Walking around the Lower East Side on a quiet day, it’s easy to hearken back to the days of the neighborhood’s immigrant heritage, provided you keep your eyes above boutique level and forget about the $300 jeans stacked inside the shops and concentrate on the historic tenements lining the streets.
But watch out. The neighborhood, as any new resident or long-time broker will tell you, has changed. You might run smack into some smashing new design, like the 20-story glass and aluminum Hotel on Rivington, or one of the daring new condominiums that have altered the neighborhood aesthetic.
A prime example of what might be called nouveau Lower East Side is the six-story development at 154 Attorney Street, just south of Houston.
“It’ll be a spectacular building — bold and brassy for the neighborhood,” says Norm Kaish, developer of the 32-unit project, scheduled for completion next spring. “We wanted something exciting and energetic.”
Architect Dan Bernstein, of Kutnicki Bernstein Architects, which designed the building, says he hoped to inject a note of modernity in a neighborhood still defined by its history.
“It breaks the mold of the tenement style,” says Bernstein. Compared to the days when he grew up there, he says, “there’s been an incredible transformation on the Lower East Side. It’s a different entity.”
Residents have witnessed the transformation from tenements to trendiness over the last several years, but for those who haven’t been tuned in, it’s quite shocking.
“I couldn’t buy now,” says Kaish, who purchased the land for 154 Attorney two years ago. “We just went to look at a piece of land that was four times the cost [of the Attorney Street property]. It would require us to sell at almost $1,000 a square foot to make money.”
When Kaish and his partner Lenny Taub first visited Attorney Street they didn’t see the potential until they started living in the neighborhood.
“Every time we develop a piece of property we go down to the neighborhood on weekends, spend evenings there, go to restaurants, meet the people, and get a sense of who the potential customer is,” says Kaish. “We thought we would find a scattering of new people coming in, but the streets were teeming, and people were coming out of the woodwork early in the morning. We were surprised at how much energy there was down there and we thought this is a good opportunity to try to find something at a reasonable price.”
When they bought the land two years ago, their projection of prices for the units was too low by half. “The market took over and started raising the value of the homes,” says Kaish. “We’re looking at $800 to $900 a square foot now.”
Studios at 154 Attorney Street start in the mid-$400,000s; one-bedrooms with dens start in the $700,000s; and two-bedroom/two-baths start in the high-$900,000s.
The doorman building’s apartment layouts aim at first time buyers — young singles or small families. The finishes are upscale, including Grohe bathroom fixtures, six-foot Zuma soaking tubs, and kitchens equipped with GE Profile Stainless appliances and Wenge finish cabinets. The two, four-bedroom penthouses boast Viking, Bosch and Sub-Zero kitchens.
The builders have devised a way to offer buyers valuable private outdoor space beyond the terraces many of the units contain. Six private cabanas with running water and a little bit of view are for sale on the roof for residents who want to stretch out on lawn chairs and cook on the grill under the open sky. A separate common rooftop deck is available for the rest. The three garden duplex apartments on the ground level have large lawns.
Neighborhood zoning prevents towers from sprouting up in the Lower East Side, but several substantial projects have been brought to market in the past two years, including 7 Essex, 115 Allen Street, 157 Ludlow and the Garfield at 142 Henry Street.
Down below Canal Street, where the Lower East Side meets Chinatown, the Garfield is far from the crowds on Ludlow and Clinton. The building, a restored nine-story former factory, was an immediate hit, despite serious pricing.
Frank Torre, the Corcoran agent representing the Garfield recalls, “When the developers came to me initially I suggested that they wait until after the holidays but they wanted to come on the market December 15. Well, open houses were swamped and I was on the phone Christmas Eve negotiating units.” The apartments ranged from $795,000 for a 900-square-foot half-floor unit to $1.675 million for a 1,900-square-foot full-floor unit.
Gentrification went into overdrive in the Lower East Side three years ago with the opening of Clinton Fresh Foods and later with other upscale restaurants and shops on Clinton, Ludlow and Orchard Streets just south of Houston. Now it’s bleeding farther south.
“The Lower East Side is in flux,” according to Robert Perl, president of Tower Brokerage, a retail broker to the area. “There’s still room for values to go up — God knows what the ceiling is anymore. Residential values are moving faster than retail.”
As Kaish sees it, “How the market in general goes will have a tremendous impact on this neighborhood. It’s been expanding at a scary rate. Personally, I’d like to see it slow down so people can believe in the growth. Growth like this gets everybody nervous.”