Updating Park Avenue: an early conceptual rendering by L&L of the potential for 425 Park. Might these designers do them one better? (ll-holding.com)

It is one of the stranger developments in the city, but it could also prove to be one of the most spectacular. David Levinson is poised to tear down most, but not all, of 425 Park Avenue—were he to totally demolish the tower, what he could replace it with could be quite a bit smaller, given a quirk in the 1961 zoning that reduced the density of the site, where a rather unremarkable and outdated 1958 tower now stands.

To fix this problem, L&L Holdings, Mr. Levinson's development firm, tapped 11 of the planets top architects to sort out this challenge. He has now winnowed the designers for 425 Park down to four, according to The Times, with an unveiling expected shortly. All of them are Pritzker Prize winners with a mixed history in the city.

Only Lord Norman Foster has enjoyed real success here, with his Hearst Tower and Sperone Westwater gallery on the Bowery. His fellow Brit Sir Richard Rogers has had a number of almost-built projects, from Vornado's Port Authority tower to a vastly expanded Javits convention center. Both are also working on nascent towers for Larry Silverstein at the World Trade Center. Then there is Rem Koolhaas, who despite making his name here with the book Delirious New York, has only ever built a store for Prada, and Zaha Hadid. The first woman to win a Pritzker Prize (along with her three competitors), she has only one American project to her name, the Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center.

The six designers who did not make the cut have all built quite a bit here: Christian de Portzamparc, Herzog & de Meuron, Jean Nouvel, KPF, Fumihiko Maki, Renzo Piano and Richard Meier.

Whomever should win, this project has the possibility to present the city with a new, daring landmark. That is if David Levinson will allow it. As The Times notes, a prospectus for the project warns the four designers not to be too indulgent: "While the client team is open-minded about material and aesthetic expression, a restrained elegance has often proven to be more successful for this building type than irrational exuberance.”

This is presuming, of course, he does not get carte blanche to design any kind of building, courtesy of the big Midtown East rezoning.

Jagged! (Atelier Jean Nouvel)

Last year, The Observer discovered that Jean Nouvel’s soaring MoMA Tower—called "the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation" by The Times' architecture critic—would not be a jagged victim of boom time hubris but in fact a real part of the skyline after all. Hines, the project’s developer, filed amended plans for the tower last July, showing that even at its Burden’d height of 1,050 feet, the Pritzker prize would still rise.

Now, more encouraging news that this project will actually become a reality: Hines has tapped Corcoran Sunshine to market the MoMA Tower, officially known as the Torre Verre, according to Crain’s, which means sales can't be too far away

"Corcoran Sunshine has always had a great relationship with Hines, a longtime client of the firm, and for the past several years we've been working on the planning and design of this landmark property," said Kelly Kennedy Mack, president of Corcoran Sunshine, in a statement, declining to elaborate on the project. "It will be the ultimate destination for the world's most elite buyers."

Assuming the economy holds on and sales begin in the near future, the project would be well positioned to take advantage of the roaring recovery in the most exclusive corners of the New York City housing market. The past month has seen a record price for co-op ($50.2 million at 740 Park), a staggering Central Park duplex ($70 million at the Ritz-Carlton) and a jaw-dropping new record (somewhere north of $90 million for the penthouse at One57).

Now, we learn that Harry Macklowe’s 432 Park Avenue is well-underway, with building permits recently filed that call for a 1,398-foot tower, as The Real Deal revealed on Friday. At 84 stories, the tower is one foot taller than most recently reported, and technically taller than the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center (might as well be an asterisk). The price will no doubt be just as high.

Whether Torre Verre will be able to command the same prices of some of its rivals will be curious to see. On the one hand, it will not be the tallest, nor directly on the Park, but the cache of both its architect and the museum’s brand name might just help push it over the edge.

Why the name was ever changed from MoMA Tower is a mystery to us. Perhaps the developers should pull a Frank Gehry and call it “New York, by MoMA.” Maybe residents could even borrow art to hang on their walls--for a small donation, of course.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The development's troubled history doesn't seem to have bothered the couple, as they paid just under the final asking price for the two-bedroom, 2.5-bath condo. Originally listed by Corcoran in 2007 for $3.4 million, the place was most recently listed by Douglas Elliman managing director Holly Parker and her colleague Trisha Riedel for $2.34 million.

Ms. Parker said that Ms. Poly and her husband had been looking in the neighborhood. "I know that they had been looking within the Highline area," she said, explaining that they ultimately settled on 100 11th Avenue because of the hyper-modern structure. "If you like modern architecture, it's just a wow apartment,” she said. "You're in this matrix of aluminum and steel, and it was very dramatic. I've never seen an apartment like that in the world," Ms. Parker gushed.

