There were plenty of firsts in new residential development in Manhattan in 2004.
The storied Plaza Hotel went condo for the first time, amid a spate of hotel-to-condo conversions. The heart of Times Square got plans for its first condo development at 1600 Broadway. The developer of 170 East End Avenue hit another first-time record, paying $770 a square foot for a development site alone.
From elegant townhouse transformations to skyscrapers taking shape in the air, The Real Deal tracked new condo and rental projects in Manhattan throughout the past year, and laid them out for our readers.
Looking backwards rather than forward, and with more detail than any map we’ve run before, this installment will be part of our semi-annual review of new projects.
Here is a brief look at developments in different neighborhoods over the past year:
The Time Warner Center spurred new projects at the foot of the Upper West Side, with the entire-block Mayflower hotel site sold to a developer for $401 million. A half-dozen new projects were set to rise west of the massive new mixed-use complex. Even the saturated center of the Upper West Side saw new projects announced, including at 2112 Broadway.
The boundary of the Upper East Side pushed further north, with projects like Glenwood’s Hampton Court opening on 102nd Street, in a neighborhood dubbed ‘Gracie Point’ by the developer but better known as East Harlem. In the heart of the Upper East Side, tony conversion projects like the former Christie’s East auction house at 219 East 67th Street and a former Lyc e Fran ais de New York townhouse at 3 East 95th Street made progress, and some projects took a page from Downtown in billing themselves as “loft-like” spaces.
Projects in Chelsea, like Vesta 24 at Tenth Avenue and 24th Street, which reportedly sold out in a day and a half, showed the neighborhood moving farther west and north. The massive rezoning of the far West Side to the north includes allowances for more than 13,000 residential units, with some developers already announcing plans but most waiting for the final zoning changes.
Thanks to the large amount of Liberty Bond-fueled residential construction in Lower Manhattan, mostly rentals, commercial owners like Brookfield Properties are reportedly growing concerned about the area becoming too residential, according to press reports. Downtown by Philippe Starck at 15 Broad Street, the Sunshine Group’s first marketing foray into Lower Manhattan, raised the luxury bar, while Sciame Development finished up work on a 14-building rental project in the South Street Seaport district, the first step in transforming the area into Wall Street’s “living room,” company principals said.