When residential developers looked at Chambers Street, formerly a bland commercial thoroughfare primarily used by pedestrians passing through on their way to City Hall or Battery Park City, they liked what they saw.
Now their vision is taking shape, as nearly a dozen residential projects are planned along the street, considered by some to be the southern boundary of Tribeca.
The residential boomlet has spurred a retail makeover along the corridor as well, with new restaurants like Kitchenette at 156 Chambers and the Soda Shop at 125 Chambers and upscale food stores replacing older, scrappier businesses (see Chambers gets retail revival).
Development on Chambers Street includes an array of projects, from newly constructed apartment complexes, such as 200 Chambers Street at West Street, with more than 250 apartments, to an upscale hotel condominium — the Smyth — at 85 West Broadway and Chambers Street, with 100 hotel rooms and 15 condominiums.
“All these residential buildings are bringing roughly 1,000 units of new residential apartments to the area,” said Herbert Chou, a sales associate with Warburg Realty. “In terms of residential, Tribeca is really expanding down to Chambers and even moving on down to Warren Street.”
Developers are fighting for the last few development opportunities there. Despite the sheer number of residential units in the works, Jeff Gerson and Scott Goldfarb, founders and partners of G2 Development, are optimistic about their small venture at 146 Chambers Street between Hudson and Greenwich streets — and affirmed they’d do another one if they had the chance. Originally a 1915 industrial loft building, the seven-story condominium conversion will have five two-bedroom apartments and a duplex penthouse.
The developers paid $4.15 million at the end of 2005 for the building, and they anticipate total costs to be about $9 million, Gerson said. The asking price for apartments will be about $1,200 to $1,250 a square foot.
“We saw a lot of potential in the block in terms of the retail that was already there, like the Starbucks, the North Fork Bank and that really nice restaurant across the street [Acappella],” he said. “We felt that the retail was where we were going to see tremendous upside, and we developed the project with a strong eye towards selling the condos and keeping the retail space.”
That space is being leased to the Original Zucker’s Bagels & Smoked Fish. Gerson said developers also liked the Chambers Street location because the anticipated customers are families, and P.S. 234, which has among the highest test scores in the city, is right down the block.
“We liked the fact that we were in the same school district as P.S. 234,” he said.
The developers feel they will be able to draft off of the demand for some of the new residential development going in, such as the Smyth and 101 Warren Street, a residential development with 228 condominiums (109 with two or more bedrooms) and 162 rental units on 90,565 square feet of land. The complex will have a Barnes & Noble bookstore and a Bed Bath & Beyond.
“There are not a lot of affordable two-bedroom apartments in Tribeca,” Gerson said.
Affordable for Tribeca, that is. The term is of course relative, since $1,250 a square foot would not be considered affordable for all of Manhattan.
“And there’s a trend in the city and also in Tribeca toward high-rise buildings with all the same amenities, and that’s what people have come to expect at $1,500 a foot,” Gerson said. “We thought there is a nice, solid market out there for the boutique condominium, where you have the same elegant finishes and more exclusivity.”
Some of those finishes will include luxury appliances, as well as a virtual doorman — a surveillance system that enables security guards to control building access from a remote location. Residents get free basement storage, as well as a common rooftop terrace for the five two-bedroom apartments and a private terrace for the penthouse.
“One major distinguishing factor right now is that our penthouse has a 600-square-foot terrace, and this is literally the biggest terrace in Tribeca on the market currently in this price range,” said Jill Camac, a senior associate at the Corcoran Group who is marketing the project.
Gerson said an elevator that opens to full-floor apartments has been added, and the top floor was virtually removed to add the duplex penthouse of modern design to the historic building.
That is unusual, as most rooftop additions on landmarked buildings — meaning most of Tribeca — can only add a one-floor addition that cannot be visible from the street, said architect Michael Zenreich, who has done work for artists in the neighborhood for many years.
“It’s a very beautiful original façde, because it had cast iron on it, and we didn’t destroy it; we just sort of revealed it,” he said. “Chambers Street is like any other typical Tribeca street, but they didn’t put it in the historic district. But it has the same characteristics: four- or five-story loft buildings. It had this cheap commercial thing, like 14th Street, for a while, but now it’s coming back to life.”