You may never have heard of Goldstein, Hill & West, but you almost certainly recognize the work of the firm, which has quietly built one of the busiest practices in the city creating understated buildings for some of New York’s most outsized developers. Have a look at the designer’s varied work, some 17 of their 70 projects scattered across Manhattan and Brooklyn. Read More
The sun was setting over New York harbor, and behind it, the coast of New Jersey. From the 17th floor of 11 Broadway, through the not-floor-to-ceiling, turn-of-the-last-century office windows, the Statue of Liberty was plainly visible. She appeared to be waving through the late-summer haze. Milling about and sipping champagne were some of the city’s biggest developers and their employees, names emblazoned upon apartment towers from this end of Manhattan to the other and beyond.
Silverstein, Ratner, Extell, Elad, Milstein, Glenwood, Trump. All the big firms were there, along with many other machers and dealmakers. It could have been a convention of The No Nonsense Apartment Builders Association of the Greater Five Boroughs. Instead it was the third anniversary party for Goldstein, Hill & West and the unveiling of their new downtown offices.
The foyer is painted a slick graphite gray, with a globular chandelier overhead, but beyond that, the designer pretense fades away. There are no amoebic benches, no plywood bookcases, no 3D printer for producing models of unusually torqued and cantilevered buildings. Little hangs on the walls besides drafting templates and zoning handbooks. It is this simplicity of design, aesthetic and attitude that draws the city’s biggest developers to the firm. Read More
More surprising than the news that the Upper East Side is purportedly the priciest place in the country to buy a home was the fact that the 10065 ZIP code has never topped the Forbes list of expensive ZIPs before. The reason why may be surprisingly simple—and deceptive. Read More
So we are obsessed with the changing skyline along 57th Street, so we are always excited and intrigued by new renderings that pop up for it. The latest may also be the greatest, and while 432 Park Avenue is nothing new, the pic that ran in The Times today gives the clearest indication yet of just how big this spindly behemoth will be. At 1,397 feet, the ritzy condo building surpasses 1 World Trade Center, less its spire, by 29 feet, boasting by some measures the biggest building in New York status. Read More
It’s easy to see who’s winning the popularity contest in New York real estate circles these days. Co-ops, like many a high school queen bee, are granted grudging respect: good looking, better grades, they hang out with all the best people and wield an awesome amount of social power. But condos, well, condos seem to have it all: they’re beautiful, friends with all the cool foreign kids and they’re so nice while still playing the edgy bad boy.
Over the past year or so, belligerently wealthy out-of-towners have been snapping up New York condos like so many Jimmy Choos and boarding school seats. The Russians have invaded and we couldn’t be happier, and the rest of the world is eager to follow. Glassy condo towers are—after their brief recessionary hiatus—rising again. Indeed, the biggest residential deals of the year went down neither at co-ops nor mansions but at 15 Central Park West and newfound rivals One57 and the Ritz Carlton. Amazingly the Ritz may look like an old co-op but it is actually a 2002 condo conversion of the old St. Moritz hotel. Back then, units sold for a fraction of what they are now getting, and certainly less than its co-op rivals on Park and Fifth avenues.
The same, alas, cannot be said of co-ops. Marvelous as those bastions of old money are, they are also notorious for their rigid policies and grueling board interviews, where one’s future neighbors—if one is so lucky—pour over financial documents and probe into personal lives. Look no further than the case of godly 740 Park. While the famed building notched a co-op record this year with the $52 million sale of Courtney Sale Ross’ immense spread, that is half the price of some of the record deals now taking place. Meanwhile Goldman guy Jonathan Sobel sold a penthouse at the Verona (a very nice one, but still, ever heard of the place?) for more than he paid for a new duplex at 740 Park. He got a 45 percent discount, to boot, from what the home was first asking four years ago.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. But might they rise again by becoming condos? Read More
Remember when sales started at 15 Central Park West? And how the buyers were “supposed to be kept secret,” but everyone was too excited to keep quiet and they gossiped like crazy and all the buyers turned out to be really famous, exciting celebrities like Denzel Washington and Sting? Wasn’t that great? We were almost like best friends, us and 15 CPW, whispering late into the night together, swapping secrets.
One57, on the other-hand, is mysterious and distant and never tells us anything, huffs The New York Times in article about how different One57′s approach to publicity is from the good natured and totally cool about everything 15 CPW. Read More
It’s nothing new that Chinese buyers are flooding the apartment market in New York and the rest of the country. Yet a pretty definitive article on the subject in The Journal reveals some interesting facts about the lengths some developers will go to to reach the Chinese market, including one project of particular interest to us: Gary Barnett’s One57. Read More
It was announced yesterday that One57 had topped out, making it (upon completion) the tallest residential building in the city, and thus the Western Hemisphere. Upon hearing the news, The Observer decided to take a rather sweaty stroll up Eight Avenue from NYO HQ to Columbus Circle to see what this record-setting 1,005-foot tower looked like.
The answer? Not much! Read More
It seems like only yesterday we were standing on the 67th floor of Extell Development’s One57, but these towers have a tendency to move fast, and now Gary Barnett has surmounted those final 20-odd floors, bringing his 90-story, record-setting tower to it final height or 1,005 feet over Manhattan.
That record setting price helped Mr. Barnett achieve a record sale on the penthouse, now taking shape, that sold for more than $90 million. Read More
Last night, The Observer got a glimpse of the super-tall residential tower Gary Barnett has planned for Broadway and 57th Street, just one block away from his already very tall One57.
Our good friends at Curbed picked up on this and were brilliant enough to photoshop the two onto the same skyline. It is quite the striking image, but not quite complete.
After all, rival 432 Park is already underway—and looking for more investors, if you’re interested, as The Journal revealed yesterday—so we figured, what the hey, let’s put them all together.
Welcome to your new skyline, circa 2015. Read More
