Lincoln Square leads Manhattan in new resi permits

It used to be nothing but train tracks, and then for a long time it was a much-delayed development site. Now, the Riverside Center megadevelopment on the Upper West Side has approved permits for over 1,000 new residential units, making the Lincoln Square neighborhood surrounding it the fastest-growing in Manhattan.

Across the borough, developers have filed permits in the past year for a total of 6,420 residential units, according to a review by The Real Deal of data from the Department of Buildings going back to November 2014.

Developers are building with gusto in neighborhoods like the Financial District, East Harlem and Murray Hill. But nowhere is there a higher concentration of new apartments than in Lincoln Square, where just three Riverside Center towers account for 1,127 permitted units, or 17.5 percent of the borough’s total permitted units.

The eight-acre development site is, of course, the last puzzle piece of the Riverside South redevelopment plan for the area between 59th and 72nd Streets along the Hudson River.

Donald Trump developed the northern part of the 75-acre Riverside South site, Known As Trump Place in the 1990s, putting up seven buildings. Extell Development and the Carlyle Group partnered on the $1.7 billion acquisition of the final section of the site in 2008, and have been selling of portions to other developers as well as building themselves.

In total, the five-building project is slated to include 2,500 residential units, 140,000 square feet of retail space, an elementary school, a 250-room Hotel And A Public Plaza.

The largest of the buildings to go through the permits process is 400 West 61st Street, the 595-unit, 37-story tower being developed by Boston-based General Investment and Development, which bought the property from Extell for $411 million.

GID filed plans for the tower, also known as Riverside Center Building 1, in May.

Extell and Carlyle have plans to develop two buildings on the site: one at 10 Riverside Boulevard (288 units) and another at 639 West 59th Street (244 units).

Other busy neighborhoods include the Financial District, where Richard Ohebshalom’s Pink Stone Capital filed plans late last year to build a 429-unit rental tower, though the status of that project remains unclear. In East Harlem, Blumenfeld Development Group submitted an application last December to file a 233-unit building, which will be designed by starchitect Bjarke Ingels.

Here’s a look at Manhattan’s neighborhoods and how they stack up to one another:

(Source: The Real Deal analysis of DOB figures)