Starwood Capital's Baccarat Hotel & Residences won't even be the priciest new tower on 53rd Street.

The sales office for 20 West 53rd Street, Starwood Capital's Baccarat-branded hotel and condo tower isn't having its grand opening until next week, but the fancy glass maker turned hotelier has already settled on a price for its crown jewel. The dark crystal's penthouse unit is asking $60 million, according to BuzzBuzzHome, which got its hands on the asking price.

A call to the sales office didn't yield any additional details, but they did confirm the pricing of the top-floor penthouse, or "the pinnacle," as Baccarat puts it. For $60 million, the buyer will get a duplex with 7,381 square feet of interior floor space, plus a 417-square foot balcony, according to BuzzBuzzHome. The unit has five bedrooms and 5.5 baths (the master with a floating sculptural tub). No word on whether or not chandeliers will be included.

The sleek, black SOM-designed tower will rise to 46 stories and contain just 61 condominiums. The latest offering plan, filed on Thursday with the Attorney General's office, puts the building's total price—that is, the combined total asking price of all of its residential units, but not the hotel rooms (151 at latest count, up from 115 last year)—at a hair above $523 million. The cheapest condo listed so far with BuzzBuzzHome is a 932-square foot one-bedroom unit on the 23rd floor, asking just $2.26 million. Residences will begin at the 18th floor, according to the building's website, and will have ceilings of up to 14 feet.

The building's design details should be commensurate with its Baccarat Hotel and Resorts brand ("We're going to marry Louis XV with the modern era," Barry Sternlicht, Starwood Capital's CEO and chairman of Baccarat, told the Wall Street Journal), but prices will likely pale in comparison to those across the street at Hines' Tower Verre. The Jean Nouvel-designed spire will rise to 1,050 feet, shy of its initial height of 1,250 feet before it was clipped by the city's chief planner, Amanda Burden.

We'll wait for more renderings before deciding if the crystal company has succeeded in crafting a space that convinces residents that "life is for living" or sees to it that their "moments become sealed in memory."

Hello, Central Park.

The new look of Midtown.

Forget Park Avenue, forget Central Park West, forget Bond Street. Pretty soon, 57th Street is going to be the place to live in New York.

Already we have the uber-hyped One57, where billionaires buy condos pushing $100 million. The taller-than-1WTC 432 Park is just beginning to rise a few blocks away, with the recent revelations its penthouse will be asking $85 million. And at some point in time, Gary Barnett, the man responsible for One57, will begin work on another luxury tower on the corner of Broadway and 57th Street.

As if that were not enough, here comes a 51-story bolt of luxury to the heart of Manhattan.

Back in May, Starwood Capital announced it had sold a majority stake to JDS Development for a site it had long controlled at 107 West 57th Street—on the same block as One57. According to a March building permit on file with the city, the tower will reach 697 feet, about two-thirds the size of One57 but 140-feet taller than the landmark Essex House on Central Park South.

The project is designed by Cetra/Ruddy architects, who may be best known for another slender condo tower, the blocky One Madison, which overlooks the park of the same name. Renderings of the firm's 57th Street project have been making the rounds among developers and brokers in the city, which is how they made their way into our rendering-loving hands. They show a more angular structure, with swooping, faceted edges not unlike the nearby LVMH headquarters. As the building slopes away from 58th Street, terraces jut from the face—providing full views of the park, of course.

The building site, just off Sixth Avenue.

The building is narrow, located on a 43-foot wide lot, about the size of two row houses. This creates for quite the exclusive building, as there is no more than one apartment per floor, according to the building permits. In fact, there are more duplexes (14) than simplexes (13). The latter are located on floors 7 through 19 while floors 20 through 46 contain the former. The top of the building is dedicated to a quadraplex that will no doubt challenge its neighbors on the block for price supremacy.

The 51st and final floor is listed as "recreational space." Forget Top of the Rock. How about Top of the Shard.

As for the rest of the building, it contains retail on the first, second and third floors, nearly 10,000-square feet of it. There is also recreational space on the second and sixth floors, where amenities for residents, like lounges, common outdoor space and workout rooms will presumably be located.

A spokesman for JDS, which is best known for its work on the Walker Tower in Chelsea, declined to comment. There, too, the firm is creating some striking apartments with commanding views of the surrounding landscape. Perhaps next they can build something crazy down on the Battery. Wouldn't it be great if they revived Santiago Calatrava's plans for a stack of Seaport cubes? Certainly would seem to fit the portfolio.

Rogers Marvel has slightly updated their design from what they originally unveiled on Toll's behalf in November, but the changes are mostly in the detailing of the building, not its composition. Today's deal does bring with it more details of what is planned, however. The 1 Hotel will rise to 10 stories, stepping down into the five-story apartment building. Additionally, there will be 16,000 square-feet of restaurant space in the complex and the same amount of banquet space, as well as 2,000 square feet of retail, a 6,000 square foot fitness center and 300 parking spaces.

A day after master parks privateer Adrian Benepe has stepped down from running Parks Department, it's revealed that the Pier 1 development will generate nearly $120 million over the course of a 97 year lease, in $3.3 million chunks. On the one hand, the park could not be maintained without this money, on the other, that is a lot more park land that could have been created if these buildings were not being built on them.

The developers vying for the right to develop Pier 1, that’s who.

