Central Park views are among the priciest in the city – unless you’re talking about the views from Central Park North, which has long been cast in the role of poor relation to the park’s other, swankier peripheries to the east, south and west.
But that’s starting to change, as more middle-class buyers and renters converge on Central Park North, enjoying large spaces and views of both the park and midtown for prices that are a fraction of those paid by their neighbors across the green, brokers say.
“Until the past few years, there was still a stigma to the area,” said Stephen Kliegerman, director of project marketing at Halstead Property. The firm recently handled the conversion of the Washington Irving mansion on the corner of 112th Street into 133 high-end condos.
“Now rents on Central Park North are much closer to regular parkside,” Kliegerman said.
Of course, there is still a long way to go before prices on the northern side of the park catch up to Central Park South and the prime real estate along Fifth Avenue and Central Park West.
Kliegerman said space on Central Park South costs about two-and-a-half times as much as space on the northern end of the park. But five years ago, the difference between north and south was closer to a 5-to-1 ratio.
Even a year ago, space on Central Park North went for about $425 a square foot, though it is now up to about $525 or $600 a square foot, said Tony Oakley, a vice president at the Corcoran Group. Oakley and business partner Larry Comroe, also a vice president at Corcoran, are handling the sale of 16 apartments on West 117th St. Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.
An indication of how much the neighborhood at the top of the park has changed is the fact that every one of those condos starts at over a $1 million, Oakley said.
He said the neighborhood’s transformation began with Harlem townhouses, which became destination for frustrated would-be buyers to the west.
“The real job happened with the townhouse market,” he said. “People who were losing out on condos in the Upper West Side began moving into Harlem to get more space for the money.”
Now, it’s spread to apartment buildings, including condo conversions and rental buildings in which apartments are renovated one by one, Oakley said. “As the older tenants move out, landlords have been upgrading,” he said.
The area has convenient access to a number of subway lines, including the B and C trains on the park’s northwest corner, the 2 and 3 trains in the middle of the park and the 4, 5 and 6 lines to the east. The neighborhood is seeing more coffee shops, bakeries and local shops open as it becomes more desirable, he said.
“The area has been gentrified,” Kliegerman agreed. “As New York continues to prosper, neighborhoods that have not are starting to catch up to the rest of the market.”