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Stephen Jacob Smith

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/17 3:18pm

the planning game

Who will follow in Amanda Burden's (very stylish) shoes?

Who Will Be New York’s Next Chief City Planner? And Does It Matter?

With the New York City mayor’s race not even past the Democratic primary, it’s a bit early to be handicapping the city’s next chief city planner, but where’s the fun in being coy?

Crain’s has taken a look at who might fill the post, which it calls “perhaps more important than any deputy mayor position at City Hall,” arriving at a short list that includes names ranging from Vishaan Chakrabarti, a consummate real estate industry insider and former director of the Manhattan office of the Department of City Planning, to the more community-minded Anna Levin, a member of the City Planning Commission and the chair of Manhattan Community Board 4′s Land Use Commission during most of the 2000s. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/16 4:06pm

Manhattan Transfers

We're more than a little jealous of the views.

Turn On, Tune In, Drop $14 M. On an UES Penthouse

The Park Regis at 50 East 89th Street isn’t what normally comes to mind when one thinks of $14 million penthouses. Built in 1974, it lacks the classical prewar touches of its Park and Fifth Avenue neighbors, and the standard unit sizes range from studios to two-bedrooms—not quite the palatial spreads that one expects from an eight-digit Upper East Side tower.

But what it lacks in outward beauty, the co-op makes up for with its interior and its views. Perched on the 32nd and 33rd floors, the unit has jaw-dropping views of Central Park, with just enough city in the frame to give it a Manhattan flavor (“Located in historic Carnegie Hill, The Park Regis offers the atmosphere of a small town,” the building description claims—unconvincingly, if you ask us, the UES being one of America’s densest neighborhoods), but not so much that you can’t make out every feature in the park. The Central Park Reservoir is especially prominent. The grand prewar apartments on Fifth and Park may have stately exteriors, but they generally top out at around half the height of the Park Regis. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/16 2:40pm

Manhattan Transfers

Good luck.

$100 M. CitySpire Listing: The Most Expensive For Sale By Owner in History?

Long Island real estate scion Steven Klar was obviously not having much luck offloading his massive, octagonal condo at CitySpire Center with Douglas Elliman. The much-maligned “trophy” vanished from the market in January, when Mr. Klar  dumped the brokerage—a win for Elliman?—and decided to lick his wounds for a few months and/or get fired up for another try.

At $100 million, more than any home in New York City has ever sold for, the price was widely mocked. Why, people asked, would Mr. Klar think he could best One57′s penthouses, which have reportedly entered into contract for more than $90 million, in a late ’80s building and a unit that he bought for only $4.5 million in the early ’90s (and hasn’t renovated since)? Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/15 2:20pm

Manhattan Transfers

6 Photos

80 Washington Place

Sousaphonic Village Townhouse Boasts Waterfall, $28.9 M. Pricetag

After watching their townhouse sit on the market for a year without a sale, the owners of 80 Washington Place have decided to take a cue from the previous owner, composer and conductor John Philip Sousa: they’re marching on. They’ve selected a pair of new brokers—Town’s Robert Dvorin and Clayton Orrigo—and cut the ask by a million dollars.

Built in 1839, the 22.5-foot-wide Greenwich Village townhouse has only been owned by only three families over its 175-year life. Its most famous owner, John Philip Sousa, invented the sousaphone and penned marching ballads, including Marine standard “Semper Fidelis” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and was also a committed technophobe. “These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country,” he testified to Congress in 1906, presaging the rise of Skrillex. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/14 7:20pm

PATH to Ruin

path

PATH/Fail: The Story of the World’s Most Expensive Train Station

The Port Authority used to set records in good ways. The George Washington Bridge was a marvel of engineering in its day, the world’s longest bridge when it was built, and still the busiest. The Port Authority Bus Terminal, opened in 1950, is to this day the largest on earth by passenger volume.

But today, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey doesn’t brag about the records it sets. One World Trade Center, born the Freedom Tower and taken over by the Port in 2006, will be the most expensive office building in the world. The “Vehicle Security Center,” an underground tour bus garage and road network serving the World Trade Center complex, may very well be the most expensive parking garage in history.

