Riverdale Tower

A New Glass Residential Building Joins a Traditional Skyline

by Karla Keffer and Tom Stabile

The red brick and wood frame cityscape of the Bronx's Riverdale area now has a Manhattan-style glass tower.

The $56 million Solaria will offer 66 high-end condominiums 11 mi. from midtown Manhattan. Developed by Arc Development of New York and designed by New York's SLCE Architects, the 20-story tower beside the Henry Hudson Parkway is slated to open in November.

The 140,000-sq.-ft. building, which was set to begin sales last month, has one-bedroom units starting at $720,000, two-bedroom units starting at $975,000, and three-bedroom units at $1.185 million. It also features four- and five-bedroom units that begin at $1.415 million.

Foundation work on the tower at 640 West 237th St. began in summer 2004 in an effort to beat the clock on new zoning rules that the city adopted for that part of Riverdale, which would have restricted its height and rentable square footage.

Though Arc had sought an exemption from the new rules from Community Board 8 in Riverdale, the board refused the request. That forced the developer to have foundations substantially complete before the zoning changes went into effect in order to continue with the project, said Charles Moerdler, who is chairman of the board's land use committee.

The project team worked swiftly and achieved substantial completion of the foundation on the day before the new rules took effect, Moerdler said.

"They got in just under the wire, notwithstanding the fact that we had remnants of a hurricane that day," he added.

The building plan drew community opposition, which Joe Korff, president of Arc, attributed to "a fear of tall buildings" by residents in the area. However, Moerdler said the primary complaint was the plan to provide parking spaces for the Solaria's residents by leasing them from an adjacent garage - effectively not adding new spaces to the neighborhood.

"That angered residents," Moerdler said. "There's an awful parking problem."

The superstructure work began in April 2005 with HRH Construction of White Plains, N.Y., as construction manager.

A major goal of the design was to create column-free spaces, said Yefim Gurevich, project manager for WSP Cantor Seinuk, the New York-based structural engineer on the job. The team achieved the goal by using only shear walls around the cast-in-place concrete building's center core.

"It's pretty much a square building," Gurevich said. "The shear walls form a box around the elevator and stair core. It happened to be very effective."

The building also has a drastic change in layouts above the 14th floor. The layout shifts the locations of columns for the top six floors, which don't match to columns running up to the 14th floor from the foundation. The team poured an extra-thick, 15-in. slab at the 14th floor in order to pick up the load of the higher floors and then transfer it to the columns below, Gurevich said.

advertisement

A desire to advantage of views of the George Washington Bridge and the Palisades in New Jersey dictated the type and style of windows, with the team >> choosing a Moduline casement system, Korff said.

"The building is exposed and has great sightlines," he added. "We went with a high-end window wall that would protect the building from leakage and would be well-insulated from sound."

The team made the best of a late delivery on the floor-to-ceiling window wall system, which was set to arrive after the building topped out. It decided to install the windows from the top down, creating dry spaces on upper floors that made it easier for interior trades to work and minimized the need for membranes, flashing, and other waterproofing, said Bob Kimerling, project manager for HRH.

"Typically on a high-rise project, the rainwater will travel down six to eight floors," he added. "It will always find a hole to go through. On this building, the interior was a lot drier than it would have been as the trades did their work."

The system also does not hang off the building on brackets like a typical curtain wall. Instead, the window sections connect to receptors anchored into the slabs, which also avoids the need for added sealing between exterior and interior walls, Kimerling said.

The two-bedroom condominiums are available in 1,427- and 1,446-sq.-ft. sizes. The three-bedroom units vary in size from 1,700 to 1,900 sq. ft. There are also one-bedroom units at 700 to 900 sq. ft.

Three residences on the 15th to 19th floors can have up to four bedrooms, measuring as much as 2,000 sq. ft., while the 20th floor holds two duplex penthouses, each with rooftop recreational space.

The building also has a rooftop observatory with an enclosed dome and telescope to explore views from 410 ft. above sea level. Residents will receive a one-year membership in the Amateur Astronomer's Association of New York and the Museum of Natural History.

Key Players

Owner: Riverdale Heights LLC, New York

Developer: ARC Development, New York

Construction Manager-General Contractor: HRH, White Plains, N.Y.

Architect: SLCE, New York

Structural Engineer: WSP Cantor Seinuk, New York

Site Engineer: Toder & Associates, New York

Steel-Concrete Contractor: Rogers & Sons, Lagrangeville, N.Y.