At one time, the property at 36 E. 57th St. was home to the New York outlet of couturier Christian Lacroix.

CoStar Group Inc.The brownstone that once stood at 36 E. 57th St.

Rising like a slim, silvery Lego tower, 432 Park Ave. will be the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere upon completion. Right next to it, until very recently, was a brownstone that was just 24 feet wide and five stories tall. The vacant, locked building, hidden behind scaffolding and stripped of ornamentation, with forlorn white curtains visible in the top-floor windows, was a vestige of an older New York. Now it’s gone. It was torn down last spring by the owners of 432 Park Ave. for purposes that have not been made clear.

This is an obituary for 36 E. 57th St., although it’s an incomplete one because most of the people who knew the building in its prime are gone now. In its day, the humble brownstone housed the New York outlet of couturier Christian Lacroix and may have been co-owned by a Hollywood kingpin. New York City records list 1930 as the year that 36 E. 57th St. was built, but the records are probably wrong. By that year nobody was building short, narrow brownstones on the high-toned block between Park Avenue and Madison Avenue.

It’s more likely that the building was erected in the 19th century, during the building boom that blanketed acres of Manhattan with the narrow, sandstone row houses known as brownstones. The 1879 edition of Bromley’s Atlas of the City of New York was the first to show a townhouse with a stone facade at 36 E. 57th St., according to researchers at the New York Public Library Map Division. That’s consistent with what Christopher Gray, a historian of New York City architecture, wrote in 1988 in the New York Times: “In 1877, a speculative developer, Duggin & Crossman, put up a row of brownstones at 32-50 E. 57th St.” Gray wrote that the poet Emma Lazarus—”Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses …”—lived for a time at 36 E. 57th St.. She died at age 38 in 1887.

The building pops up in the Commercial Record of 1919-20, listing among its occupants a Miss Rose Gruening, a Bradish J. Carroll, and one Frank B. Taggart, whose occupation is listed as vice-president at 60 Broadway in lower Manhattan. By then, the block had begun its transition from residential to commercial.

Wrote Gray: “Gradually, the row became sandwiched between the giant Fuller Building (1929) at Madison Avenue and 460 Park Ave. (1954). As the last vestiges of the residential character of the 50’s just east of Fifth Avenue began to disappear in the 1950’s, the 57th Street row came to represent a sort of symbolic demilitarized zone between the midtown skyscrapers and the Upper East Side residential district.”

The next appearance of 36 E. 57th St. in the public records is as a retail establishment. Montblanc, Piaget, and Oxford Clothes occupied the ground floor over the years. Ownership changed hands several times, at one point in the 1980s belonging to a group that included somebody named Lew Wasserman. Circumstances point to this being the same Lew Wasserman who built up the MCA talent agency and bought Universal Studios and Decca Records. He died in 2002.

Architect Maurice Medcalfe worked in the building during the 1960s. His firm, Hills & Medcalfe, was inspired by the Apollo program to design a building on East 71st Street that was pink and had bulging ovals for windows. It stood out in its block of brownstones like a Martian invader and was quickly dubbed, not affectionately, the Bubble Brownstone.

The last blaze of glory for 36 E. 57th St. came in 2007, when it became the home of Christian Lacroix’s first shop in the city. New York magazine gave it a Critics’ Pick: “Joining the high-fashion parade along 57th Street, Lacroix’s two-story store eschews the minimalism of nearby neighbors like Dior and Yves Saint Laurent, presenting instead a sensory overload of lights, textures, and ornamentation. Part pomp, part disco, a mirrored front wall gives way to an array of tinseled stilettos, embellished handbags, and op-art bangles.” The fun didn’t last long. Christian Lacroix filed for bankruptcy just two years later, and the decor was hauled away.

In its final years, according to city records, the building housed such establishments as World Wide Visa Service, Syd Levethan Shoes, New Horizons Beauty Salon, and Bryant Enterprises design services. Next to the front door, until the demolition, was a sign for Federico, a hair salon and spa that was one of the building’s final occupants.