And then there’s the PATH station to New Jersey, the most troubled project at one of the world’s most troubled construction sites. At $3.74 billion, plus another $200 million in contingencies, the “Transportation Hub” at the World Trade Center—not even the busiest station in the Financial District—will be far and away the most expensive train station built in modern history. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/14 4:40pm

Gentrification Watch

Brownsville is packed with projects, but will they be enough to stem the tide of gentrification once it hits the neighborhood?

Closing in on Brownsville: Brooklyn Gentrification Nears the Final Frontier

“So many of the civic successes heralded by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg,” Ginia Bellafonte wrote in The New York Times back in 2012, “might have happened in Lithuania for all the effect they have had (or could have) on the lives of people in Brownsville,” which Ms. Bellafonte then goes on to helpfully identify as a neighborhood in northeastern Brooklyn.

We’re not sure if gentrification counts as a “civic success,” and we aren’t aware of any pasty-faced, heritage flannel-wearing hipsters wandering around Pitkin Avenue, the neighborhood’s main drag, yet. But if trends in nearby neighborhoods are any indication, it won’t be long before Brownsville—a byword for blight, home to the largest concentration of public housing towers in the city and to this day a place that some mail carriers fear to tread—is selling something artisanal besides stamp bags. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/13 3:12pm

Manhattan Transfers

1049 "Fifth" Avenue.

Occupy Fifth Avenue: John Zuccotti Buys On (Well, Near) a Different Park

John E. Zuccotti may have a park of his own downtown, made famous by the Occupy Wall Street protests that centered around the privately-owned public space, but when he and his wife Susan decided to pick up an apartment in Manhattan, they chose a more classical park to look out onto: Central Park.

The real estate titan (you don’t get a park in Lower Manhattan named after you for nothing—he’s the chairman of Brookfield Properties American division and was a partner at Olympia & York, the chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York and has served on the Planning Commission; for a brief period in the the ’70s, he was even an establishment favorite for mayor) picked up a two-bedroom on the sixth floor for nearly $2.6 million—a number that, on Fifth Avenue, suggests a striking degree of modesty. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/13 9:00am

Elsewhere

On the Market: 1 WTC Spired But Struggling; Side Boob at Stuy Town; Bangladeshis Rebuild Brownstones

No major leases signed at the WTC since Condé Naste. [Crain's]
WeWork joints Forest City Ratner for Seward Park bid. [WSJ]
One World Trade Center gets its spire [AP]
TRD reviews Charles Bagli’s Other People’s Money [TRD]
Side boob at Stuy Town! [NYP]
Bangladeshis in Kensington dominate brownstone restoration. [NYT]
The Journal thinks Prospect Park South is next to Park Slope. [WSJ]
Guys, people like skyscraper views and The Times is on it! [NYT]
Greenpoint gripes about the G train. [Crain's]
Eyal Ofer switches from offices to apartments and gets noticed. [WSJ]
Two alternative beaches for Pier 42 on the Lower East Side. [DNAinfo]
Floral Park gets anti-McMansion rezoning. [WSJ]
Park Slope mansion with 90-foot ballroom asks $6.5 million. [Curbed]

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/10 3:53pm

Developing Situations

There are a lot of hospitals in the area. Could you tell?

At Home Among the Hospitals? David Winter’s Firm Buys East Side Development Site

Along its most institutional stretch between the East Village and Murray Hill, the condos First Avenue is best known for are medical, not residential. From Bellevue to NYU, it’s a place where people want their stays to be as brief as possible.

But with Manhattan’s residential market coming roaring back to life, developers are setting their sights on the island’s less-developed fringes. New York’s first modern micro-apartments are going up on a city-owned site at 335 East 27th Street and Michael Stern’s JDS Development is nipping at the heels of Kips Bay, with a two-tower, 800-unit project set to break ground this summer at an old ConEd site at First Avenue between East 35th and 36th Streets.

“The  neighborhood is crying out for something modern and upscale,” he told the Wall Street Journal in March.

And now 40 North, a press-shy wealth management firm with offices on the 30th floor of the ultra-prime Solow Building, is plunging straight into the heart of the hospital district. The firm just picked up a $32 million chunk of land on the southeast corner of First Avenue and East 24th Street. Read More