Isaac Chetrit hires KPF to design 80-story tower on Sixth Avenue

Developer still reviewing offers for the large dev site

From left: 991 Sixth Avenue, William Pedersen and Isaac Chetrit (Credit: Google Maps and KPF)
From left: 991 Sixth Avenue, William Pedersen and Isaac Chetrit (Credit: Google Maps and KPF)

UPDATED, Nov. 7, 10:53 a.m.: Nothing says “I am in the big leagues now” quite like hiring a famous architecture firm. Isaac Chetrit and Ray Yadidi picked Kohn Pedersen Fox, the firm behind Hudson Yards and One Vanderbilt, to design an 80-story mixed-use Tower On Sixth Avenue in the Garment District.

The building will include retail, office space and either apartments or a hotel, sources said. But whether it will be built is still far from clear. Groundbreaking likely won’t start until early 2020, when an office tenant’s lease at 989-991 Sixth Avenue expires.

And Chetrit and Yadidi are still considering flipping the site, which sits between 36th and 37th Streets, as The Real Deal reported last month.

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The owners completed the assemblage in 2015, when they paid Himmel & Meringoff Properties $26 million for 235,000 square feet of air rights from the landmarked Haier Building. They paid $49 million for the office building 989-991 Sixth Avenue in 2007 and added the unfinished hotel development at 993 Sixth Avenue for $54.3 million in 2015.

The partners previously negotiated with architects Christian de Portzamparc and Jean Nouvel to design the project, sources have said.

Chetrit, a cousin of developer Joseph Chetrit, has been quietly amassing a portfolio of commercial buildings in the Garment District.

Correction: A previous version of the story incorrectly identified one of KPF’s projects.