The structure’s fate was sealed when 432 Park Ave. began to rise, and rise, and rise, to 96 stories. The luxury condo building—separated by a foot of space from 36 East 57th Street—s taller than the Empire State Building. It’s also taller than the Freedom Tower would be without its spire. Prices for apartments in it begin at $17 million. Its owners are powerful enough that they managed to get a Park Avenue address for it, even though it isn’t on Park Avenue. The first residents should move in “this fall,” said Joey Arak, who handles public relations for the residences.

Last August, 36 E. 57th St. was sold for $65 million, a lot for a structure covering 0.06 acre. At that rate, a full acre would cost $1.2 billion. The sum was no indication of the value of the building, which was nothing but an inconvenience. The new owner has the right to put up a building on the site approximately four times as big as the one that’s there. Robert Zirinsky is listed as the new owner. According to the website Real Deal, the demolition permit was filed by New York Medical Investors, which shares an address with Zirinsky, and by Macklowe Properties.

Macklowe is refusing to say what it has in mind for 36 E. 57th St.. The building permit that’s posted on a fence in front of the lot is for a retail building consisting of one story plus a cellar, but it’s hard to believe that such a small project is all that Macklowe has in mind. Arak has heard the space would be used for a lobby to reach the office floors of 432 Park Ave., but he wasn’t sure and wasn’t authorized to speak about it. Representatives of Macklowe did not return phone calls.

There was no good reason to save 36 E. 57th St. It was not architecturally distinguished and no president ever lived there. It was built in the era of Boss Tweed, mutton-chop sideburns, and horse-drawn carriages, and it had clearly outlived its usefulness. Spare a thought, though, for the passing of an era.

The bistate agency will be able to recoup most, if not all, it has invested in rebuilding the World Trade Center site since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to a study by New York University’s Rudin Center.

By Daniel Geiger

BloombergThe World Trade Center site.

The World Trade Center site will pay for itself in two decades, according to a new report by New York University.

NYU’s Rudin Center, which focuses on transportation and infrastructure, released a study Thursday showing that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will be able to recoup the nearly $7 billion it is anticipated to invest in the rebuilding of the 16-acre site.

“The Port Authority will recover more than 97% of its capital outlay by 2036,” said Mitchell Moss, dean of the Rudin Center. “It has also had a tremendous regional impact on economic development and has been a catalyst for the diversification of downtown’s economy.”

According to the Rudin Center, the Port Authority will have spent $6.7 billion of its own funds by 2019, when the site’s redevelopment will be largely complete. That money is sorely needed at a time when the bistate agency is contemplating huge infrastructure projects, namely the estimated $10 billion replacement of its bus terminal on Eighth Avenue. In total, the authority has spent about $17 billion on rebuilding WTC, but about $10 billion of that has been paid for by government, insurance and other money.

The Port Authority will be able to recoup the money it will pour into the site from several sources, the Rudin Center said. Among them is the sale of the final development parcel at the site, 5 WTC, which could generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the agency. The agency will earn hundreds of millions in rental income from tenants at the completed office towers. It will benefit from further leasing at 1 World Trade Center, where it has already le rented more than 1 million square feet to Condé Nast.

Additionally, the Port Authority will rake in money from its deal with Silverstein Properties, which built 4 WTC and is in the process of erecting 3 WTC. Silverstein is also in the process of finalizing a huge lease with News Corp. and 20th Century Fox that will allow the developer to build a third tower on the site, 2 WTC. The agency collects ground rent from Silverstein for those sites and is entitled to 15% of the value of the three towers if the developer refinances the properties—an event that could eventually net the authority $1 billion, the Rudin Center estimates.

So far, the Port Authority has collected money from a number of other sources: a sale of the site’s retail space and a $100 million stake in 1 WTC that it sold to the Durst Organization. The agency also leased 1 WTC’s observation deck to Legends in a deal that is expected to generate more than $800 million.

Still, there has been chatter from some that the Port Authority should sell off the WTC site and its other real estate assets to focus on transit and regional infrastructure. Moss said it should resist that suggestion. “You don’t sell a real estate asset just before it’s about to go up in value,” he said.

