Affordable or not affordable, that is the question. (Durst/Fetner)

Tomorrow, Durst/Fetner will go before the Zoning and Franchise Subcommittee of the City Council, one of the final stops in the months-long public approval process for the developer's angular apartment building at the western edge of 57th Street. Councilwoman Gale Brewer has sent a letter to the developer outlining her demands ahead of the hearing. They largely follow concerns she has had from the start, namely the affordability of the project, community space and an enticing streetscape for the project.

The development, designed by Danish wunderkind Bjarke Ingels and his firm BIG, has drawn international attention for its unusual design, but lingering issues continue to anger the community, including Ms. Brewer. Last month, the project was approved by the City Planning Commission after some minor modifications.

The biggest remaining issue is clearly permanent affordability for the 20 percent of the project's 753 units that are to be set aside for low- and moderate-income residents. "It has been my strong preference that affordable units be designated as permanently affordable," Ms. Brewer writes. "Without permanently affordable units, the city would not be able to maintain its mixed-income residential character."

Currently, the affordability mandate is set to expire after 35 years because the Durst/Fetner does not own the land but instead has a 99-year lease on it from a family whose descendants now number more than a hundred, making negotiations very difficult. To extend affordability beyond 35 years, the developers argue, would be to risk the project's future.

Jordan Barwotiz, a spokesman for the developer, said, without getting into specifics, that the firm is hopeful it can can reach a deal at the council to get the project approved. "We look forward to working with Councilmember Brewer and her colleagues to make the best project possible," he said.

Here is the full letter.

Forget Fifth Avenue, West Broadway or Columbus Circle—57th Street is the new gold coast. (Emily Anne Epstein)

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. “You’ve got so much on the horizon. You’ve got proximity to Central Park, you’ve got proximity to some of the world’s most premier shopping. I think it’s perceived to be the dead center, heartbeat of the city.”

Mr. Barnett is not alone in that belief, as a number of the city’s biggest builders have set their sights on the strip, positioning a boulevard that is equal parts grand (Bergdorf Goodman) and greasy (the Brooklyn Diner) to become New York’s new gold coast.

Barry Sternlicht, the creator of the W and Starwood hotel chains, had already planted his flag at 107 West 57th Street, having bought the vacant lot from another developer for $52 million in 2005. Last year, Mr. Stern bought into the property for $40 million, and together they’re now planning a shard of an apartment tower, all boutique luxury beauty, shooting up some 700 feet and 50 stories, but only 34 feet wide. With its pointy top, this might become the most expensive toothpick ever made.

Towers skinnier than runway models have begun to rise skyward all along this hiding-in-plain-sight strip. All seem to be in pursuit of the same thing: better views and bigger payouts. Already, at least a dozen billionaires are said to have bought into One57, where two of the units have sold for $95 million, the highest price ever paid for a home in the city, topping even the $88 million penthouse at the grand 15 Central Park West. These are untold heights in a city famous for them.

“I’ve taken to calling it the billionaires’ belt,” said author and 58th Street resident Michael Gross.

Always lacking the cachet of better-known crosstown boulevards, 57th Street is having a moment, thanks to a confluence of decades-old zoning and newfound global wealth. While City Hall has played almost no role in the development of 57th Street in the past few years, the Tiffany-tinted thoroughfare may soon stand as the singular symbol of the Bloomberg era. All it takes is an apartment—average price: $20 million.

A big part of the appeal, of course, is that all of these buildings are condos, which don’t tend to exclude residents based on pedigree, the way co-ops do. An ill-gotten oligopoly and half a dozen divorces? Who cares! Welcome to 57th Street.

In addition to 107 and 157 West 57th Street, there is 432 Park Avenue, rising on the old Drake Hotel site between 56th and 57th streets, which Harry Macklowe has controlled for years. It will usurp Mr. Barnett’s record, becoming New York’s tallest tower, bar none, at a height of 1,397 feet. (That’s ignoring 1 World Trade’s 400-foot spire, but you can’t live on a pole.) So far, Mr. Macklowe and CIM have pegged the most expensive units at 432 Park Avenue in the $80 million range.

