtown skyline.

One Beacon Court was the second major new construction project in the city for Vornado. The first was the handsome, 40-story residential condominium tower known as the Park Laurel at 15 West 63rd Street adjacent to the McBurney School. It was built in 2000.

The developer used the city’s "inclusionary zoning" provisions to create almost 260,000 square feet of added residential space, by developing one building and purchasing the "bonus" square footage from two other projects in the same community board district. The program permitted developers to get four square feet of bonus space for luxury housing for every square foot of lower-income housing they produce.

Vornado Realty Trust used about 97,000 square feet from the 53-unit senior project at 351 East 61st Street, developed by RFT and Davis & Partners, and another 42,000 square feet were purchased from BFC Partners that developed 346-8 East 21st Street. The remaining 119,000 square feet was obtained from a 41-unit project for the Metropolitan Council on Housing that Vornado developed at 171 Lexington Avenue, with Jeff Levine.