Although public perception of the WTC site has improved in recent years as construction has neared completion and the site has attracted office tenants, tourists and shoppers, the rebuilding, which fell years behind schedule and clocked in billions of dollars over budget, had been widely viewed as a financial sinkhole for the bistate agency.

“The agency has focused on managing the WTC project to remain as close to schedule and budget as possible,” the Port said in a statement. “As the WTC reconstruction continues to wind down, the Port Authority also has strived to return to its core transportation mission of state-of-good repair work and new infrastructure investments … while pursuing the Special Panel on the Future of the Port Authority recommendation to phase out of real estate ownership and prudently look to divest non-core real estate holdings.”

The report also noted the large economic impact the site has had on lower Manhattan. The Rudin Center said 51,000 people will work at the WTC site, accounting for two-thirds of the job growth in the area over the next 10 years. Those employees will earn a total of about $7 billion in yearly wages. The rebuilding will also generate about $11.9 billion in salaries for construction workers and related job

Private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts is about to pull the trigger on a long-rumored Hudson Yards investment.

KKR is looking to buy 400,000 square feet of space at 30 Hudson Yards, which is now under construction at West 33rd Street and Tenth Avenue, the New York Post reported.

The company, which would relocate from its 160,000-square-foot space at Sheldon Solow’s 9 West 57th Street, has been mulling the move since at least May of this year.

A number of major tenants have already signed on to occupy the 90-story, 2.6 million square foot tower, which is set to open in 2019. Time Warner has committed to buy over half the building’s space in the form of a 1.6 million square office condo. The Related Companies, which is developing the Hudson Yards complex along with Oxford Properties Group, announced last week it would take 270,000 square feet across six of the building’s upper floors. Oxford, for its part, will take 45,000 square feet. [NYP] – Ariel Stulberg

The de Blasio administration is pursuing two zoning changes that could make the city a denser place without increasing the size of buildings.

The city hopes to allow more so-called micro apartments, or units smaller than 400 square feet, and give developers leeway to carve up buildings into more apartments.

The modifications—which would only alter a building’s innards, not size—are buried in a citywide proposal called Zoning for Quality and Affordability, which is currently making its way through the public-review process. That overall proposal includes a number of other changes to the way buildings will be constructed in New York City.

However, these two changes are geared toward tackling a simple housing problem that housing advocates have called on the city to address for years: the dearth of apartments for single households. Nearly 50% of the city’s population is estimated to be single people, spanning a wide range of ages and demographics, according to the nonprofit Citizens Housing and Planning Council. Yet only about 7% of the city’s housing stock is made up of studios, and about 35% are one-bedrooms, which are units also eyed by couples.

“You can’t deny the data,” said Sarah Watson, deputy director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, which has been advocating for more flexibility in unit sizes for years. “This mismatch causes all sorts of economic distortions.”

Here’s how the zoning changes would address the issue: Currently, there is a cap on the number of units allowed to be constructed inside a building in New York City. The limit varies by district and neighborhoods, but in parts of the Upper West Side, for example, a 6,800-square-foot building is limited to a maximum of 10 apartments by something called the density factor.

The rule was designed to limit the density of a given building. It’s the reason, for example, that developers can’t build an entire complex consisting of studios. The de Blasio administration is seeking to relax this limit in areas of the city where buildings are roughly 12 stories or higher, which were hitherto forced to be less dense than some of their smaller counterparts.

In practice, a 72,500-square-foot building in Long Island City, for instance, might currently be allowed a maximum of 101 units. But if the rules are changed, 106 apartments could be built. In the most extreme case, a building could contain a maximum of 15% more apartments than currently allowed.

While many developers don’t even hit their maximum allowable density (meaning they stock their buildings with larger units), Watson believes that giving them more flexibility in deciding the makeup of apartments is a step in the right direction to addressing the shortage of small apartments, though she would like to see the city give developers even more leeway. The shortage is a problem because, when singles can’t find their own place, they find roommates and take over larger apartments that would have been taken by a family.

“It’s far better to do this in an upfront way and allow denser housing, rather than having hidden density on the inside of these buildings,” she said. “Otherwise you get into the issues of not being able to plan for education or transportation, because you need to understand where people are living.”