Not to be outdone, the brash Mr. Barnett is poised to one-up those who have one-upped him. For some time now, he has been planning a tower at 225 West 57th Street, on the corner of Broadway and West 57th Street.

Early speculation had been that the building would reach 1,250 feet, but some reconfigurations and a few more air rights deals have now yielded Mr. Barnett a tower of 1,550 feet—set to reclaim the crown of city’s tallest tower by a good 151 feet. Mr. Barnett’s 88-story tower will have New York City’s first Nordstrom in its base, a sure sign that the luxury brands clustered around Fifth and Madison will continue to migrate west.

Further down, both on the boulevard and on the skyline, is the Durst Organization’s 625 West 57th Street, the one major new rental tower on the strip. Every design magazine from here to Dubai cannot stop talking about the 32-story pyramid, which looks like a giant paper airplane crossed with an aircraft carrier, designed by Danish wunderkind Bjarke Ingels.

Among the other smaller developments on the stretch are a new brooding hotel on the southern side of 57th Street, designed by the rough-edged industrial glam outfit Roman and Williams. Mr. Barnett also controls a 50-foot-wide parcel at 16 West 57th Street that he bought last year for $80 million. The site, off Fifth Avenue, had previously been marketed as a boutique shopping spot and 28-story hotel, but given Mr. Barnett’s keen ability to assemble air rights, something much taller seems possible.

And all the way over on the corner of Second Avenue, World Wide Group is preparing to break ground on a 57-story avant-garde behemoth with 270 high-end apartments, designed by Roger Duffy of SOM. Earlier renderings showed a faceted tower, like an uncut diamond, but a source explained that the newest plans “undulate.”

The length of 57th Street has encompassed the broad sweep of humanity, the high and low, the cultured and the crass, the chichi and the chintzy. Like so much of the city in the past 11 years, its rough edges are being demolished and reshaped, fashioned anew. Manhattan is starting to look as much like Dubai as New York, and is starting to feel like it, too.

For a few glorious decades more than 100 years ago, 57th Street was one of the city’s most sought-after addresses, the home of Manhattan’s first luxury apartment towers.

Up until the late 19th century, crowded tenement houses served as refuges for the masses, while patricians kept to their own townhomes. Only with the construction of buildings such as The Osborne at 57th and Seventh in 1885 were the well-to-do convinced to abandon their own private buildings. Then as now, it was amenities like doormen and sprawling layouts that made the move so attractive, the most important of all—as always—being the views, albeit only 10, 11, 12 stories above the low-slung hordes.

The Alwyn Court, Mr. Gross’s home, still stands at the corner of 58th Street and Sixth Avenue, a limestone grandee built in 1907 with etched sculptures running up and down its façade, every inch detailed by a mason’s hand. Then there are Cass Gilbert’s Rodin Studios, the Art Deco Parc Vendome apartments of the 1930s and the Ritz Tower at Park Avenue, the tallest residential building in the city when completed in 1927. And one of the saddest examples, at 57th and Ninth Avenue, the horribly dilapidated but still grand Windermere.

“In a lot of ways, the city’s craze for apartment living began here,” Ronda Wist, vice president of preservation at the Municipal Art Society, said during a recent walk along 57th Street. “The archetypes are all here.”

While the grand dames were soon eclipsed as the city continued its inexorable move northward, 57th Street still had other attractions to recommend it. It was an art hub long before there was Soho or Chelsea, owing to the Fuller Building, the Steinway Building, Carnegie Hall and The Art Student League, the former home of Georgia O’Keeffe, Alexander Calder and Ai Weiwei.

It has also long been home to some of the city’s most exclusive shops, starting with the arrival of Henri Bendel at 10 West 57th Street in 1913. The Louisiana milliner had left behind Ninth Street in the Village to cater to the emerging uptown set, and it was here that he would introduce them to the likes of Coco Chanel. Bergdorf Goodman followed in 1962, when it bought and demolished the old Cornelius Vanderbilt II mansion that had lorded over the northwestern corner of Fifth and 57th, taking up the entire block. Now, LVMH Row stretches the entire length of the block on the other side of the street, clear down to Madison.

