Hines Interests reportedly have taken over 56 Leonard Street tower project

Now that New York by Gehry has begun to be occupied, and now that 1 World Trade Center is rising mightily, and 4 World Trade Center is up 50 stories or so, one might think that the downtown skyline might be ready to catch its breath.

This, of course, is not-dead-yet New York and yesterday it was reported that the stalled, 830-foot-tall tower planned for 56 Leonard Street a few years ago by Alexico, which is headed by Ivan Senbahar and Simon Elias, the developers of 165 Charles Street, a Richard Meier-designed apartment building on West Street, has been revived by Hines Interests.

A November 8, 2011 article by Matt Chaban at observer.com, indicated that Hines Interests was taking over the project and retaining the Herzog & de Meuron design that called for 145 residential condominium units sitting on a stainless steel amorphous base by Anish Kapoor.

Herzog & de Meuron designed 40 Bond Street with its "graffiti fence" and the "bird-cage" Olympic Stadium in Peking.

The observer.com article said that it has learned that Hines is "poised to revive 56 Leonard Street," adding that "Left for dead amid the wreckage of the real estate bubble, 56 Leonard is almost certain to rise anew."

56 Leonard Street is about five blocks south of Canal Street and four blocks north of City Hall in the midst of TriBeCa and is not far from another major project that was put on hold at about the same time by Larry Silverstein, a mixed-use tower at 30 Park Place just to the west of the Woolworth Building at 233 Broadway. The Silverstein tower, which is planned to contain a hotel and residential condominium apartments, has been designed in Post-Modern style by Robert A. M. Stern.

Hines's other projects in the city include the undulating residential condominium at One Jackson Square in Greenwich Village and designed by Kohn Pederson Fox, the "Lipstick" office building on Third Avenue in Midtown designed by Philip Johnson, and the Torre Verre just to the west of the Museum of Modern Art on West 54th Street designed by Jean Nouvel. The latter project is expected to be about 1,080 feet high after City Planning Commission head Amanda Burden demanded it be reduced in height by about 200 feet out of respect for the Empire State Building, which is not close.

What is close is the handsome building at 66 Leonard Street designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh and built in 1901, several years before the architect would design the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue. It is known as the Textile Building and was converted in 1999 to 46 residential condominiums by Chessed LLC. of which Yitzchak Tessler was managing partner.

Also not far away is the Barclay Tower at 10 Barclay Street, a 56-story, mid-block, rental apartment building was erected in 2005 directly across the street from the mid-rise portion of the great Woolworth building that is one of the icons of the city and overlooks City Hall Park. This 441-apartment tower was erected by Glenwood Management, one of the city's largest developers of luxury rental towers and was designed by Costas Kondylis.

Nearby is the very attractive 11-story, 123-unit rental apartment building known as TriBeCa Abbey at 121 Reade Street that was designed by Stephen B. Jacobs for Abington Properties.

Every floor in the new Herzog & de Meuron tower is different and rotated from the floors above and below. The press release for the project described it as "a thoughtful, daring and ultimately dazzling new alternative - the iconic American skyscraper re-envisioned as a pixilated vertical layering of individually sculpted, highly customized, graceful private residences opening to the atmosphere." In other words, every apartment in the shimmy-shimmy-shake form of the tower will have a balcony.