The other major change sought by the administration would be to eliminate the current 400-square-foot minimum apartment size that still exists but is seen as outdated.

In fact, there has been an industry consensus that smaller units can easily provide desirable living conditions, and that minimum room sizes and other specific measures are already dictated by the city’s building code and provisions in the Americans With Disabilities Act, among others.

With this in mind, the Bloomberg administration in 2012 commissioned a contest to build a micro-unit pilot project to increase the density of units allowed inside a building. That pilot has resulted in a 11-story modular housing development in the Manhattan neighborhood of Kips Bay called Carmel Place, with studios as small as 260 square feet, which is set to open later this year.

The proposed changes would not allow for a building as dense as Carmel Place, which had its density requirement completely waived instead of modified.

– See more at: http://therealdeal.com/blog/2015/10/23/gladstones-madison-equities-partners-plans-65-story-condo-at-45-broad/#sthash.bZw488JT.dpuf

The super-luxury condo developer is waiting to open sales in the 800-condo building up to U.S. customers until early next year.

Gary Barnett, the developer who sold New York’s most expensive apartment, is marketing his newest and largest Manhattan condo project to Asian buyers first—with prices well below those at his Billionaires’ Row towers.

Barnett’s Extell Development Co. will start sales of the more than 800 condominiums at his Lower East Side property exclusively overseas, including in China, Malaysia and Singapore, he said in an interview. Apartments at the 80-story tower, called One Manhattan Square, won’t be for sale in the U.S until early next year.

They also won’t be breaking any price records. Barnett estimates that most of the One Manhattan Square condos will be listed at $1 million to $3 million. Homes in that range are in short supply in Manhattan, where developers—including Extell—have focused almost exclusively on building larger and lavish apartments aimed at ultra-wealthy buyers who view New York real estate as a haven for cash.

“We think that’s a reasonable place to be,” Barnett said of the One Manhattan Square pricing. “There are a tremendous amount of people who would like to own something in New York City but are priced out because everybody’s building super-luxury.”

It was Barnett himself who ignited the development boom of high-end homes with the construction of One57, the 1,004-foot skyscraper across from Carnegie Hall on Manhattan’s west side. Extell began work on that project, planned as the city’s tallest residential tower, less than a year after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. ushered in a real estate downturn.

The building reached $1 billion in sales after six months, including a contract to buy a penthouse for $100.5 million, the highest price ever paid for an apartment in New York history. That deal closed last year.

Construction boom

Other builders followed suit. Now at least eight residential properties aimed at multimillionaires—including Zeckendorf Development Co.’s 520 Park Ave., Vornado Realty Trust’s 220 Central Park South and another tower by Extell about one block from One57—are under construction in or near Midtown, with the 57th Street corridor being dubbed Billionaires’ Row. Manhattan prices overall reached a record of $1,497 a square foot in the third quarter, according to Miller Samuel Inc. and Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

While expensive homes are still drawing interest, the greater demand from places like Asia is for less pricey offerings, of which there aren’t many, Barnett said. Extell, which usually doesn’t outsource the sales and marketing of its properties, has hired Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. to sell One Manhattan Square’s units internationally, with exhibitions planned next month in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

“There’s a tremendous hunger to purchase in New York for investment or for living or for safety or for a pied-a-terre,” Barnett said. “It’s hard to find something which is a good value and that more people can afford.”

The project at 252 South St., about a mile from New York’s Chinatown, will be the largest ever for Extell by number of units, he said. The complex will have 50,000 square feet of indoor amenities that will include art studios for residents. Another 40,000 square feet of outdoor space will feature landscaped gardens and a “tea pavilion,” he said. The tower, which will be complete at the end of 2018, also will include smaller units, he said.

“There nothing really that’s crazy expensive,” Barnett said.

Land deal

The firm agreed to buy the land, near the Manhattan Bridge and the East River, in January 2012 for $103.5 million, according to public records. The timing of that site purchase—ahead of a spike in land prices brought about by the latest construction boom—is what enables Extell to offer apartments there at lower price points.

