The neighborhood formerly known as Manhattan Valley is gentrifying at a fast clip.
It now includes a new American Apparel outlet, a gay bar named Suite, the modest farmer’s market in Central Park and the luxury condos that are going up on the east side of Broadway at 110th Street.
In the unofficial sweepstakes to attach a sparkly new — and marketable — moniker to Manhattan Valley and the adjacent Harlem areas, Central Park North is gaining favor, brokers said.
“Borders are fluid, so even though there is still a Manhattan Valley post office, no one calls it that anymore,” said David Daniels, a sales associate at the Corcoran Group who grew up in the neighborhood. “It’s really part of Harlem, but even Riverside Church isn’t even considered to be Harlem but another part of the Upper West Side. It’s all just one big neighborhood now.”
As the area, which stretches from 96th to 110th Street east of Broadway, begins absorbing the spillover from more desirable parts of the Upper West Side, the neighborhood is awash with talk that the Pinnacle Group, one of the city’s largest owners of rent-regulated apartments, is trying to push out longtime residents in favor of higher-paying tenants.
Despite evidence of change, old ways remain. Owner-operated stores reflect the Latino heritage of many residents — the Acosta Deli-Restaurant, Miguel’s Barbershop and the A Velez home furnishings store. Families eat outside on their stoops on warm summer evenings. A middle-aged man sells bric-a-brac on a blanket spread out on the sidewalk. Young men loiter in front of apartment buildings bearing the ubiquitous signs of public housing — the 24-hour security service. They shout across the wide avenues that bustle with car and foot traffic at night.
A sign of the area’s transformation can be found on 109th Street, where a notoriously powerful drug dealer once terrorized the neighborhood before being arrested a decade ago, said Meyrick Ferguson, senior director of sales at Massey Knakal Realty Services. The corner of 109th and Amsterdam Avenue is now the site of gay bar Suite.
“Columbus and Amsterdam were known for being bad blocks,” Ferguson said. “Now, the next generation has moved in.”
“I remember empty lots and boarded-up buildings along Central Park West,” added Daniels of Corcoran. “One place I particularly remember is now a luxury condo. We’ve re-entered the Golden Age.”
He refers not just to the area’s gilded 19th-century pedigree, when the buildings lining Central Park West expanded the manorial opulence along Fifth Avenue, but also to 455 CPW, a former cancer hospital turned upscale residence with an adjoining tower. But despite its gated, car-friendly entryway and valet parking, private health club, concierge and three- and four-bedroom units, its reception in the market has been mixed. Apartments there sell for $2.8 million to $7 million. The New York Post reported that sales in the 97-unit condo slowed this summer, and that eight of units remained unsold in late July, three years after they hit the market. And nearby Columbia University bought more than half of the units in the building.
Large-scale development — proposed and under way — flanks the area, including new buildings around the Columbia campus and the new Extell towers at 100th Street and Broadway. Along Columbus Avenue and 97th Street, in Park West Village, a massive Robert Moses complex that is now part condominium and part rent-stabilized, a plain plywood fence surrounds a row of stores. Owner PWV Acquisitions plans a 90,000-square-foot retail development geared toward national chain stores, with some space underground and a 29-story tower.
To the north, the 2840 Broadway condo at 110th Street plans to begin closing in the second week of September, said Ronald Lense, executive vice president at Prudential Douglas Elliman, which is marketing the project. Here, two four-bedroom apartments are listed for over $3 million.
“Most of the zoning is low-density, except around Broadway, but there are a lot of buildings turning over,” said Ferguson, who recently closed on a condominium site at 238 West 108th Street, a mixed-use building on 105th Street, and six properties on 109th Street in the last six months. “We’ve seen a lot of Israelis buying here.”
The neighborhood remains a series of juxtapositions as gentrification meets entrenched street culture. Old tenements clash with glass-facade buildings, and a row of pristine 1880s townhouses along a tree-lined section of Manhattan Avenue between 105th and 106th streets contrasts with the massive Frederick Douglass public housing project, a complex that covers the southwestern third of the neighborhood.
It’s an area of change, down to the street names. When Central Park West meets 110th Street, it turns into Frederick Douglass Boulevard. At Park West Village, closer to 96th Street, several tennis courts fill up on summer weekends. In the projects, the focus is on basketball, complete with scoreboard, grandstands and boisterous fans.
“There are a lot of diehard Upper West Siders who don’t like change,” said Ferguson. “But looking into the future, I think that like Manhattan in general, you’re going to see the national retailer nudging out the mom and pop stores and everything that comes along with it.”