Marketing has started and a sales office is expected to open soon for The Charleston, a 191-unit residential condominium building at 225 East 34th Street on the northeast corner of Tunnel Exit Street between Third Avenue and Second Avenues.

The 21-story building has been designed by SLCE with HLW International as design consultant. BBGM is designing the interiors and Thomas Balsey Associates is the landscape designer.

Most of the southwest corner of the building, which has a one-story base with about 11,000-square feet of commercial space, is angled and its frontage on 34th Street has three projecting bays that descend from the highest at the west to the lowest at the east. The building will have many balconies.

It will offer studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments and several three-bedroom penthouses with prices ranging from about $600,000 to $2,430,000. Studios will have about 540 square feet, one-bedroom units will have about 670 to 980 square feet, two-bedroom units will have about 983 to 1,441 and three-bedroom units will hae about 1,712 square feet.

It is being developed by LCOR, which has developed more than 20,000 residential units and 16 million square feet of commercial space across the country, and the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS).

The building will have many corner windows and balconies, a fitness center, storage space, a catering kitchen, a media lounge and a zen garden with three waterfalls and a geometrically patterned floor. The large lobby will have a revolving door entrance and a wall hung with hanging strings of gold-colored beads.

It will also have a roof deck with impressive views of the Empire State Building and midtown and it will have about 11,000 square feet of retail space. The site is close to the Queens Midtown Tunnel.

The building is named after Charles Benenson, the New York developer who died in 2004 and had owned the site, which was formerly occupied by a vacant three-story structure. Mr. Benenson, a well-known art collector, was the developer of several properties in Manhattan including the Connaught apartment tower at 330 East 54th Street and at one time was the owner of the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C.

"It was very important to the Benenson family that the building be named in memory of our father, Charlie," Lawrence B. Benenson, a principal of Benenson Capital Partners LLC, has commented, adding that "LCOR was gracious enough to agree and we are certain The Charleston will be one of their most successful projects." Benenson Capital Partners LLC sold the property for about $73 million.