“It may not be Fifth Avenue, but there’s a five in the address, and that’s all a lot of these buyers care about; for the foreigners, it’s all they even know,” said retail real estate maven Faith Hope Consolo. “It could be Fifth Avenue in the 60s or Fifth Avenue in the 20s, their friends back home aren’t gonna know. All they see is the postcard address. It’s the same with 57th Street. They know Bendel’s, and now they know One57. To these people, the address matters more than what’s outside the door.”

A big reason for this boom is that there are few other places in the city with the right mix of regulations and existing development to allow for these kinds of towers. There are no height or landmark restrictions in Midtown, unlike areas like Tribeca or the Upper East Side, making going higher that much easier. Plus 57th Street has the added advantage of being an extra-wide street, which allows for even taller buildings. And being just two blocks south of the park, it really is the perfect location for an ostentatious tower, or a dozen.

But more important even than the physical geography of the place is its psychogeography, particularly for Chinese and Russian buyers, said Yuval Greenblatt, a vice president at Douglas Elliman who has run the firm’s Midtown office for more than a decade.

“It’s the center of the city. They’re near shopping and all the hotels, the St. Regis, the Pierre, the Plaza; they’ve got the theaters, and the businesses are there,” he said. “Plus it’s close to the hedge funds at the Solow Building and GM and Seagrams. It already had this international feel, and now more than ever.”

But is there really a market for so many multimillion-dollar homes all bunched up together like this? “I think so,” said Jonathan Miller, the master appraiser. “So long as the market isn’t flooded, which it’s really not, and we only get one or two of these projects a year, we should be fine.”

“Remember,” he added, “these buildings are big, but so are the apartments, so there really aren’t that many of them.” One57 has 135 units (plus a Hyatt hotel on the bottom half) and 432 Park has 128, while 107 West 57th Street has all of 27 units planned, each one taking up at least an entire floor and more than half will be duplexes.

Meanwhile, demand is skyrocketing like these towers. Just as these new buildings are in a different class, so are the buyers. “Before, this was a small investment, little more than a hotel room,” Mr. Greenblatt explained. “Now, these are real homes, big homes, with the nicest finishes. These are the type of buyers who own homes all over the world, so that’s what they want.”

Mr. Greenblatt actually believes that there has been pent-up demand for these kinds of apartments for years that is only being worked out now, and that it should last for years, as global wealth continues to concentrate in the hands of the few and find its way into New York and other world capitals. As of this year’s Forbes list, there are 1,226 billionaires. And counting. Economic uncertainty only spurs on this kind of investment, too, according to Mr. Miller.

“If you’re looking out from your apartment on the 70th or 60th, even the 50th floor, you’ve got a certain perspective on the city,” Mr. Greenblatt said. “You’re looking out over one of the most powerful cities in the world, and you’re on top.”

In 2006, when Mr. Gross left the Village after 17 years to take up residence in Alwyn Court, it was, he told The Observer at the time, “Precisely the kind of neighborhood that the Village used to be. Creative people, no entitlement, no rage, no stroller Nazis.”

And now? “I’m just happy I don’t have to leave the neighborhood to go to Sur La Table.”

A tweaked north side for Durst/Fetner's 625 West 57th Street. (Durst/Fetner)

Big, pointy apartments. (Durst/Fetner)

When Douglas Durst began deciding, yet again, what to do with the almost block-long property he owns at 57th Street and the Hudson River, City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden urged the developer to think big. A high-tech data center, a school and a hotel had all fallen through, so Mr. Durst had fallen back on that most reliable form of New York City development: housing.

Ms. Burden wanted something iconic, especially for a project on such a prominent street at such a prominent location right on the waterfront. With Hudson River Park right there, it ought to be iconic. Mr. Durst delivered something BIG indeed, hiring the Danish wunderkinds at Bjarke Ingles Group to design his project.