“He was the first out of the box after the financial crisis to market super-luxury,” Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, said of Barnett. “If you take him to be a market leader, this is recognition of the next wave—when it’s possible for developers.”

HFZ Capital Group’s Ziel Feldman and homebuilder Toll Brothers Inc. have also announced plans to build less pricey condos as a way of satisfying a shortage in the Manhattan market.

For Extell, lower price points are a good strategy to attract buyers in China, after a currency devaluation in August made the cost of buying homes in the U.S. more expensive, Miller said. The devaluation, and the prospect of another, probably increased the appetite of buyers in the country, said Miller, who recently traveled to Shanghai to give presentations to real estate investors.

On New York listings website StreetEasy, page views originating from China more than doubled in July from a year earlier. That was the same month that China’s security regulator banned major shareholders from selling stakes in listed companies for half a year.

“That just makes people more anxious to invest in a stable and secure and economically vibrant country,” Barnett said. “The United States fits the bill and New York City tops the list. We haven’t seen any slowdown in demand at all.”

October 01, 2015
By Rich Bochmann

“Our strength is assembling land,” Extell Development’s Gary Barnett told an Israeli TV station late last year as he gave a reporter a tour of his condo tower One57. “On that, we’re Number 1.”

It’s hard to deny the accuracy of Barnett’s assessment. While Barnett was chatting with that reporter, construction crews were clearing the site for his next supertall tower just one block west at 217 West 57th.

That tower — which was unofficially known as Nordstrom Tower, but has now beenofficially dubbed Central Park Tower — will top out at 1,550 feet tall when it opens in 2019.

And like One57, it’s a textbook study on assembling the development and air rights needed to construct a supertall residential building. That process often takes years and involves a level of perseverance not all developers are cut out for.

But for most developers, particularly those near Central Park, assembling air rights is key. Barnett, for example, spent more than a decade negotiating nearly a dozen acquisitions to put together the 1.2 million square feet of development rights needed for the 183-unit Central Park Tower, which will reportedly have a record sellout of $4.4 billion.

“Gary is the most consummate, patient, visionary assembler of land in the city now,” said Michael Silverman, the co-chair of the land use group at the law firm Kramer Levin, which advises Barnett and other developers on land assemblages.

Here’s a look at some of the key deals that allowed him to go big at Central Park Tower — along with other key moments for the city on the supertall-tower front.

2001

Trump World Tower opens at 845 United Nations Plaza on the East Side. At 861 feet, it claims the title of the city’s tallest residential tower.

2003

Two years later, around the time that the Time Warner Center opens at what now seems like a modest 750 feet tall, Barnett is quietly negotiating to buy a controlling stake in the group that owns the former home of the Hard Rock Café a few blocks away at 221 West 57th Street.

Summer 2005

Extell closes on the Hard Rock deal as well as a property directly behind it fronting 58th Street, paying a total of $67.5 million. Together, the properties give him about261,080 square feet of development rights, and become the first pieces of Central Park Tower’s footprint.

December 2005

Barnett negotiates with the Art Students League of New York, a non-profit school whose alumni include Jackson Pollock and Georgia O’Keeffe, to buy air rights from its headquarters, which sits next to his site at 215 West 57th Street.

The 1892 French Renaissance building is a city landmark. But that doesn’t prevent its owners from cashing out on roughly 136,096 square feet of air rights above it.

January 2006

Barnett leapfrogs to 205 West 57th Street and pays $7.73 million to buy 100,670 square feet of air rights from the Osborne Apartments, a landmarked co-op built in the late 1800s.

March 2006

Rival developer Harry Macklowe closes on his $418 million purchase of the Drake Hotel, which will eventually become the site of his mega residential tower 432 Park Avenue. The building, also the product of a complicated assemblage, claims the title of the Western Hemisphere’s tallest residential tower when it tops out at 1,496 feet in 2014.

June 2006

Barnett continues plugging away at his assemblage for Central Park Tower. He pays $57.5 million to buy the B.F. Goodrich Company Building at 1780 Broadway, plus two other contiguous properties that form a rough T-shape next to his site. When the city moved to landmark the properties three years later in 2009, Barnett struck a deal that allowed him to demolish the two smaller buildings in exchange for preserving the ground-level façade of the 12-story “Automobile Row” building and incorporating it into his development. The deal netted him 156,050 square feet in development rights.

