Fantastic shot of WTC1
Luxury Developments Struck Big In 2013
It was a good year for luxury residentials in New York. According to an end of year report by Olshan Realty, 2013 saw the best year for contracts signed since 2007 totaling in at nearly $10.9 billion sold. This represents a 70% increase over total sales contracts in 2012.
Development, particularly in the Manhattan area, also saw a sharp upturn this year. 38% of all luxury apartment sales were made on new developments that are not yet completed, and the total number of development contracts in Manhattan jumped 20% in the third quarter of 2013. The new Leonard series of developments proved to be in high demand among the wealthy tenants of New York City. 56 Leonard did particularly well, seeing 90% occupancy in 9 months at an average of $3,200 per square foot.
The Azure luxury residential in Manhattan co-developed by Carl Mattone and the DeMatteis Organizations continued its slow but steady climb to success. The Azure building announced earlier this year that it had reached 75% occupancy, and though the penthouse units remain unsold they underwent an extensive interior makeover by acclaimed design specialists Bjorn Bjornsson and James Rixner.
Though the year ended on a high note for luxury high rises, the inauguration of Bill de Blasio as mayor of New York City on Wednesday may prove problematic for 2014. de Blasio spent a portion of his ceremony speech condemning the economic disparity within NYC, particularly the rapid development of luxury condominiums under Bloomberg’s oversight. Though his current action plan shows no sign of actively opposing luxury development, he has plenty of time in 2014 to decide to do so.
Community Garden Razed To Make Way For Amphitheater
In the makings of a classic “evil corporation” Christmas story, the NYC Economic Development Corp demolished a decades-old community garden to make way for a $53 million dollar amphitheater, a long time pet project of Brooklyn Borough President Marky Markowitz.
The demolition of the 70,000 sq ft garden took place at 4 AM, bringing a sour tinge of underhanded play in the eyes of affected community members. But it gets better.
Markowitz previously tried to build the amphitheater at Asser Levy Park but was shouted down by community members who filed a lawsuit to prevent the construction. It appears that Markowitz has won this time around, with the City Council approving the project last week despite the local community once again voting against it in September.
Under the current plan, the city would purchase a neighboring building to turn into a restaurant and concert area while the garden is slated to become a seating area. The razing was done rapidly, with gardening implements and resident animals (several chickens and a family of feral cats) displaced on the street.
The Sphere Is Rolling Nowhere
Speculation around Battery Park was rampant earlier this week as the historically significant sculpture The Sphere was dismantled and moved yesterday. Created by German artist Fritz Koenig, The Sphere was an art installation between the two former World Trade Center towers. It was recovered damaged, but intact within the ruins of 9/11 and temporarily relocated to Battery Park in 2002 as an interim memorial with the intent to move it back to the WTC site when appropriate. Since then the sculpture has had an air of mystery as public officials refused to disclose any information on relocation or repair of the sculpture, but promising that it would be moved back to WTC as planned.
Onlookers in Battery wondered if that day had perhaps arrived, as workers loaded the sculpture onto a truck while refusing to comment on where it was headed. Officials with the National September 11th Memorial had no idea where it was headed nor did the NJ/NY Port Authority who have jurisdiction over the 1WTC site.
Battery Park City Authority officials, including experienced real estate moguls with relocation experience Carl Mattone and Donald Cappocia, had also mentioned nothing. The ending was unfortunately anticlimactic. Arthur Pincus, an assistant commissioner of the parks department, said that The Sphere was simply being moved about 500 ft. to another location in the park to accommodate renovations.
The wait is back on with the public once again unsure as to the fate of the sculpture. Soon to be ex-Mayor Bloomberg has stated that the structure is “beautiful where it is” while the executive director at Port Authority Patrick Foye believes it belongs in the Memorial Plaza. The BPCA once again remain silent on the matter.
Former 5Pointz Curator Meres One Moves On To rag & bone
After a bitter battle between building owner Jerry Wolkoff and local graffiti artists, the local graffiti culture center 5Pointz was whitewashed out and prepped for demolition in November. The community promptly responded by tagging the fresh walls demonizing Wolkof for his decision to replace 5Pointz with two high rise luxury residences.
Former 5Pointz curator and graffiti artist Jonathan Cohen, also known as his graffiti handle Meres One, has moved on and found a new canvas to express his art. Clothing company rag & bone has invited Cohen to paint on the wall of its Nolita location for the month of December, an invitation he accepted last Saturday with a black-and-white reimagining of his “Bright Idea” mural.
rag & bone’s Nolita location is no stranger to local graffiti, and has regularly hosted graffiti art on its walls since 2010. The store hosts a new graffiti artist every month and runs an album of the works on its Pinterest page.
SOM Reveals Wind-Powered Skyscraper In Indonesia
American architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) has unveiled designs for a brand new supertower in Indonesia measuring 530 meters tall, twice the height of Wisma 46 – the current tallest Indonesian building .