Yesterday, Ms. Burden got to put her official stamp on the project, when she and the rest of the City Planning Commission approved Durst/Fetner’s BIG pyramid. It was the second-to-last step in the arduous months-long public review process, in many ways made all the easier by a dynamic design that has made this arguably the most unusual apartment building in the city.

"Our approval will facilitate development of a significant new building with a distinctive pyramid-like shaped design and thoughtful site plan that integrates the full block site into the evolving residential, institutional, and commercial neighborhood surrounding it," Ms. Burden said before voting in favor of the project.

Contained within the striking design are 753 apartments in a building that tapers from CKCKthree stories along the river up to a pinnacle of CKCK38 stories. It has an unusual sloping aspect (technically a tetrahedron, not a pyramid) with a massive courtyard cut into the middle that is almost the site of a football field. The cutout also affords every apartment with an outdoor terrace, a feature that was especially important to Mr. Ingels.

The commission required a few modifications to the project, dealing primarily with how it is experienced from the street. There is a limit on the amount of signage and obstructions that can go in the windows of the retail lining 57th Street and the West Side Highway, to ensure transparency and a sense of activity that does not obscure what is going on inside. The fear is a blank wall would deaden the street life, as has happened ion places like Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn.

The developer has made similar gestures on 58th Street to ensure vibrancy on what is otherwise a block-long stretch of almost blank building. Retail wraps the corners of the building, but otherwise, there is a lobby and a loading dock and little else.

Part of the reason for this is the building is located in the 100-year-flood plane, so the Con Ed substation cannot go in the basement but instead by located above-grade. The utility needs access to the facilities at all times, so they have to be on the street, and cannot go higher up in the building. The developer also argued that there is barely any retail on 58th Street as is, so forcing it into the northern side of the building would be impractical and difficult to lease.

The solution was to establish a retail space within the lobby located in that section of the building, and to also install glass vitrines along the blank parts of the façade that could feature plants or sculptures on a rotating basis, creating a more engaging streetscape.

"It's an important approval, and we're pleased with her support and input," Mr. Durst said in an interview.

Previously, the developer agreed to additional modifications when the project received approvals two months ago from Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. That included widening the sidewalks and narrowing the driveway between 57th and 58th streets located in the middle of the block at the main entrance to the building. Durst/Fetner will also provide seating and landscaping in the space. The developer also agreed to improve a connection to Hudson River Park at 59th Street, a block north of the development. The connection currently passes under an overpass of West Side Highway, and the developers will work with the city and state departments of transportation to spruce up the space.

"In all, this is an exciting project on a pivotal site that will benefit its occupants, the neighborhood and the city as a whole," Ms. Burden said.

One aspect of the project that has yet to be addressed is how long the affordable units in the building will remain affordable. The development is being built through the city's 80/20 program, which means 20 percent of apartments will be reserved for low- and moderate-income families, while the remaining number will be market rate.

Currently, those units will only be eligible for less well-off families for 35 years. The community board desperately wants permanent affordability, but Durst/Fetner insists it cannot agree to such an arrangement because they do not own the land. The developers themselves are leasing it from a family that has owned the land for more than a century, and is now comprised of some 100 trustees Durst/Fetner must negotiate with about extending the affordability window.

But local Councilwoman Gail Brewer has insisted the developers had better get negotiating, because she is willing to torpedo the project at the City Council—the final step in the public review process, where Ms. Brewer will have almost total say over the project—if her constituents do not get what they want.

Looking sharp, but will it fly with the neighbors? (Durst Fetner)

Ms. Durst, baby bump hidden behind lectern. (Matt Chaban)

"My own feeling, and the feeling of board, is that we'd like this project to succeed," J.D. Nolan, chair of Community Board 4’s land-use committee, told The Observer. "The Dursts are great developers, and they have worked very well with us in the past. Nevertheless, this is a rezoning, and the public should benefit as well as the developer."

And so, the full board voted unanimously against Durst Fenter's new apartment building on the far West Side last night. One of the most dynamic designs of the decade, 625 West 57th Street calls for a swooping white pyramid that rises dramatically up from the Hudson like an origami dove taking flight. Designed by Danish wunderkinds Bjarke Ingels Group (aka BIG), the project has even decided to eschew LEED ratings in its quest for singularity.