The ceilings in the new place are 10.5-feet high, which will comfortably fit Ms. Poly, who stands a statuesque 5-foot 10-inches. She can practice her runway walk in the long entry foyer, and store her abundant outfits in the massive walk-in closet. The kitchen is unimposing, and there is no formal dining room—perfect for a runway diet!

eknutsen@observer.com

New York by Frank Gehry at 8 Spruce Street (Photo from NYC Loves NYC)

Once, living in a building with celebrity residents or prewar pedigree was the goal of every nouveau riche New Yorker. Trump International, anyone? Yes, please, 740 Park.

Now upwardly mobile denizens of our great city have slightly different aspirations: starchitect developments; that is, buildings designed by jet-setting, Pritzker-prize winning  architectural wizards, typically of the old guard variety. While some have suggested that the starchitect craze is the result of pure unadulterated vanity, it turns out that buildings have made a pretty penny since they began to sprout up a decade ago, Crain's reports.

Highrises designed by the likes of Frank Gehry, Richard Meier and Jean Nouvel, however, don't come cheap and require costly initial investments. In addition to keeping the precious architects content with a constant supply of imported mineral water and diamond encrusted drafting templates, the triple-premium materials and fixtures used in these buildings come with steep price tags.

While naysayers initially panned the starchitect craze as a pre-crash pipe dream incompatible with post-recession market realities, buildings like Gehry's "New York" at 8 Spruce Street have actually been doing remarkably well during the downtown, according to Crain's.

Frank Gehry's 76-story rental just south of the Brooklyn Bridge, built by Forest City Ratner, has attracted much critical acclaim. And it's filling up quite nicely, despite studio rents that typically top $3,000, according to Susi Yu, Forest City's senior vice president, retail development.

Similarly, everybody's favorite West Village condo, Superior Ink, has been selling big and legitimizing the starchitect craze. Designed by Robert A.M. Stern, the 17-story building was an investment, to say the least.

Its cost per square foot of construction made the project “one of the most expensive buildings we've built,” said Bruce A. Beal Jr., an executive vice president of Related Companies, Superior Ink's developer. On the other hand, sales for tower units, which started well before construction was completed in 2007, “exceeded our expectations,” he said.

Interest is still high. One buyer who bought an apartment for $25 million in 2009, resold it a year later for $31.5 million, which worked out to a whopping $4,983 per square foot.

Crain's looks at the beloved 40 Bond and how the phenomenon has even spread to the outer boroughs, where Richard Meier's On Prospect Park has, after some initial hiccups, become a smash success. The takeaway is clear: the post-boom era demands better architecture, not worse. Lest we slide back into the old reality of junkbox built at cut rates, the city will not only be aesthetically but economically worse off.

eknutsen@observer.com

Spin me right round baby right round. (Billy Farrell Agency)

It was not the cheeriest day for the opening of a carousel, last Thursday. The wind was gusting in off the East River, inverting umbrellas and disturbing sundresses under somber skies. The weather had turned against the free King Cones being doled out on the shores of Dumbo, but the first strains of fall were nothing a steaming street-cart hot dog couldn’t fix. And luckily, the pavilion—designed by Pritzker Prize-winning French architect Jean Nouvel—that surrounded the carousel featured some of the largest windowpanes in the entire city, the perfect windbreakers. Dignitaries from both sides of the East River had piled inside the grand shed.

Mr. Nouvel had suddenly become one of the most active designers in the city. In addition to condos for Andre Balazs and MoMA, he was now building follies on the waterfront. Surveying his work, his lupine features and all-black outfit were rather out of place among the screaming children and gleaming horses, which had been painstakingly restored by Jane Walentas, wife of David, father of Dumbo.

It was 32 years ago that Mr. Walentas bought up all those millions of square feet of derelict warehouses. Who could ever have imagined it would someday become the most expensive neighborhood in all of Brooklyn, home not only to a $25 million penthouse inside of a clock tower but also perhaps the finest carousel in the entire city? Not David Walentas. He told The Observer as much. That was about all he would say, in fact. “It’s Jane’s day, why don’t you talk to her.”

Their son, Jed Walentas, the heir apparent who has struck out successfully in Manhattan and Williamsburg, was more forthcoming. “I always had a lot of confidence the carousel would find a place on the water,” he said. This after his mother spent most of his life—since 1980—on the painstaking restoration project. Ms. Walentas, who used to work as an art director on fashion shoots, sanded, hand-painted and gilded nearly every one of the 48 horses and two chariots from the 1922 Youngstown carousel. Even so, a handful of neighborhood groups protested the donation of the carousel, something they saw as the Walentases exercising yet more control over this little corner of the borough.

