Renovation plans for Washington Square Park have drawn attention to that area one broker called the pulse of Greenwich Village.
Interviews with agents who have a combined several decades of experience brokering in the area around the park agreed that it lends a cachet to nearby dwellings and occasionally provides a lure to prospective buyers. While the construction expected to last at least two years starting this autumn may have short-term effects on selling nearby real estate, an improved park, brokers agreed, could have long-term positive effects.
The project, with an estimated price tag of $16 million in private and public monies, will temporarily close different parts of the park, which may affect sales near the construction.
“I think, certainly, during construction, it would not be a hospitable time for someone who lived on the park to put their condo or co-op on the market,” said Village resident Marjorie Dybec, a senior vice president at Bellmarc’s East 12th Street office. “Buyers are going to be a little reluctant to pay top dollar for buildings in the midst of construction.”
The first phase of the redesign will close the northwest quadrant of the park, according to the city parks department, including a fountain first installed in the 1850s that now suffers cracks. That closure, expected to last about a year, will block entrances at Waverly Place and Macdougal Street, and Fifth Avenue.
The second phase is slated to start after that, and will focus on landscaping and repaving parts of the park. It should also last at least a year, and any closures depend on what happens during the first phase.
The renovations are much needed on some parts of the 178-year-old park: The pavement and lawns are uneven and in disrepair; the fountain’s troubles aren’t easily fixed; and the central plaza area feels cluttered on sunny, heavily trafficked days.
The former potter’s field became a city park in 1827 and the nearly 10-acre square has been redesigned several times since. Famed amenities like the fountain and the Washington Arch were added, and in 1964, Fifth Avenue was rerouted around the park rather than through it.
The area is dominated by New York University, the Village’s largest landlord. But the park’s heritage as the epicenter of a long-vanished bohemian scene gives it a pricey luster, with 800- to 850-square-foot one-bedrooms fetching as much as $1,000 a square foot along Fifth Avenue from about 8th Street to 13th Street, said Ellen Rick, a Village resident for a quarter-century and a vice president at Prudential Douglas Elliman.
A one-bedroom in a prewar building nearby, at 10th Street and University Place, is being sold for $800,000, said Stacey Max, a Bellmarc executive vice president.
“Everybody loves having the park there,” Rick said. “Washington Square Park has kind of the pulse of the Village.”