While all of the teams vying for the 100,000-square-foot project have found hotel operators and are prepared to make a go of a waterfront hostel, some bidders, as well as those who considered the project but ultimately decided not to make a pitch for the plot, have told The Observer that having a hotel is a drag on the project.

“It’s a great view, sure, but it’s far from mass transit, it’s far from a lot of activity, you’re basically between the BQE and the park, and that’s about it,” one participant said. “There’s Dumbo, but Dumbo isn’t exactly jumping after dark.”

According to bidders, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation, the city-backed agency responsible for the open space and the development underwriting it, is unwilling to nix hotel space from the project’s requirements because it is outlined in the original agreement between the city and the state. Changes would require approval in Albany, which was hard to get in the first place, and therefore officials are afraid to open the process up again and risk any unexpected consequences.

At a time when New York City is seeing record number of tourists, it seems hard to believe that hotels would not be a hot commodity. But it has more to do with long-term, reliable income streams and, more crucially, banks general unwillingness to lend to developments in the city at the moment. Adding a hotel to a project makes it that much more complex of a deal and thus a harder sell.

That is why events spaces—bars, ballrooms, conference centers—are prominent features of many of the hotel proposals submitted by developers. They add reliable income that takes advantage of the waterfront and skyline appeal.

"It wouldn't be a prime, prime location, but it is a good location," Roland Demilleret told The Observer. A managing director at hotel consultancy HVS, Mr. Demilleret actually consulted on some of the projects, and he said there was a general excitement among the hotel operators but less so among the developers.

"The only problem I see for the site is it's far from the business districts," Mr. Demilleret said. "It won't draw the commercial client, but the leisure client will still come." He also said that hotels in Brooklyn still tend to be price-sensitive, less a first choice than a cheaper alternative to Manhattan, so the room rates cannot be too high. "As long as you keep it small, it will work," Mr. Demilleret said. "I don't think a 400 room hotel would work there." The plan currently limits hotel rooms to between 170 and 225 rooms, the apparent sweet spot.

"We think a hotel is a great fit with the project and the site, and we have never thought twice about including it," Brooklyn Bridge Park spokeswoman Ellen Ryan told The Observer last week.

Still, these challenges have not deterred the final three teams still in the running, Dermot, FXFowle and Hyatt with space set aside for the St. Anne's warehouse theater; Toll Brothers, Rogers Marvel Architects and Hampshire Hotels; and Starwood Capital, Alloy Development, Bernheimer Architecture and nArchitects. (The winners were reported recently by Crain’s.) Not making the cut were bids from RAL, Extell Development, Two Trees and SDS Procida.

An announcement for the winner is expected in the next few weeks.

All three winners offer proposals with high-wattage design behind them, which is counter to what some competitors had said was a bias toward money above all else. It is an attitude that makes sense, given the conservancy’s desperate need for funds to keep the park afloat—85 acres of parkland, much of it built on piers, does not pay for their own maintenance.

Other entrants said that design has been an important part of the competition, pointing to the presence of notorious nitpickers Amanda Burden, the City Planning Commissioner, and James Polshek, chair of the Public Design Commission, as signs that quality architecture is just as important as the promised payment. “Some entries were definitely dismissed because they were not good enough,” one source said.

It echoes a commitment conservancy president Regina Meyer outlined to The Observer during a tour of the park in the fall, just before the finalist were announced. "In terms of design and pedestrian experience, we were real clear this was very important to us," Ms. Meyer said standing on the path between the lush park and the vacant development site. "We don't want anything to undermine our huge public investment in design already."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

To achieve the recap, Blackstone converted an $80 million mezzanine loan into an ownership stake at the 10-building, Northern California complex, according to the Commercial Mortgage Alert.

Tenants there include game developer Eidos, Dreamworks SKG and developer of business analytic software Informatica, which bought two of the complex’s buildings several weeks ago for a reported $148.5 million.

The buildings that Informatica bought are 2000 and 2100 Seaport Blvd. The company was represented in the sale by a team from Newmark Knight Frank, a spokesperson confirms, while Starwood Capital was represented by a team from Cassidy Turley.

As for the complex as a whole, Starwood had $480 million of outstanding debt on the eight buildings that it held onto there. The Informatica sale allowed it to fill the $125 million gap that remained after the buildings traded.

Eastdil Secured is acting as the advisor for the new loan and the partners are said to be considering a variety of options, including securitization lenders.

Cgaines@observer.com

All of them have hired top notch architects, offering the kind of dynamic neighborhood BBP president Regina Meyer said she was hoping for. The community was not exactly thrilled with what they saw at the unveiling of the designs tonight—more on that tomorrow—but without further ado, here they are.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Developers filed plans on Friday for the View at Bryant Park, a good year after the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved designs for a 31-story cloud-buster at 20 West 40th Street. The site has since had to go through ULURP, the city's land-use review.

John Porges, one of the developers, said construction will begin this August on what is being billed as New York City's first, five-star green hotel.

The Starwood Capital 1 hotel, designed by Morris Adjmi Architects, will reportedly have 150 hotel rooms and 64 condos.

Starwood Capital announced plans last year to launch a new chain of LEED-certified hotels, dubbed "1," because one percent of all revenues will be donated to local environmental groups. The Natural Resources Defense Council is an adviser on the project.