UPDATED, Nov. 7, 10:53 a.m.: Nothing says “I am in the big leagues now” quite like hiring a famous architecture firm. Isaac Chetrit and Ray Yadidi picked Kohn Pedersen Fox, the firm behind Hudson Yards and One Vanderbilt, to design an 80-story mixed-use Tower On Sixth Avenue in the Garment District.
The building will include retail, office space and either apartments or a hotel, sources said. But whether it will be built is still far from clear. Groundbreaking likely won’t start until early 2020, when an office tenant’s lease at 989-991 Sixth Avenue expires.
And Chetrit and Yadidi are still considering flipping the site, which sits between 36th and 37th Streets, as The Real Deal reported last month.
The owners completed the assemblage in 2015, when they paid Himmel & Meringoff Properties $26 million for 235,000 square feet of air rights from the landmarked Haier Building. They paid $49 million for the office building 989-991 Sixth Avenue in 2007 and added the unfinished hotel development at 993 Sixth Avenue for $54.3 million in 2015.
The partners previously negotiated with architects Christian de Portzamparc and Jean Nouvel to design the project, sources have said.
Chetrit, a cousin of developer Joseph Chetrit, has been quietly amassing a portfolio of commercial buildings in the Garment District.
Correction: A previous version of the story incorrectly identified one of KPF’s projects.