April 12, 2012
First Quarter 2012 reports released last week by the major real estate brokerages in Manhattan indicated that luxury apartment sales activity and prices remained relatively stable although some bidding wars were reported.
Median sales prices for Manhattan luxury apartments slipped 0.9 percent in the first quarter of 2012 to $775,000 from $782,071 in the prior year quarter, according to a new report from
Prudential Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel Inc., but the average sales price and price per square foot posted increases.
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March 30, 2012
The CIM Group and Harry Macklowe have submitted a plan examination request to the New York City Department of Buildings for a 1,397-foot-high building on a mid-block site on 57th Street between Park and Madison avenues that goes through the block to 56th Street.
The plans, submitted this month by Flack & Kurtz, an engineering concern, indicate it would be an 82-story structure.
An article today at therealdeal.com by Katherine Clarke said that the building would have 128 residential condominium apartments with 12-foot-high ceilings and some retail space. It said that Rafael Vinoly is the architect for the project, which in published renderings is very slim and has no setbacks.
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March 30, 2012
Greenwich Village is world famous for its charm and its bohemian contrariness so it has been no surprise that New York University has taken a severe beating recently over its very ambitious expansion plans.
The plans would add 2.5 million square feet of space to the university's superblocks south of Washington Square Park at the base of Fifth Avenue.
The university abandoned its handsome campus in the Bronx in 1973 to the City University of New York that now operates it as the Bronx Community College. NYU, however, has been steadily expanding in the village not only with new buildings but also by taking over existing buildings and converting them to academic uses.
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March 28, 2011
Abingdon Square Park, a small, triangular park in the West Village formed by the intersection of Eighth Avenue and Hudson, Bank and West 12th streets, is one of the more elegant in the city.
It is bounded on the north by two handsome 17-story, pre-war apartment buildings and a cheery, 6-story, red-brick building that was originally the Trowmart Inn when it was built by William Martin as a resident hotel for young ladies in 1906 and its now being converted to ten, large residential condominium apartments by FLAnk Architects.
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March 08, 2012
With the recent removal of construction barricades on 72nd Street near the southwest corner of Madison at 72nd Street that intersection has become one of the city's most glamorous.
Ralph Lauren, the fashion designer, has ensconced his company on both of the ornate and handsome southern corners, one of which he built from scratch and recently completed expanding to the west.
The two, low-rise, limestone-clad buildings not only complement one another very graciously in scale and visual interest, but also enable the very attractive, pre-war apartment buildings on the north corners to have impressive and expansive views to the south.
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March 05, 2012
One of the city's great streets, Astor Place is the nexus between Greenwich Village, the East Village and NoLiTa. Only three short blocks long, it intersects with Broadway, Lafayette Street, Stuyvesant Street, Fourth Avenue and The Bowery.
With the completion of
Astor Place at 445 Lafayette Street, designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates, in 2004, it now has a very prominent landmark marker, notable for its curved, reflective-glass, mid-section and its starchitect-studded history.
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February 06, 2012
The New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) has issued a request for proposals to "Illuminate Lower Manhattan." The proposals must be submitted by March 13, 2012 and the winning plan will be awarded $1 million toward the cost of the project.
The EDC wants to make Lower Manhattan more attractive, exciting and interesting and therefore raise property values just as the High Line has made West Chelsea more desirable.
The proposed light show must be east of Broadway and south of Fulton and Ann streets, although the EDC is encouraging locations along South Street or near the New York Stock Exchange. Presumably such a geographic location might provide visibility for the project from Brooklyn, but not from New Jersey as Battery Park City has been excluded from the project. It is not clear why the EDC has set a geographic limitation for the project unless it wants to have it highlight the South Street Seaport, whose fate is not clear although the Museum of the City of New York has recently taken over its museum.
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January 23, 2012
The City Planning Commission today approved a rezoning of the shuttered St. Vincent's Hospital site in Greenwich Village that will permit Rudin Management to convert several of the former hospital buildings to luxury condos, and to demolish others and replace them with new high-rise luxury condo construction.
The proposed rezoning must now go to the City Council for public hearings and a vote; the rezoning only takes effect if approved by the Council.
"Thanks to today's actions by the City Planning Commission, the West Side of Manhattan is now one step away from seeing a significant revitalization of the St. Vincent's campus and its surrounding area," said William Rudin, CEO of Rudin Management, in a statement. He added that the project will create more than 1,600 construction and permanent jobs.
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January 17, 2012
The city is studying a rezoning of commercial properties in Midtown East to replace "aging" smaller stock.
Much larger new office buildings that might be developed under the plan, however, are likely to significantly obstruct many existing vistas from major residential properties in the area.
The city's plan appears to be based on somewhat dubious premises that all buildings in the area that should be landmarked have been and that all corporations desire very large floors.
New York's Department of City Planning said Thursday it plans to study whether the city's commercial office market in midtown east needs to be reinvigorated with new zoning, according to a January 13, 2012 article at
crainsnewyork.com by Amanda Fung.
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January 13, 2012
The median net effective rent (face rent less landlord concessions) rose 9.5 percent to $3,121 in the Fourth Quarter of 2011 from $2,950 in the same period the previous year in Manhattan, according to the latest Douglas Elliman Report on apartment rents.
The study indicated that there was "no apparent shift in apartment mix was responsible for the increases" that were consistent across all rental price indicators. The sharp decline in mortgage rates pulled some potential renters into the sales market, the report continued.
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