Columbus Circle and the new Time Warner Center are more than a pricey mall and a slow moving intersection. More permanently than Christo’s recent installation, they do double duty as unofficial urban gates — pass them heading north and you’re on the somewhat sedate Upper West Side. Pass them going south and you’ve waded into the cacophony of Midtown.
Since the Time Warner Center opened, the blocks to the west and north are poised for radical transformation. Development between Columbus Circle and Lincoln Center, which is itself slated for an upgrade, has given a previously unfocused neighborhood a community focal point and helped spark a residential apartment boom.
“You’re going to blink and all those garages will be gone and condos will be there,” said Abby Gellert, Halstead Property’s director of sales for Manhattan’s Westside. “The projects underway will change this neighborhood almost overnight.”
Besides Donald Trump’s seven towers on Riverside Drive, the neighborhood will soon be home to at least nine other condominium towers, ranging from 35 up to possibly 60 stories. Both the Empire and Mayflower hotels are being partially converted to condos.
Fordham University plans to more than double the size of its Lincoln Center campus, an expansion that would be financed partly by the sale or lease of two corner parcels on Amsterdam Avenue, which could become luxury housing.
Should the Fordham plan be realized, a high-rise quadrangle for 10,600 students would be created on the Columbus Avenue end of the superblock between 60th and 62nd streets, with seven new buildings around a 1.5-acre courtyard. This ensemble would be overlooked by two apartment towers, one of which could be as high as 60 stories.
Most of the other projects center around the intersection of West End Avenue and West 59th Street. In a change from the development pattern of many nearby condos, most of the soon-to-be-built towers will have bases featuring space for retail outlets and restaurants, helping to give the area some of the visual jolt and sidewalk life found in other Manhattan neighborhoods.
“This area used to be a bit of a slum,” said Rose Marie Laster, a vice president at Corcoran. “Now there are new shops coming and the Whole Foods in the Time Warner Center has had a big impact.”
These projects are becoming available just as demand for Upper West Side residences surges. According to Halstead Property’s monthly property report for February 2005, the number of new listings on the West Side fell 24 percent from a year ago. The biggest squeeze came among units with two bedrooms or more, which led to higher prices. West Side condo prices averaged $1.29 million in 2004, up 27.2 percent from the previous year, according to Miller Samuel appraisers. West Side co-ops averaged $877,000, up 11.7 percent from the year before.
“The biggest story on the West Side is the lack of product. Nothing is going on the market,” said Gregory Heym, chief economist for Halstead Property. “Our brokers say that right now the West Side is the hardest because there is nothing to sell.”
Other brokers agreed.
“There’s a real frenzy in this neighborhood,” said Antonio G. del Rosario, an agent for Citi Habitats. “Apartments that used to be on the market for weeks are now selling in a couple days.”
Rosario, who lived in a dorm room at the Julliard School in the 1990s, has seen the neighborhood behind the Time Warner Center and Lincoln Center change from a near slum to an appealing option. He attributes the popularity of the area to several factors: a spillover of young professionals unable to find apartments in Hell’s Kitchen, improved public schools, and of course, the Time Warner Center.
“With its restaurants, bookstore, and fresh food market, Time Warner did a lot for this neighborhood. It’s made living in the area a lot more convenient,” said Rosario.
Due to robust demand and developers’ desire to cash in on high prices, most new residential units will be condos rather than rentals, and will provide a much needed alternative to dealing with increasingly difficult coop boards in the area.
“Because of this incredible demand, one thing I’m noticing a lot is how much more demanding co-op boards have gotten in the last year,” said Gellert. “With the embarrassment of riches of buyers, boards are getting so critical that we sometimes joke that people couldn’t pass their own boards.”