Old Westbury Gardens in Old Westbury, N.Y. (Source: Flavorwire)

JDS confirms West 57th Street project will be 900 feet tall, making it Manhattan’s third tallest residential tower. Shake Shack coming to Grand Central Terminal, after long struggle involving lawsuits and evictions. Donald Trump helps sets up crowdfunding website to compete with Kickstarter. Twenty mansions Jay Gatsby probably would have owned: PHOTOS. Prospect Lefferts Gardens brownstone in contract for $1.85M, which would be highest-record sale. Read these stories and more after the jump.

Walker Tower penthouse interior

Developers of condos in Manhattan are responding to steeply escalating demand by raising prices on unbuilt units as often as twice a month, Bloomberg News reported. At the same time that home sales hit a decade high in the fourth quarter, Manhattan’s inventory of homes for sale dropped to its lowest levels in at least 12 years, according to appraisal firm Miller Samuel…. [more]

Sheldon Solow

In one of the largest land deals in years, Sheldon Solow has reached an agreement with a consortium led by JDS Development Group to sell a parcel of land overlooking the East River for roughly $200 million, the Wall Street Journal reported. The full-block piece of land is zoned for residential use, and sources told the Journal that JDS intends to build a 37-story tower and a 47-story tower on the site, with a total of more than 830 units. The deal is being financed primarily by a $125 million loan from UBS. The parcel being sold is the smaller of two plots totaling nine acres that Solow bought in 2005 from Con Edison for $630 million… [more]

The former Verizon building at 435 West 50th Street

JDS Development Group and Property Markets Group have secured $45 million in financing for their luxury condominium development in the former Verizon building in Hell’s Kitchen, indicating that banks are becoming more receptive to condo projects, the Wall Street Journal reported. The partnership, which acquired the upper floors of the Ralph Thomas Walker-designed telephone building at 435 West 50th Street for over $25 million in 2011, aims to convert the upper floors into 71 luxury condos, as The Real Deal previously reported. Starwood Capital will supply additional equity…. [more]

One Madison Park

They say you can never be too rich or too thin — real estate is no different. Increasingly skinny apartment towers are growing all over New York City, the Wall Street Journal reported.

While generally residential towers have been at least 10,000 square feet wide, these days architects are eschewing that convention, the paper said. For example, 432 Park Avenue, designed by Rafael Viñoly, is expected to have approximately 8,250-square-foot floors, while One57 has floors as small as 6,240 square feet. And, towering above Madison Square Park, is the Cetra/Ruddy-designed One Madison Park, with its tiny 3,300-square-foot floors. [more]

Renderings of 202 8th Street (inset: Michael Stern)

A 51-unit rental building is rapidly taking shape at 202 8th Street, an L-shaped lot in Gowanus that was originally slated for condominiums when developers JDS Development Group and Property Markets Group acquired the site in 2008.

Construction crews completed the 12-story superstructure this week, and the developers have scheduled a small “topping off” ceremony for next Friday, Michael Stern, the managing partner of JDS, said. While superstitious builders may have shied away from the inauspicious date, Stern embraced it. “You can’t forget Friday the 13th,” he said. [more]