Hell’s Kitchen only a decade ago would have been unthinkable as a luxury condo address. No longer.
The developers of the conversion of the former Hit Factory recording studio on West 54th Street and the new Link on West 52nd Street, in fact, want to talk up the connection to the once-gritty neighborhood.
Hell’s Kitchen’s Hit Factory, where Billy Joel, John Lennon and the Notorious B.I.G., among many others, recorded, will reopen in the first three months of 2007 as a seven-story, 27-unit condo that will include six penthouse duplexes. HF Sponsor Corporation, a joint venture of Arizona-based Sagamore Capital and Core Plus Properties LLC of Stamford, Conn., are developing the project at 421 West 54th Street.
“My partners and I were in the market for a conversion opportunity in New York,” said Scott Turkington, principal of HF Sponsor. “We wanted something unique in what it was and what it would become. The Hit Factory has a great musical history and would be a unique place to live.”
While none of the professional recording studios will remain, developers have kept recording studios on the first-floor intact; those will be used for showcase displays by Gibson Guitars. A large collection of platinum and gold albums will hang in the lobby, Turkington added.
The condo units range in size from 1,000 to 3,400 square feet, and will have high ceilings, oversized windows and access to a street-level auto lift elevator used by recording artists to elude paparazzi. Along with a parking garage, the Hit Factory Condominium will have a fitness center and a community roof deck.
Units start at just under $1 million, and the most expensive penthouse is priced at $4.25 million for 3,500 square feet of living space and a 1,300-square-foot private terrace. Sales started in July, and units are going for about $1,000 a square foot, said Michael Chapman, executive vice president of Stribling Marketing Associates, which is marketing the Hit Factory.
A little more than two blocks away, the Link’s prices range from $955,000 to $2.3 million for the 215 condos there. The development is 60 percent sold after hitting the market in the summer of 2005, said Tom Elliott, vice president of marketing for Elad Properties, which is developing the Link.
Marketing for the project has tended toward the edgy, perhaps capitalizing on the former grit of Hell’s Kitchen in much the same way that the Hit Factory touts the recording studio that once drew the famous to the same neighborhood. An ad for the Link this past summer featured a half-naked woman getting a tattoo in one of the project’s condos.