By Kim Velsey 3/20 1:52pm

Housing Developments

5 Photos

432 Park

432 Park Makes Splashy Debut With a Third Of Its Units Already In Contract

How does one describe a luxury housing market where a tower can sell more than a third of its units before it officially hits the market. Frothy? Overheated? How about insane?

Well, the tower that towers above them all—432 Park Avenue—has officially hit the market (a development first reported in The Wall Street Journal) with more than one-third of its 126 units already in contract. Apparently, the 1,396-foot Rafael Vinoly-designed tower has been quietly marketing units since last summer. We’re not sure how we feel about a project that makes its market debut with so many units already spoken for—it’s a little like a debutante attending her coming out ball when she’s already engaged to be married. But, you know, congratulations. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/08 8:05pm

Skyscraper Living

EmilyAnneEpstein_57th_23

57th Heaven: How a Boring Boulevard Became the Billionaires Belt

Michael Stern was walking to a meeting last summer when he saw the vacant site, barely wider than a townhouse, at 107 West 57th Street. On one side was the Steinway Building, an 87-year-old city landmark with an etched white limestone façade. On the other was a dowdy old SRO about to be gutted and transformed into the Quin Hotel, yet another boutique confection for the tourist masses.

Yet it was not the barren lot’s immediate neighbors that set Mr. Stern’s heart racing, but another edifice further down the block: Gary Barnett’s One57. The 1,005-foot, 90-story tower was only about halfway built at the time, but already it was on its way to taking the crown, on the skyline and in the record books, as the city’s tallest apartment building. Billionaires were already circling the units, which ranged from $5 million to $115 million.

Looking from Mr. Barnett’s site to the one in front of him, Mr. Stern knew he had to have it.

“Right now, there is nowhere else in the city like 57th Street, and it is only going to get better,” Mr. Stern told The Observer. Read More

By Matt Chaban 12/06/12 4:10pm

Skyscraper Living

Bound for the heavens. (432park.com)

Watch New York’s Tallest Building, 432 Park Avenue, Rise in Real-Time on a Secret Sky Cam Site

The condo tower rising at 432 Park Avenue may be the most fascinating development project in the city. Sure, it can boast of being the tallest building rising in the city at the moment, to an eventual height of 1,397 feet (29 feet higher than the roof of 1 World Trade Center). It is also set to be the most expensive. But even more so, it is the secrecy of the building’s developers, CIM Group and Harry Macklowe, that make the project all the more intriguing.

Very few details about the project have been released, and none of them publicly. Even renderings are clandestine. Which is why it is amazing that not one or even two but three different skycams have been whirring away at the site for the past year, showing it off in real-time, free for anyone to look—except that no one thought to. Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/27/12 6:00am

Skyscraper Living

A hypothetical skyline, with 225 West 57th at right, One57 middle, 432 Park at left. (Curbed/NYO)

Gary Barnett’s Biggest Blockbuster Yet: 225 West 57th Street, New York’s First 1,550-Foot Tower

If King Kong were to swing into New York sometime this decade, he might actually have a hard time figuring out where to go.

In the original 1933 black-and-white classic, King Kong famously scales the two-year-old Empire State Building, cementing it in the conscience of the world as arguably its most famous skyscraper. Four decades later, the giant gorilla set his sights higher, standing astride the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Today, perhaps he might climb atop their succesor, the new 1 World Trade Center. But one gets the sense that King Kong is given to gigantism, so only the city’s tallest tower will do.

Until a few months ago, that would have been 1 World Trade. But since 432 Park Avenue began to rise skyward in April, the 1,397-foot condo tower developed by Harry Macklowe and CIM on the old Drake Hotel site would have claimed the skyline crown. It beats out its downtown rival by 29 feet, so long as one ignores the silly 400-foot sorta spire atop 1 World Trade. Should King Kong arrive sometime in 2014, this slinky tower would probably be his choice.

But a year or two after that, and he might turn his gaze further down 57th Street, past the already striking 1,005-foot One57 tower, Gary Barnett’s billionaire bauble nearing completion despite that crane accident. There it would settle on another tower being developed by Mr. Barnett, at 225 West 57th Street, just one block from what was already going to be the city’s tallest apartment building when it opens next year. The new tower’s height, according to building permits filed last week: 1,550 feet.  Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/05/12 4:36pm

Skyscraper Living

Going up. (NYT)

432 Park Will Not Only Be New York’s Tallest Building But Also, at $2.43 B., Its Most Expensive

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

By Kim Velsey 9/04/12 11:12am

Dizzying Designs

Prices may rise in tandem with the tower.

Higher Tower, Higher Prices: Is 432 Park Avenue Upping Its Asking Prices?

With everyone else tacking on millions to the asks for their apartments, we guess 432 Park Avenue wanted to get in on the action, even if the most soaring of soaring residential towers has yet to break ground. Why should One57 and 15 Central Park West rake in all the cash? Especially when 432 Park Avenue is set to be the tallest residential building in the city at 1,395 feet? Read More

By Kim Velsey 8/17/12 12:45pm

Stratospheric Living

Like living in a (sometimes bad) dream. (Extell)

Higher Than Thou: The Headaches That Come With Living on Top of the World

High life isn’t just a cheap beer. It’s also the way that some people—those who like to be in the upper echelons of society both literally and figuratively—live.

Local options for the vertically inclined include New York by Gehry at 8 Spruce Street, the still-rising One57 and the yet-to-rise 432 Park Avenue. Inevitably, there’s already something else in the works, or soon to be in the works, that will loom over all of those other buildings and block the sunlight for us mere mortals who spend most of our time at street level. Read More

By Matt Chaban 6/05/12 11:53am

Dizzying Designs

Hello Midtown.

Just How Crazy Will New York’s Tallest New Building Be? The 432 Park Avenue Pics You’ve Been Waiting For

Last week, The Journal got its hands on a 67-page marketing packet for Harry Macklowe and CIM’s soaring tower at 432 Park Avenue, the former Drake Hotel site where the developers are working on the tallest tower in the entire city, apartment or otherwise.

In their write-up, Journal journalist Eliot Brown and Craig Karmin mentioned that inside the packet “are a collection of striking images of what would be the tallest residential tower in the U.S. at 1,395 feet as well as a number of other interesting factoids about the tower, called 432 Park.”

Those factoids are below, but what obviously whet The Observer‘s appetite most was the promise of “striking images” (we have a thing for those) that were sadly absent from The Journal‘s report. But no more. Read More

By Matt Chaban 5/31/12 5:40pm

Skyscraper Living

Going up. (original image:Dave Hogerty/Curbed, with additions by NYO)

Just How Insane is the 57th Street Skyline Going to Be?

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

By Matt Chaban 4/27/12 5:07pm

Skyscraper Living

To infinity, and beyond. (CIM)

The Tallest Building in New York City, 432 Park Avenue, Is Now Rising

The Observer was wandering along 57th Street today when we saw an unexpected sight: a cement truck backed up to the old Drake Hotel site. Two of them actually, one dumping its payload into the maw that Macklowe built while another waited to do so.

And so, a new era for our ever-more-spindly skyline begins, thanks to Harry Macklowe and his secretive partners at CIM. See what the future holds after the jump. Read More