Jed and his wife, Kate Engelbrecht, had brought along their 4-month old son, who seemed to enjoy the first spin of Jane’s project, which will run every day but Tuesday, with an admission fee $2. The city’s fleetest children almost outnumbered their Champagne- and lemonade-sipping parents, the bubbly fighting off the chill. Ms. Walentas warned that her grandson’s sweater was hiked up around his belly, and he might catch a cold. The Observer asked Jed if he had been given the Simba speech yet: everything the light touches is our kingdom, someday it will all be yours, and so forth. “Not yet,” he said.

The family was standing just inside the western entrance, one of two sides with industrial accordion doors that open the carousel to Dumbo and the river. On the north and south sides stand those massive panes, acrylic, actually, and not glass, for it is cheaper and safer that way—the seven-to-a-side slabs weigh four tons, half as much as glass, and stands up better to that awful wind. And those funky, plastic-y distortions, Mr. Nouvel loves the distorted images of the bridges that clear glass would not afford. “It is like being outside and not, a fantasy,” he said.

We sidled up to Ms. Walentas, who had been flitting between cameras, microphones and friends all afternoon, a smile on her face. She had donned a yellow, heavy-duty rain jacket, which matched her husband’s, the kind one wears aboard a sailboat—perhaps theirs was moored around the corner—and was just finishing a hot dog. “It’s a wonderful feeling,” is all she would say. “Now I really do have to go be with my friends.” Clouds or no, it was still her day.

Amanda approves.

It was Amanda Burden who stopped the MoMA Tower, giving Jean Nouvel's 1,250-foot spire a haircut, and it is up to her if the project will ever snake its way onto the skyline. As The Observer revealed last month, developer Hines Interests has resubmitted plans for the shorter, stockier Torre Verre, and they await Ms. Burden's approval. Where the head of the City Planning Department once thought the top of the tower was undignified, unworthy of sharing space with the Empire State Building, she now loves it.

Arts Journal blogger CultureGrrl revealed in a recent post what Ms. Burden told her about the MoMA Tower at May's Downtown Whitney groundbreaking.

"The top is glorious," Burden told me when I ran into her at the Downtown Whitney's groundbreaking, before the plans were formally filed. "It's going to be a great signature addition to the skyline." She added that the building's "facets are more pronounced" and there is more of a sense of movement around the exterior.

High praise!

A department spokesperson cautioned The Observer about reading too deeply into these pronouncements, though it certainly sounds like the tower is on its way to being approved. When that might happen remains unclear because the new plans are currently undergoing a chair certification, which has no set timetable, unlike a standard land-use application. It could be approved tomorrow or in two years—as long as it takes to get the designs in line with what the department, and its strong-willed commissioner, desires.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Hines declined to release new plans, and initially suggested there were none. Through a public information request, The Observer has obtained copies of architectural drawings from the City Planning Commission. While they may not be as sexy as the kind of full-color renderings architects usually prepare to wow the media , they shed plenty of light on the new shape of the project.

Having lost 200 feet in height cost Hines almost 30,000-square-feet of new development in the tower. Instead of rising to 85 stories, all but the top four of which were occupiable, there are now 78 stories, with four stories on top still reserved for mechanical systems, such as elevators and HVAC. The total square footage is roughly 629,000, or about half as much as the bulkier Chrysler Building.

This shrinkage has not appeared to cost Hines much, after all. In approving the project, the City Council required the developer to reduce the number of hotel rooms, a matter that had concerned the neighbors because it can mean lots of transient visitors—not that the Warwick Hotel isn't across the street, or a huge Hilton on Sixth Avenue. Instead of 147,000 square feet of hotel space, with 167 rooms on the eighth through 17th floor, there is now 96,000 square feet on the eighth through 13th floor—the plans did not detail the number of rooms, but the City Council approval stipulated no more than 100 rooms.

There has actually been a net gain in residential space, to 480,000 square feet, up from 458,000. Instead of spanning the 19th floor through 81st floor, the apartments will be on the 14th floor through the 74th floor. The plans did not state how many units there will be, but some examples can be seen in the plans. Three apartments on the 23rd floor measure 1,847 square feet, 2,263 feet and 2,296 feet, compared to one 5,669-square-foot apartment on the 59th floor. The square-footage of the top most floor, which conceivably would be combined with units below to create a larger duplex or triplex, measures 3,204 square feet.

