Marketing is expected to begin soon for 8 Union Square South, a 15-story residential condominium building that is being erected by the Claremont Group, of which Stephen Lari is a principal, on the southwest corner of 14th Street and University Place.

The site was formerly occupied by a yellow-brick low-rise building with a four-story glass stair tower designed by Morris Lapidus for Crawford Clothes that for many years housed Paterson Silks and finally Odd Job. The tower was demolished last year over the protest of some civic groups that felt it should be declared an official city landmark.

Roger Lang of The New York Landmarks Conversancy, a civic organization, for example, testified March 29, 2005 before the Landmarks Preservation Commission on its possible designation the Crawford building and another Lapidus building, the former Summit Hotel, now the Doubletree Hotel on Lexington Avenue at 51st Street. "Crawford Clothes exemplies his playful, glamorous early retail designs; it was created in 1948, barely three years after he opened his own firm in New York?.Think of Lapidus as the anti-Mies. No elegant, severe, serene modernity for him. In fact, his 1966 autobiography was entitled "Too Much is Not Enough," a direct riposte to Mies' "Less is More."

The most famous building by Lapidus, who died in 2001, is the Fontainbleau Hotel in Miami.

Arpad Baksa is the architect for the project, which will have an illuminated top as shown in the "night" rendering" at the right.

The building will have 20 two- and three-bedroom apartments and prices are expected to start at about $1,500,000.

The building is also known as 36 East 14th Street.