September 2006

Barnett locks down a narrow, 20-foot-wide lot wedged between two puzzle pieces on the 58th Street side of his site. He pays $14 million to the building’s owner, Robert Neuwirth, a prominent gynecologist, adding another 20,250 square feet to his tower.

November 2006

Barnett closes on a $2.23 million air-rights purchase from the 16-story St. Thomas Choir School at 202 West 58th Street. The move fetches him about 11,984 square feet in additional rights.

January 2007

Barnett snags another 14,290 square feet, paying $3.7 million to the estate of legendary developer Sol Goldman for the air rights over a 13-story apartment building at 200 West 58th Street.

2009

In the midst of the global recession, Extell breaks ground on One57, ensuring its status as the first among the city’s supertall towers when it tops out at 1,004 feet.

2011

Frank Gehry’s 8 Spruce Street opens Downtown. At 891 feet tall, the rental building, which was developed by Forest City Ratner, becomes Manhattan’s newest trophy tower.

June 2012

Extell announces a partnership with the department store Nordstrom to open the company’s first NYC location. The outpost will occupy seven stories at the tower’s base — hence the unofficial Nordstrom Tower name.

June 2013

In two separate transactions, Michael Stern’s JDS Development Group and Property Markets Group team up to buy Steinway Hall and the ground underneath at 111 West 57th Street for $177.8 million. The building will briefly be the city’s tallest apartment tower at 1,438 feet when it tops out in 2018. That is until Central Park Tower is complete.

July 2013

Barnett pays $25 million for the 20-foot-wide lot at 232 West 58th Street, completing his building site. In return he gets about 20,750 square feet of development rights.

October 2013

Barnett buys 90,371 square feet of development rights from Peter Fine’s Atlantic Development Group. The transaction is facilitated through city’s inclusionary housing program, which allows developers to sell development rights by creating affordable housing. Barnett can thank Atlantic’s 2005 project at 1 East 35th Street for this boost.

February 2014

The Art Students League approves an agreement allowing Extell to widen its building 28 feet to the east by cantilevering over its headquarters. Barnett pays the league $31.8 million for the easement and scores an additional 6,000-plus feet in air rights. It’s also the first time he reveals renderings for the tower designed by Adrian Smith and Gordon Grill, the firm behind the world’s tallest building: The 2,722-foot-tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

July 2014

Documents leaked to the website New York YIMBY peg Central Park Tower’s height at a symbolic 1,775 feet tall in deference to One World Trade Center. “It will be one foot less,” Barnett tells the Israeli TV reporter later in the year. “Out of respect.”

September 2015

New renderings reveal Extell has eliminated the building’s architectural spire, decreasing the overall height to 1,550 feet.

While the city’s other boroughs have yet to catch up, Brooklyn has beaten its previous median sales price record by 25%

By Joe Anuta

The median sale price of a Brooklyn home hit an all-time high during the third quarter of 2015, coming in at $676,250, or 15% higher than the same time a year ago, according to a market report released Thursday. The results reinforce just how much Brooklyn has gown into a desirable place to live—its recovery from the Great Recession has far outpaced other boroughs.

Brooklyn is the only borough whose median sale price has surpassed a previous high set before the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers. In fact, its growth has dwarfed other areas of the city. Case in point, while the median sale prices in Manhattan and Queens this quarter—$998,000 and $450,865, respectively—were still a few percentage points below their zeniths set in 2007. Brooklyn has exceeded the previous record by 25%.

“That’s not solely price appreciation and limited supply and demand—it’s a change of identity,” said Jonathan Miller, head of appraisal firm Miller Samuel, which prepared the report for Douglas Elliman, referring to Brooklyn.

Exactly how that identity, a sort of cultural patina that has attached itself to the borough, has evolved is complicated. But it is clear that a new crop of buyer is seeing Brooklyn not as an alternative to pricey  Manhattan, as in years’ past, but as a first choice.

