When the second installment of the High Line opened last month, the word “voyeuristic” popped up more than a few times in reviews describing the park’s coexistence with its architectural surroundings. Well, it turns out that those neighboring buildings New Yorkers have been gawking at from the elevated pathway for the past two months actually have residents, and not all of them wanted to live in a metaphoric fishbowl. “People take pictures and wave at you when you’re alone in your home. We have to keep dark shades up all the time,” Ronni McFadden, who lives eye-level with the High Line at West 23rd Street and 10th Avenue, told the Post. “There’s zero privacy.” According to Carlos Santiago, “it’s a great view, but we can’t enjoy it because we have to keep the shades down at all times, and one of the best things about the apartment was the light.” [more]

TF Cornerstone showed off the 15,705 square feet of ground-floor retail space at its Meatpacking District rental building, dubbed West Coast, with a party for brokers and other real estate professionals late last month (see photos above). The retail space, underneath the 325-unit building at 95 Horatio Street, has two separate addresses, 90 Gansevoort Street and 810 Washington Street, and is located across the street from a High Line entrance and the forthcoming Whitney Museum. The celebration took place at 810 Washington Street, where a pair of clothing stores have already signed for space — Intermix, for 2,725 square feet and Vanita Rosa, for 825 square feet. – Adam Fusfeld [more]

Alf Naman

From the June issue: Alf Naman is standing in front of a wall of plate-glass windows, in skinny jeans and a blazer, sipping a Pellegrino and gazing down on workers tending a grassy stretch of the High Line at 23rd Street. A sliver of New York Harbor shimmers in the distance.

It’s the kind of multimillion-dollar view the veteran real estate broker spent decades showing off to clients when he worked on the Upper East Side. But this particular $5 million apartment — one of 11 units in a 14-story luxury building known as HL23 — has an added twist. Naman built it himself. Naman, who has been inching toward full-time development work for years, will find out soon enough whether buyers respond to his refined tastes, and those of his development partner, Garrett Heher, and his broker, Erin Boisson Aries of Brown Harris Stevens, who is handling sales at the 515 West 23rd Street project. [more]

Sam Zell and a rendering of 500 West 23rd Street

From the June issue: Since the 2008 financial meltdown, the pace of new residential construction in Manhattan has been limited by tight capital markets, rising labor and material costs, and weak demand for new housing. But a new luxury West Chelsea rental project from billionaire Sam Zell is being closely watched as an indicator of where new development is headed in the near future.

Already, the project at 500 West 23rd Street has been a focal point for union protests. Certainly, with 23 union contracts set to expire this month in New York, the kerfuffle is indicative of the deteriorating relationship between big developers and organized labor in the city. Still, the developers have high hopes for the High Line-adjacent building, as the rental market recovers in one of the city’s busiest areas for new development. [more]

Just a few days since the opening of High Line phase two comes an opportunity for buyers to get in on the High Line action.

CB Richard Ellis is marketing a 200,000-square-foot property at 511-541 West 25th Street, between 10th and 11th avenues, according to Crain’s. Tesla Motors has a showroom in the building.

Darcy Stacom, a vice chairman at CBRE, predicts this new listing will fetch about $500 per square foot.

“This is a neighborhood that is coming into it own, and this is an opportunity to get it on it,” Stacom said. [more]

The High Line (courtesy of Architectural Record)

Phase 2 of the High Line opened yesterday, and it is a great advance on the already substantial achievement of Phase 1. While the latter, which opened in 2009, two years earlier to the day, stretched from Gansevoort to 20th streets, the new extension takes us half a mile further, all the way up to 30th Street. Much is the same and much is different.

The Mod aesthetic favored by the architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro is exemplified
in both cases by the grayish concrete pavers flanked by plantings and relieved by wooden
benches in odd shapes and a variety of coves. But while the earlier and more southern stage
generally stands apart from the large neighboring buildings, even as it passes under them, the
newly unveiled segment skirts so close to the generally diminutive buildings in its stretch that
the idle stroller can peer impertinently into the windows of the inhabitants [more]

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the Friends of the High Line co-founders, and actor and High Line board member and advocate Edward Norton gathered on the iconic steel trestle this morning for the official opening of the slightly narrower Section 2 of the High Line, running between 20th and 30th streets on the west side of Manhattan (see photos above).

The city took control of the 1.45 mile-long elevated High Line from CSX Transportation in 2005, previously a freight rail structure. The first section opened almost exactly two years ago and marked its 2 millionth visitor in April 2010, according to city data.

“Just as the transformation of the High Line is ongoing… so too is the transformation of the area around it,” Bloomberg said at the dedication ceremony. “Since work on the High Line began, we’ve seen the development of or planning for more than $2 billion in private investment, adding thousands of new residential units, thousands of new jobs, 1,000 new hotel rooms, and new restaurants, galleries and shops.” [more]

Sam Zell, a rendering of his 500 West 23rd Street project, Alf Naman and a rendering of his 515 West 23rd Street project

The High Line has been responsible for $2 billion of private investment, 12,000 new jobs and 29 development projects since opening in June 2009, show city figures cited by the New York Post. In 2010 alone, almost 2 million people visited the park, which opened its second section, between West 20th and 30th streets on Wednesday. “This is something I don’t think anyone expected,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. “I don’t think anyone expected this economic impact.” As reported in the June issue of the The Real Deal famed developer Sam Zell and Alf Naman are among those parlaying the success of the High Line into new developments with forthcoming condominiums at 500 West 23rd Street and 515 West 23rd Street, respectively. [more]

The Related Companies and Abington Properties are set to break ground on a new residential tower at 30th Street and 10th Avenue this fall, but until then, they’re lending the site to Friends of the High Line, which will transform it into a summer public gathering spot, “The Lot at 30th Street,” complete with a 350-seat bar by chef Tom Colicchio, collection of food trucks and a public art exhibition. According to the New York Times, the site, currently a vacant parking lot, sits at the foot of the northern entrance to the second section of the High Line, which opens next month. Comments

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The near completion of the second section of Chelsea’s High Line park has brought a wave of new residential developments, and new developers, to the West 20s. As the Wall Street Journal noted, one of the developers making its first foray into Manhattan construction is actually a familiar name: Equity Residential, the company chaired by real estate mogul Sam Zell. Though Zell first entered New York City in 2004, and the New York-Metro area now accounts for 13 percent of his company’s income, a 111-unit rental is the first ground-up project his firm has undertaken. [more]