The tower will be occupied by oil/gas company Pertamina and will unsurprisingly be named the Pertamina Energy Tower. In an admirable effort to make the building as green as possible, the top of the tower features a gently curved funnel-like structure that frames a wind tunnel. The tunnel is expected to generate 25% of the energy needed to power the entire building. The result is both increased energy efficiency and a visually striking building design.
In addition, SOM claims that the walls of the tower are precisely calibrated for Jakarta’s position relative to the equator to reduce solar heat buildup. Exterior sun shades will provide optimal natural lighting, further cutting down on electricity costs.
The complete tower is expected to house 20,000 Pertamina employees and officially be completed in 2020. You can look at concepts of the tower on SOM’s website here.
The Kenilworth Real Estate Market Report
The borough of Kenilworth has its roots as a pre-Revolutionary farming town and is currently home to almost 8000 people.
Rahway Valley Railroad Station, once situated at North 31st Street, served at the turn of the century as the hub of activity in the community and as a backdrop for numerous movies — particularly, Westerns.
There are currently 29 homes offered for sale in Kenilworth, reflecting a sharpe decline in inventory since the summer where there was an average of 40 homes on the market at a time. To view all of the Kenilworth listings, please click here. Seven homes were sold in Kenilworth in November, slightly lower than the average of 7.75 homes sold per month over the summer.
Homes that sold in Kenilworth in November were on the market for an average of 69 days, slightly faster than the 72 average days on market over the summer…
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Downtown Jamaica Business Improvement District Courts Food Businesses
Downtown Jamaica is showing some major economic growth this season and seems intent on proving its worth as a business improvement district. The area’s developers and economic leaders met with restaurant owners to tap into the roughly $430 million in unused ground-floor space.
Since the onset of the Jamaica Center Business Improvement District in 1979, the area has seen major economic growth under the management of the Greater Jamaica Development Corp (GJDC). Queens developer Carl Mattone and his real estate firm the Mattone Group developed the Jamaica Center building itself in 2002. In the past few years, GJDC has opened brand new retail outlets, a hotel and a department store and recorded roughly 86,000 people in foot traffic. Despite these numbers, downtown Jamaica only offers three dedicated restaurants and the meeting was an effort to fill that gap.
Jamaica Center BID research consultant Mark Lohbauer rhetorically asked restaurant owners “You’ve got hundreds of other choices right here in the five boroughs of the city. You could go anywhere. Why would you go here?” He then pitched the growth Jamaica downtown has seen in the recent years and the need to fill out ground-floor restaurant space. “They (GJDC) bothered to treat their district much like a mall,” he said “and they intend to manage it much like a mall.”
Sangria’s, CityRib and Applebee’s are the three dining options in the area, and those surveyed during Lohbauer’s study reported that they had food on their minds. Dedicated sit-down restaurants, healthier cafes and specialty food stores were all high priorities for those traveling through downtown Jamaica.
Half Of Americans Pay Too Much For Housing
A new Harvard study found that about half of Americans are paying too much for rent. Though perhaps in unsurprising find, the study does provide some hard numbers that are worth examining.
What does “too much” mean? The study defined Americans who pay 30% of their income or more in rent to be “cost-burdened” and those paying 50% or more to be “severely cost-burdened”. Results reported that in 2011, 50% of Americans were cost burdened compared to 25% in 1960. 28% of Americans in 2011 were severely cost burdened.
Photo courtesy of bill lapp via flickrcc
In layman’s terms, the study concluded that the availability of new, affordable apartments has been nowhere near the growing demand and that the gap between the two has been widening annually since the 2007 recession.
Though the stream of foreclosures during the recession did provide an influx of rental structures, the growing prices of homes zoned out a large portion of the population from the possibility of home ownership and the resulting increase in demand for rental housing quickly outpaced the supply the foreclosed homes provided.
Bjarke Ingels Group Commissioned For Harlem Residential
Harlem might be getting its own unorthodox residential building, designed by award-winning Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. Blumenfeld Development has recently hired the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) to design an apartment building in Gotham Plaza between Lexington and Third.
The project is still in its preliminary stages and no final design has been decided on, but given the unique nature of the projects BIG is known for it is likely that the building will be turning heads once it is built. The 200 units in the building will operate under the 80/20 program, meaning that 20% of the units will be affordable.
BIG already has experience developing in New York, and has received recognition for the pyramid-shaped residential on West 57th Street being developed by Durst Fetner Residential. BIG has also proposed a design for a “Titanic-prow” viewing platform for Pier 6 on the Brooklyn Waterfront and recently made headlines by winning the French Urban Center Design Contest with a large scale combination of a rural environment with a dense urban layout dubbed Europacity.
Neighborhood Watch 