Most people picture a cul-de-sac as kids on bikes, waving neighbors and no through traffic. Manhattan has almost none, but Riverside Drive comes close. The winding, non-commercial boulevard is quiet enough to hear yourself think, while Broadway's shops, restaurants, schools and subway lines are a few blocks east. Across the street sits Riverside Park, with its tennis and basketball courts, playgrounds, dog runs and waterfront paths. It works as the neighborhood's shared backyard, minus the tour groups that crowd Central Park.

That backyard is finally getting some long-promised upgrades. The 79th Street Boat Basin is Manhattan's only public marina. It has been closed since November 2021 because of severe deterioration, and in October its reconstruction cleared environmental review. The roughly $90 million makeover includes a new boathouse approved by the Public Design Commission, and the marina is expected to reopen in 2028. At the south end, a new multi-sport turf field near West 62nd Street is nearly done, capping a 30-year effort to replace old railyards and a parking lot with a waterfront park. Uptown, a $26 million drainage project aims to fix the flooding that turns the park's northern stretch into "pop-up ponds" after heavy rain.

The Drive itself changes far more slowly. It once held Charles Schwab's full-block mansion, the largest home ever built in Manhattan. The mansion was replaced by the decidedly less whimsical Schwab House at 11 Riverside Drive, which was the Drive's busiest co-op over the past year. Most of the strip is landmarked prewar stock, and new construction with direct park views is rare. Waterline Square at the southern tip of Riverside Boulevard and Claremont Hall in Morningside Heights are the most recent, and nothing new is coming along the Drive or the Boulevard.

That scarcity shows up in the numbers. In the 12 months through September, resale condo sales in Riverside Dr./West End Ave. rose 15%, and the median price climbed 13% to $1.7 million. Co-ops posted a 7% gain to a $1.23 million median. On the Drive itself, co-op sales jumped 20%.