Developers are also paying more attention to Kings County. But while additions to the housing stock have kept inventory relatively stable and above historic lows—the number of apartments for sale was down 13% from the third quarter of last year—it was not enough to slake demand. In fact, the average amount of time an apartment sat on the market was 55 days, down 40% from last year, signaling the market’s quick pace and that upward pressure on prices will likely continue.

The median price this quarter was 15% higher than a year ago and whether such a growth rate is sustainable in the long run is highly questionable. “Are wages growing that fast?” Mr. Miller asked. “I’d say no.”

October 07, 2015 08:00AM
By Konrad Putzier

With dozens of luxury condo towers under construction, New York’s skyline is in flux. And so are developers’ finances.

Almost $12 billion of apartment deals are under contract at the 15 biggest luxury developments under construction where sales have launched, according to figures compiled by The Real Deal from listings data firm On-Line Residential. That’s $11.7 billion of sales that haven’t closed – in some cases several years after signing.

A prolonged wait between signing and closing is hardly unusual for new developments, since construction has to near completion before a temporary certificate of occupancy can be issued. A sign of success in many ways, the large volume of units under contract also highlights the uncertainty condo developers are dealing with, and the risks they face if the market suddenly turns and buyers have second thoughts. For buyers, waiting years for an apartment in a market where existing units often sell in weeks requires patience.

Rudin Management and Global Holding’s Greenwich Lane leads the pack with 181 units under contract totaling $1.4 billion, according to a spokesperson for the project. The West Village project’s condo filing plan was declared effective in February 2014 and its current sellout figure is $1.7 billion – meaning the developers have almost met their target for the 199-unit building.

Alexico Group’s 56 Leonard Street had its offering plan declared effective a month earlier, in January 2014, and it has also sold almost all of its units. Work on the tower began in 2007, but was halted for several years in the aftermath of the financial crisis until the developers finally secured a construction loan from Bank of America in 2013. The 145-unit tower is scheduled to open next year, and has 142 apartments under contract for a total of $1.12 billion, according to OLR.

Among the newer offerings, SR Capital’s 551 West 21st Street has found quick success with buyers. The building is Scott Resnick’s first major project since leaving his family’s company, Jack Resnick & Sons. The offering plan was approved this March, and Resnick has already sold most of its units. “I’m certainly sleeping well at night, knowing that I am contracted for 80%,” he told the Wall Street Journal in May. According to OLR, 28 out of 44 units are under contract for a total of $400 million – close to the current sellout of $464 million.

The ranking comes with caveats: some developments have several closed sales, which are not reflected here, meaning it is by no means a ranking of sales success. And two prominent developments, 220 Central Park South and 432 Park Avenue, do not have any units under contract listed on OLR. In the case of 432 Park, TRD pulled a figure of $869.7 million from StreetEasy listings data, but sources close to the project say the real figure is likely much higher. In April, the Observer reported that the tower is 70 percent sold.

October 05, 2015 05:10PM

After launching sales in January, Ian Bruce Eichner’s Flatiron condo tower has hit the half-way mark, and the developer plans to put the first of two penthouses on the market in the spring for as much as $38 million.

Buyers have snapped up 50 percent of the 83 units at 45 East 22nd Street, Eichner told The Real Deal.

“We’ve sold evenly in every category we’ve got,” said Eichner, who hired Corcoran Sunshine to handle sales and marketing at the building.

The building, which uses a clever design to place more sellable square footage on the higher floors, has a projected total sellout of $714.6 million, according to a condo offering plan on file with the Attorney General’s office.

The most expensive unit on the market now just cracks the $20 million mark, with a number of full-floor units and a pair of penthouse apartments yet to be released at a time when sales of trophy listings in certain parts of the city have shown signs of cooling lately.

Eichner said the first penthouse, at 6,000 square feet, will hit the market around $38 million, while a second penthouse could fetch an even higher price.

When construction is finished in 2017, the Kohn Pedersen Fox-designed spire will climb more than 100 feet higher than One Madison, making it the tallest building between 57th Street and Lower Manhattan.

The tower is the product of a complex land assemblage Eichner put together next to One Madison, and marks his return to New York City development following several high-profile ups and downs