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Apartments at "Blue," the 16-story residential condominium building now under construction at 105 Norfolk Street will range in price from $745,000 to $3,950,000.

Norfolk Hudson LLP announced today that the building, which will have 32 apartments, will have a full-time doorman, reportedly the first residential building on the Lower East Side to have such a feature, as well as apartments with bamboo floors, floor-to-ceiling windows, individual storage units, and residential communal outdoor space on the second and fifth floors.

The building, whose distinctive facade of different shades of blue was described by the developers as resembling "a perfectly cut azure gemstone," has been designed by Bernard Tschumi, who was dean of architecture at Columbia University from 1988 to 2003.

It is on the site of the former parking lot belonging to Ratner's, the famous kosher restaurant, and its sales office at 100 Norfolk Street occupies Ratner's former restaurant kitchen that was briefly occupied by Lansky's Lounge, a night club named after Meyer Lansky, before and after the restaurant's closing last January.

The $17 million building is a project of Angelo Cosentini and John Carson, who completed The Atalanta at 25 North Moore Street, and Hudson Realty Capital LLC., a real estate fund led by Richard Ortiz.

The building's one-and two-bedroom apartments and duplex penthouse range in size from 759 to 2,494 square feet. Some apartments will have terraces and the building will have a walk-in cooler for private grocery deliveries.

"What we've tried to do with Blue is build a world-class architectural icon, a signature one-of-a-kind building that is emblematic, both externally and internally, of the lower East Side's spirit of reinvention and experimentation," Mr. Cosentini stated in a press release.

The building, which will be one of the tallest on the Lower East Side, is expected to be completed in the fall of 2006.

The Norfolk Street project is separated by a one-story building that houses a nightclub from another striking new condominium project, the "Switch" building at 109 Norfolk Street, a 7-story building now under construction designed by Narchitects where the floors zig-zag and forth with gentle angles creating a lively facade and a new twist on bay windows. It is just to the south of the very pleasant, red-brick Asian Americans for Equality Community Center at 111 Norfolk Street designed by Victor M. Morales, a building that was completed last year.
Architecture Critic Carter Horsley Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.