Chinese companies jump into NYC development

Residential properties in Downtown Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Midtown among high-profile projects

From left: Renderings of 429 Kent Avenue, 610 Lexington Avenue and Atlantic Yards (Credit: SHoP Architects)
From left: Renderings of 429 Kent Avenue, 610 Lexington Avenue and Atlantic Yards (Credit: SHoP Architects)

While buyers from the world’s most populous country are flocking to the New York City real estate market, Chinese developers are increasingly getting into the game.

The most high-profile project is arguably the residential portion of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards, which involves the Shanghai-based Greenland Group. Greenland snapped up a 70 percent stake in the project in December for $200 million. At 429 Kent Avenue, between South 8th and South 9th streets, the Oosten — the first ever ground-up project from the Xin Developmet Group International, part of the Xinyuan Real Estate Company — is the farthest along.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

“Williamsburg has sort of evolved like the meatpacking district,” Ryan Black, Xinyuan Real Estate Company’s director of development, told the New York Times of the Oosten’s planned locale in an industrial area south of the Williamsburg Bridge. “Living there used to be fun, and then it became too hip, too touristy. Being in the middle of it is not always the best place to be.”

And across the river in Manhattan, China’s largest residential developer China Vanke, is building a new 61-story condominium at 610 Lexington Avenue in partnership with RFR Holding. Designed by British architect Normal Foster, the development sits on a site once home to a YWCA and next to RFR’s Seagram building at 375 Park Avenue. [NYT]Julie Strickland