Still, this was not enough to sway the board, which generally seems to like the design but still has too many issues with the details surrounding it to approve the project at its monthly meeting. The board's vote is merely provisional, though it will be given considerable consideration from officials down the line as they cast their vote for or against the project throughout the rest of the months-long public review process.

Last night, Helena Durst was in attendance to make her family's case, as she has for the past decade as the project has struggled from one plan to another—data center, car dealership, for-profit school, hotel. She looked appropriately pregnant for the occasion, which was held on the second floor of St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital (the maternity ward is on the seventh) on the corner of 11th Avenue and 59th Street, two blocks from where Ms. Durst hopes the 740-unit apartment building might soon rise.

"This is an asset for the skyline," she said.

But not yet for the community, at least in its view. Their singular issue is affordable housing, of which there will be some 150 units. The sticking point is that those apartments will only be reserved for low-income tenants for 35 years. The board wants permanent affordability, instead. "As a community board, we are supposed to do the best we can to preserve and maintain our communities and keep them going," Mr. Nolan said. "As we see our neighborhood changing, we see so much luxury housing going up, and we feel that is not contributing to the preservation of our neighborhood."

The Dursts argue they cannot make the apartments permanently affordable because they do not own the site but have instead signed a 99-year land lease with a family that has owned the property for centuries. Now, there are some 150 different family members who have to be negotiated with, and any changes to the amount of affordable housing would require a renegotiation of the lease. Since the Dursts will not own the site in perpetuity, it is not clear the land's owners would agree to a permanent affordable housing provision.

Still, Councilwoman Gale Brewer has also expressed concern about the permanence of the affordable apartments, and since she has the final say on the project, it could continue to be a serious issue.

Other concerns included the appearance of the building along 58th Street. Currently, all the retail is along 57th Street, with entrances, loading docks and mechanical systems on the 58th Street frontage. The board hopes those spaces can be rejiggered, with shops, trees, anything really to make the streetscape, which is nearly a block long, more appealing to pedestrians.

Parking is an issue in two ways. One, board members argued there were too many spaces for a project in the middle of Manhattan. Two, there is an issue with the access to that parking, through a two-way driveway that cuts through the middle of the site and connects to the Helena, a rental building also owned by Durst Fetner on the southeast corner of 10th Avenue and 57th Street. The board wants that space cut down to one lane, with a public plaza created out of the excess space this would free up. "Curb-side drop-off?" Mr. Nolan said. "What is this, Dubai?"

A small community facility building drew concerns because the Dursts have yet to find a use for the building, after a failed bid to have the Manhattan Children's Museum move in. Now, they are looking at other childcare spaces, like day care or early education. Mr. Nolan thinks an art space could be good, too.

"This has always been a place for actors, artists, stagehands," he said. "They need housing they can afford, they need places they can perform. Without them, it's not the kind of New York I want to live in."

To try and counter the local opposition to the project, Durst Fetner made a full political push last night, bringing out speakers and testimonials from the Community Preservation Corporation and Citizens Housing, Settlement Housing Fund and Planning Commission (on affordable housing); New York Building Congress, Regional Plan Association and the Partnership for New York City (on design and construction jobs); members of 32BJ (on service and operations jobs); and the Audubon Society (on how normal buildings have troubling bird strikes and this one will not).

Still, this show of support failed to sway the board to vote for the project.

"We hear their concerns and we will continue to work with them on a solution," Jordan Barowitz, the Dursts' director of external affairs, said after the disapproval vote. "That being said, I think is a very compelling project for the community and the city. It provides desperately needed market-rate housing and 150 affordable units for decades. And it's an innovative and inspiring design. Great design makes for great places, which makes for a great community."

Update: The story has been modified to clarify that the full community board disapproved of Durst Fetner's building last night, not the land-use committee, though it also disapproved the plan at a meeting earlier in the summer. The story also misstated the location of the Helena. It is on the corner of 59th Street and 11th Avenue, not 10th Avenue. The Observer regrets the error.