AvalonBay files plans for 33-story Lincoln Square tower

SOM-designed, 160-unit building will hold rentals, condos

1865 Broadway
Timothy Naughton and 1865 Broadway in Lincoln Square

AvalonBay Communities filed plans Monday for its new 33-story, mixed-use residential tower at the site of the former American Bible Society headquarters in Lincoln Square.

The building will hold 160 apartments – both rental and condominium units – across more than 236,000 square feet. There will also be 34,000 square feet of retail space on the project’s lower levels, according to a permit application filed with the city’s Department of Buildings.

While the filing indicates a scaling down from a previously reported 70,000 square feet of retail at the development, the plans may not account for retail space slated for the building’s cellar level, which is not always factored in DOB filings.

The residential real estate investment trust, led by CEO Timothy Naughton, acquired the property at 1865 Broadway for $300 million earlier this year, and will demolish the existing 12-story building on the site. Skidmore Owings & Merrill is designing the project.

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The filing specifies anywhere from 13 to 15 apartments on each of the tower’s third through sixth floors, with seven units on each of the eighth through 13th floors and a single duplex apartment spanning the 14th and 15th floors. In addition to another two units on each of the 14th and15th floors, the 16th through 24th floors will hold four apartments each, while the 25th through 31st floors will each have three units.

The fourth, sixth and seventh floors will be used for residential amenity space, though the filing does not note the type.

AvalonBay may look to sell a portion of the development such as the retail component, Matthew Birenbaum, the firm’s chief information officer, said on the third-quarter earnings call last month. Birenbaum lauded the site’s “very flexible” zoning and said the project would be 100 percent market-rate, with AvalonBay not pursuing a 421a tax abatement.

The Virginia-based REIT recently entered contract to sell a Kips Bay luxury rental building, at 377 East 33rd Street, to the Dermot Company for $175 million.