Space for MoMA in the tower will remain constant at roughly 52,000 square feet, and the plans also call for a restaurant located in the lobby and basement of the building.

As for the appearance of the building, compared to earlier drawings and renderings, it does look a little bit squatter, but not by much, and the articulation of the tower has changed slightly. Viewed from Brooklyn, across the East River, it would not be invisible, appearing somewhere in the lee between One Bryant Park and the old CitiCorp Center. Still, it will not tower over these buildings, either.

Hines declined to comment on the new details for the tower, but it describes the changes thusly in its new application:

The facade consists of several sloped planes at different angles, which ascend to a sharp needles at the top of the building. The tower top is distinguished by three distinct asymetrical peaks, of varying height and shape. The top peak has a vertex with an interior angle of 27 degrees. The facade treatment of the building consists of non-mirrored glass and painted aluminum elements. And the interior structure of the building is expressed on the facade in an aluminum web "Diagrid" pattern of nodes and spokes, which extends from the sidewalk to the top of the building, not including mechanical spaces. The mechanical equipment at the top of the building is set behind a facade of blades, or louvres."

That last point is of particular note because it was the under-designed nature of the tower's top that led Ms. Burden to have it shortened.

As before, the redesigned tower is producing a mix of opinions, directed as much at Ms. Burden as at Mr. Nouvel.

Architecture critic and editor Jayne Merkel, when presented with the new plans, felt an appropriate response had been made by the developer. "Most people will see it from below, where it will still look quite tall, somewhat faceted, and thin," she wrote in an email. "It will not appear to be quite as pencil thin on the horizon as the first scheme would have, but I am not at all sure that that is a problem either. It won’t be lonely in Midtown Manhattan, and I don’t think it is so brilliant that the original height was justified. I suspect that if the revised, shortened tower had been submitted originally, its champions would have liked it just fine."

Carol Willis, director of the Skyscraper Museum downtown, believes the decision by the city to lower the tower was an unfortunate one. "Manhattan has two big defining characteristics, its vibrant streets and its competitive skyline," she said. "We've done a great job in the past decade with protecting and improving the quality of experience of the 'sidewalks of New York,'  but I think it's a shame that the skyline seems to be losing its ambition and diversity."

For a look at a truly tall building, consider the Supertall exhibition currently on view at the museum.

The Death Spire. (Atelier Jean Nouvel)

New York City may have brought down Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but another torrid Frenchman will not be held up by the likes of us.

Jean Nouvel, winner of the Pritzker Prize and a severe man even by the standards of his profession, delivered unto the city a “real skyscraper” in 2007. The Torre Verre, more commonly known as the MoMA Tower, would rise to 1,250 feet, an obsidian shard piercing the heart of midtown, built on land traded by the museum to a developer, Hines, for $125 million and three floors of galleries in the base of the new building. A rival to the Empire State Building 20 blocks south, The Times’ Niccolai Ouroussoff called it “the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation.”

Mr. Nouvel, in defending his creation to the City Planning Commission, which was then  deciding the outsize tower’s fate, said at a July 2009 hearing, “It’s like music, part of the rhythm of the city and the skyline.” Commission chair Amanda Burden was less taken with Mr. Nouvel's tune, and knocked 200 feet off the top of the tower, bringing it well south of the Chrysler Building it would have eclipsed (and much closer to its as-of-right height).

Among the issues, she deemed the building’s thorny crown an eyesore for visitors to the Empire State Building, a position that drew outcry from the tower's legion of worshipers. "Approving the design of Tower Verre while lowering the height was not a compromise but an example of curatorial caution run amok, an attempt to turn midtown into an architectural preserve," wrote Justin Davidson in New York magazine.

The tower will rise to something closer to the bottom of its crown, though its new profile has not been revealed.

Ms. Burden's burden not withstanding , like many of the starchitectural erections proposed during the boom, the tower was put on hold, left for dead by some. Hines argued during the approval process that the project simply could not work if not approved at its original height. It  would simply be too small to justify the expense of such an ambitious tower. So much for so much.

And yet, this is New York. Expensive real estate can always be justified.

Two weeks ago, Hines quietly filed a new set of plans with the Department of City Planning. They are compliant with two special permits that the commission and the City Council approved in the fall of 2009, which enforce the 1,050-foot height along with restrictions on things like a loading dock for the new building and the museum's sculpture garden fence—something that has been bothering the neighbors ever since the 2003 renovations. According to a department spokesperson, the application is a chair certification, which does not require public approvals. The process is meant to ensure that the project is in accordance with what was previously agreed upon; a review has no set timeframe.

