Downtown Residential

Housing Projects Are Living Large in Lower Manhattan

Tight sites, heightened scrutiny, a congested area, and the shadow of the massive World Trade Center redevelopment all contribute to significant hurdles for project teams building new residential towers in Lower Manhattan.

by Adrian MacDonald

The surge of new residential development in Lower Manhattan, the oldest, densest warren of streets in New York, continues at a brisk pace despite the ramp up of other major commercial and infrastructure projects.

With simultaneous work ongoing on the World Trade Center site, several commercial-to-residential conversions in the area, new office buildings, utility projects, and construction of new parks on the East and Hudson rivers, construction in the area below Canal Street has become an object lesson in logistics, traffic management, and community relations.

The area from the Battery to Canal Street is just 1.7 sq. mi., excluding Chinatown. Four new residential towers are rising in Battery Park City and at least six more, not including conversions, are on the way in Tribeca and near Wall Street.

"Lower Manhattan is a matter of logistics," said James Cavanaugh, head of the Battery Park City Authority. "There are a lot of materials and workers converging on a relatively small part of the city."

The Battery Park City district, which has a mandate for developers to build green, will produce four more towers on the last residential sites in the master-planned high-rise neighborhood. When complete, Battery Park City will have 5 million sq. ft. of green structures, Cavanaugh said.

Stanton Eckstut of the architecture firm Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn in New York designed Battery Park City's master plan with his then-partner Alexander Cooper in the early 1980s. Eckstut is now the design architect on the neighborhood's last two sites for Milstein Properties.

"Everyone is so focused on the superblock of the World Trade Center," he said. "But there's a huge redevelopment going on all around it. The edges are just as much a part of the reconstruction."

The layout of Battery Park City stands in stark contrast to the rest of Lower Manhattan. Where Financial District towers cling to a complex, narrow 17th-Century street grid, Battery Park City emphasizes open space, greenery, clear sightlines, traffic control, and uniform aesthetics.

"The master plan guidelines provide developers with certainty," Eckstut said. "If you follow the guidelines, you will get approval. The public process went on before when the plan was approved."

The Battery Park City Authority plans to complete lease negotiations with Milstein by the end of the year to break ground in early 2007 on Sites 23 and 24. Eckstut's design calls for two condominium towers of 230 and 320 ft., connected by a 50,000-sq.-ft. community center that sits mostly below grade.

advertisement

On Sites 16 and 17, the Sheldrake Organization's 31-story River House tower broke ground in January. Nearby, Millennium Partners will open its 35-story Millennium Tower later this year on Site 2A.

Albanese Organization of Garden City, N.Y., plans to break ground this fall on a new 31-story tower on Site 3, building on its success with the Solaire, which earned Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The new building will strive for the top LEED level of platinum.

Just across the six lanes of West Street, developers in the Financial District and Tribeca engage in the more traditional free-for-all of urban core construction.

A dramatic addition to the skyline will be a 75-story mixed-use tower on Beekman Street designed by Frank Gehry of Los Angeles-based Gehry Partners and developed by Forest City Ratner of Brooklyn. The structure will combine residences with facilities for NYU Downtown Hospital and a New York City public school. Forest City has said it plans to break ground on the 44,280-sq.-ft. site this fall and finish by 2009 or 2010.

Construction on Beekman Street could be complicated by city plans for an 18-month street reconstruction project set to start next spring. Forest City and Community Board 1 have both asked the city to postpone the street project, said Paul Goldstein, the board's district manager.

"There's a fire house and a hospital on the street and three parking lots," Goldstein said. "It's narrow, it's a one-lane street, but it's a critical east-west corridor."

Sitework is taking place on other large parcels with planned residential projects, including a site on Beaver Street owned by the Witkoff Group, and two sites on Washington Street - one owned by the Moinian Group and the other by Time Equities, said Eric Deutsch, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York. All three developers are based in New York.

The strong residential push is also attracting retailers, such as Sephora, which recently opened a downtown location, and plans for new Tiffany's and Mays stores, Deutsch said.

"The retailers recognize that it's time to get in down here," he added. "It's a sign of the diversification of the economy in Lower Manhattan."

Other new residential buildings in the works in the downtown area include:

• a 21-story apartment tower at 88 Leonard Street by Leviev Boymelgreen of Brooklyn set for completion in January

• a 45-story condominium tower at 15 William Street by SDS Investments of New York set to open in September 2008

• a 57-story residential tower at 10-12 Barclay Street by Glenwood Management slated for completion in June

• a 30-story condominium tower at 200 Chambers Street by Jack Resnick & Sons set for completion next year

• a $550 million complex at 270 Greenwich Street with 390 units and a retail section developed by Edward J. Minskoff Equities of New York and slated to open in 2008

• and a new tower combined with renovated structures at One York Street, which is breaking ground this year.

One York Street will mix a new 14-story glass tower with pre-Civil War era buildings in a complex at the lip of Tribeca on a full block just below Canal Street. The building, designed by Enrique Norten of Mexico City's TEN Arquitectos, will have 40 loft units ranging in size from 850 sq. ft. to 3,160 sq. ft. and selling for $1 million to $15 million.

The building, developed by New York-based JANI Real Estate, will have a fitness center, outdoor swimming pool, retail and office space, and an automated parking garage with 50 spaces.

Meanwhile, 270 Greenwich Street will have 15-story and 35-story towers and separate entrances for market-rate rental apartments, duplex condominiums selling for $1.3 million to $12 million, and retail spaces.

The project is an anomaly among Lower Manhattan sites because of its ample size, said Chuck Olivieri, senior vice president for construction and development at Minskoff. The firm combined three lots fronting Greenwich, Warren, and Murray streets into a single 90,565-sq.-ft. site.

"The big site permits a lot of staging within the property line instead of the street," Olivieri said. "It's taken the edge off challenges others have encountered."