That was Andre Terzibachian's response when The Observer emailed him about 400 Park Avenue South on Friday. A partner at Atelier Christian de Portzamparc, Mr. Terzibachian is responsible for many of the firm's projects in New York, where the Pritzker Prize-winning Frenchman has had a number of surprising successes: the jagged LVMH North American headquarters on 57th Street; the skyline-redefining, outrageously priced One57 now rising a few blocks to the west; and beyond that, abutting the Hudson River, a daring complex of five towers at Riverside South.

All the while, 400 Park Avenue South was in the works the middle of Manhattan as a small-time developer tried, and eventually failed, to get an ambitious project off the ground. (Oddly enough, it is the only of Mr. de Portzamparc's projects not somewhere on 57th Street.) Construction was set to begin after years of development and zoning approvals. Then the recession hit. In December, the site was sold to a partnership of two of the nation's biggest builders, Toll Brothers and Sam Zell's Equity Residential. It was not clear at the time what the fate of this crystalline castle would be, but it turns out Mr. de Portzamparc will be planting another shard in the New York skyline after all.

On February 3, Handel Architects filed a slew of new construction documents for a 42-story residential tower at 400 Park Avenue South with the Department of Buildings. Handel had been the architect of record for de Portzamparc's earlier project (most out-of-town designers must team up with a local firm to file construction documents on its behalf), so it seemed promising that the eagerly anticipated tower would soon rise. David Von Spreckelsen, a senior vice president at Toll and head of its New York office, confirmed that Mr. de Portzamparc was indeed on board for the project. He is still designing the facade, as had originally been planned, a design that has not changed much, for reasons both aesthetic and practical.

The new team did not want a "Joe Blow building," as Mr. Von Spreckelsen put it. But there was also the fact that the previous developers went to so much trouble getting their project designed and then approved by the city. To switch architects and do it all over again would probably have been more expensive than simply adopting Mr. de Portzamparc's progressive designs for the tower at the corner of 28th Street. "If we wanted to abandon that design, we could have actually built something much taller, but it was a sort of pencil building going straight up," Mr. Von Spreckelsen said. "At the end of the day, it was too inefficient, because too much of it would have been taken up by the core. You weren't going to have the living space on the floors."

There will be one small alteration to the design, using a different type of glass that offers greater energy efficiency, a nod to the recently passed green building codes, but otherwise the tower will look almost exactly the same.

Keeping the same architects also meant the project could start almost immediately. "The documents were (almost completely) ready since we were supposed to deposit the building permit a few years ago, so we were able with Handel to get things done rapidly," Mr. Terzibachian wrote in his email. Groundbreaking is set to commence in May, Mr. Von Spreckelsen said, with an expected completion by the end of 2014.

Mr. Von Spreckelsen said Toll Brothers was especially excited about the project because of the unique arrangement it had reached with Equity Residential, whereby the latter is building rentals on the bottom half of the building while the former builds condos on the 20 floors on top. "They're taking the first 22 floors, so our condo units are starting at 250 feet in the air, so every unit has a pretty great view," Mr. Von Spreckelsen said.

And the unique design should appeal not only to those living inside the building.

"It's obviously really going to change the way Park Avenue South looks," Mr. Von Spreckelsen said. "I know that it's one of Christian's favorite buildings he's ever designed, and I know the city administration loves it, so I think it's going to be great for everyone."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The Ace Hotel

While long a cultural wasteland, the area now known as NoMad is enjoying it's time in the sun. Landlords in the Northern Flatiron district have been courting cultural institutions and local joints in an effort to vivify the neighborhood, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Developers are trying to play their cards right, hoping to make NoMad a new cultural hotspot. And they have a good start—fan favorite the Museum of Mathematics just leased a space in the neighborhood. With its similarly obscure cousin the Museum of Sex just a few blocks away, NoMad is just a few improbable institutions away from being be the off-color cousin of museum mile!

The wide array of new bars ad restaurants setting up shop in the neighborhood offer the perfect post-sex (or post-math) refreshment. Some old-timers are expanding as the area gains social clout. Jay-Z's 40/40 Club for example, is currently undergoing a multimillion dollar face-lift and expansion.

Developers are providing discounted rates to help attract interesting tenants, ultimately boosting the neighborhood's cultural cache.

"We basically take a long-term interest in the neighborhood as a whole. We're willing with tenants to give them relatively low, fixed rents," said Andrew Zobler, chief executive of Sydell Group and developer of the Ace Hotel and the planned NoMad Hotel, both in the area.

Trendy hotels, celebrity-owned clubs, sex-themed educational establishments— what's next? A film festival?

eknutsen@observer.com

Dubbed by its listing as "the superlative apartment in a building filled with apartments beyond compare," the 17th-floor loft at 15 Madison Square North must indeed be something. Otherwise, it would be tough to explain the 2007-like bidding war.

According to city records, hedge funder Anand Desai and wife Erica recently paid $12 million for the 14-foot-high-ceilinged, freshly renovated apartment on the edge of Madison Square Park. A high price, but not that unusual for more than 5,000 square feet of loping loft space.

The catch was that an earlier listing price pegged the condo at $9.95 million, chopped from an original early 2009 asking price of $13.5 million. Was the $2 million-plus jump from $9.95 million to the closing price of $12 million a typo or evidence of a high-flying bidding war, the sort not common in these parts since Lehman Brothers went kaput in September 2008?

The latter proved to be true.

Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group was reticent to comment on whether, in fact, there was a bidding war showdown in Madison Square Park. Tricia Cole, the group's executive managing director, said only that she was not currently in a position to comment. But the group did offer the following official explanation: "Listed early in 2009 at $13.5 million, the price was later reduced in order to draw a larger audience of interested buyers. In this case, our reduced price generated significant interest and multiple bidders for this wonderful home, which in the end drove the price back up. As is always true in an efficient market, the market ultimately sets the price."

And apparently the market was hopping. "This really does show the efficiency of the market," said Louise Phillips Forbes, a top broker with Halstead who was not involved in this particular deal. She was speaking generally about an uptick in bidding wars in New York. "The market is catching up. The truth is, maybe not across the U.S, but in New York proper, where our economy is responding to all of the efforts that have been put into helping it, I am seeing bidding wars at every scale. This is what we are dealing with for great, unique properties."

In 2006, the top 12 floors of the 20-story office building at 15 East 26th Street were converted to deluxe residential condos. Officially known as 15 Madison Square North, the converted residential floors are almost sold out, according to Ms. Cole.

All have views, of course, of the wholesale district north of Madison Square Park and east of Broadway that is one of the only unnamed neighborhoods on those taxi maps of Manhattan. However, an overhaul of this neighborhood's image is swift underfoot-one hotelier has tried to make the acronym NoMad (North of Madison Square Park) stick as a new Tribeca. Which begs the question, evinced by this $12 million deal borne of an apparent bidding war: Has NoMad started to settle down?

cmalle@observer.com