The resolutions required a tower of similar design proportions. How much the new design resembles the old one, just shorter, is not immediately clear. Initially, Hines said it had filed no new plans, but when The Observer pointed to a notice on the City Planning website, spokesman George Lancaster admitted that the project was back on and imminent. “We DID file revised plans with City Planning for the shorter tower adjacent to MoMA,” he wrote in an email. “We aren’t going to release drawings or details just yet but will in the near future.” He would not say whether the project had financing yet.

The controversial crown.

MoMA was equally taciturn. "The filing is Hines' so I don't have any details on it here. Our plans with regard to the project remain unchanged," emailed Margaret Doyle, the museum's communications director. When asked about something Hines would not discuss, the recently acquired Folk Art Museum and how it might factor into the project, she replied, "MoMA has not yet announced any plans for the Folk Art Museum building."

“Of course for the neighborhood it’s going to be a problem, because it’s a big, tall building,” said Al Butzel, attorney for the Coalition for Responsible Midtown Development, a local community group that filed an unsuccessful suit against the project last summer. “Ten-fifty is better than 1250, but it’s still much more than we wanted, which was 500, closer to the Financial Times building next door.”

Justin Peyser, co-founder of the group, put it more succinctly and cynically in an email: "Our city has always been for sale to the highest bidder and this bid is awfully high."

In Paris, they forbid tall buildings, too.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Self-made man Luciano Rammairone went from studying at Pace to having college kids write about it for high school kids at College Bound magazine. Now, his CollegeBound Network rivals the likes of Kaplan and Princeton Review, and the proceeds have helped finance a move from a sleepy Staten Island cul-de-sac to one of the toniest--if troubled--properties in Manhattan.

Mr. Rammairone paid $3.6 million for a ninth-floor three-bedroom in the Pritzker-approved signature building on starchitect's row. That is a 13 percent discount off an ask of $4.145 million.

Located in the northern quadrant of the crescent-shaped building, the 1,950-square-foot condo enjoys western views of the Hudson and Chelsea Piers through Mr. Nouvel's distinctive windows. "This home was created with stainless steel, etched and clear glass, terrazzo flooring and custom lighting...every detail individually designed by Jean Nouvel," boast Holly Park, Trisha Riedel and Michael Lorber in their Douglas Elliman listing.

This is not the first spectacular home purchased by Mr. Rammairone, either. He has bought a number of properties on Staten Island in the past decade, including 79 Howard Street. That became Casa Belvedere, a landmarked mansion that was restored and converted into an Italian arts and cultural haven.

And last month, city records reveals that Pierre Combet, a French businessman, bought a unit down the hall at 100 11th. His new one-bedroom on the building's southern side was asking $1.925 million and sold for $1.54 million, a 20 percent slash.

Their new neighbors include fellow real estate lover Larry Mueller and, of course, Kelsey Grammer.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Some current residents complain that ceiling panels have fallen and appear to be held in place with masking tape, improperly poured concrete gives ceilings the appearance of water damage, and scars are visible on the terrazzo floors were walls were moved. One resident also said a window in the curtain wall never fully shuts, leaving a constant one-inch gap so the wind howls through the apartment.

[Todd] Eberle, the photographer, said 40 Mercer is "built more solidly" than the Chelsea building. He has had leaks in the ceiling of his 100 Eleventh Avenue unit, but he's more bothered by the rust on the steel beams he can see out his windows.

Yet 40 Mercer, Nouvel's other big development in town, done for Andres Balazs and where Eberle also lived, did not run out of construction financing at the height of the recession, nor was it nearly as dynamic of a project.

The lengthy article describes how 100 11th came online at the peak of the real estate boom, nearly selling out before more than half of the buyers walked away, many via lawsuits, others even abandoning their deposits. More suits and complaints have since been filed by current residents over construction and other issues, and yet the building is once again 76 percent sold, with only 13 units remaining. (At least one recent buyer profiled by The Observer sees the building as a great investment, rivaling his former home at 15 Central Park West.)

The big question seems to be whether this is simply the price one pays to live in a building of such complexity and ambition--with 1,700 different windows, for gosh sakes--or whether the developers, Cape Advisors, cut corners wherever they could, both to increase profits and enable the project, which ran out of money on more than one occasion. Whatever the case, it could be a lot worse:

In many respects, 100 Eleventh Avenue is a success story. It could easily have stalled, like other ambitious starchitecture projects such as 56 Leonard Street, a Jenga-like tower by Herzog & de Meuron, and Dutch starchitect Ben van Berkel's 5 Franklin Place.

Heck, even Frank Gehry has had problems with leaks before. It should be interesting to see how 8 Spruce Street fares.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo