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

October 02, 2015 10:16AM
By Konrad Putzier

UPDATED, Oct. 2, 11:10 a.m.: The Dalian Wanda Group, China’s largest commercial real estate developer, is closing its New York office by November 30 and will run its U.S. operations from Beijing.

Wanda occupied a small office at RXR Realty’s and Blackstone Group’s 1330 Sixth Avenue. It wasn’t immediately clear why the Beijing-based company is leaving the Big Apple, or whether the step has any impact on its investments here.

Sean Muellers, Wanda’s chief U.S. representative, will leave the firm after three years at the end of November, according to an email sent out to colleagues and business partners, a copy of which TRD obtained. “Due to a corporate reorganization, Wanda’s New York Representative Office will be closing by November 30th,” Muellers wrote. “Please note that all US investment activity going forward will be managed directly from Beijing.”

In 2012, Wanda bought the AMC movie theater chain for $2.6 billion. Last year, it announced a $1.2 billion mixed-use development in Beverly Hills and acquired a development site in Chicago with plans to develop a $900 million mixed-use tower.

Unlike rival Chinese developers like Greenland Holdings, China Vanke or Soho China, Wanda has no stake in major New York real estate projects. In 2013, Reuters reported that the firm wanted to build a $1 billion hotel in Manhattan, but the plans apparently never came to fruition. Sources told TRD that Wanda was recently looking to buy hotel development sites in major U.S. cities, including New York.

Wanda has $85.6 billion in assets under management and is owned by China’s richest man, Wang Jianlin. Like other major Chinese developers, the firm was hit by the recent slump in the Chinese housing market. In June it announced a “strategic alliance” with China Vanke.

Wanda and Vanke “have been disciplined,” Borja Sierra, U.S. head of capital markets at Savills Studley, told TRD in June. “They’ve said no to a lot of opportunities. They don’t only want to have an asset. They want to buy the right place.”

Dalian Wanda Group could not be reached for comment.

In the third quarter, the median Manhattan sale price was about $1 million.

By Joe Aruta

Over the past three months, Manhattan homes flew off the shelves at a record pace and price.

On average, listings were snatched up in 73 days, according to a third-quarter market report released Thursday by appraisal firm Miller Samuel for Douglas Elliman Real Estate. The report found that the amount of time it took to sell all of the inventory at the current pace, called the absorption rate, was roughly half of the amount of time compared with the past decade’s average.

“Basically, the market is clearing twice as fast as it normally would,” said Jonathan Miller, head of Miller Samuel. That quick turnaround time is largely due to tight inventory and robust demand.

The increased appetite for apartments is also behind the increase in average price per square foot to $1,497 for the quarter, another record.

Mr. Miller’s report was released along with a slew of others that, while arriving at slightly different numbers, all recorded the median Manhattan sale price at about $1 million, up approximately 10% from  last year. In fact, one report by residential brokerage Compass said that the median price had, for the first time ever, exceeded $1 million.

However, Compass also reported that sales volume fell to 3,929 transactions, about 10% fewer than last year. That dip can be attributed to the lack of apartments on the market.

“We expect prices to continue to increase and inventory to remain in short supply,” the report noted.

The high-end of the market was relatively flat, with the median price of luxury homes, which the Miller Samuel report defined as apartments topping $3.6 million, increasing by 10% over last year. Sales volume for these pricey pads increased by roughly the same amount. On the other hand, these apartments sat on the market for roughly double the amount of time compared with the overall Manhattan market.

Meanwhile the median price of new developments shot up  25% over last year to about $2 million, and according to Frederick Peters, head of Warburg Realty, more newly constructed units are  on the way. “There is always a fall market, but this one has been unusually well populated,” he said.

Michael Bloomberg and the Koch brothers were included on the magazine’s list of the richest individuals in the nation.

Forbes magazine has released its Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans, with 70 New Yorkers making the cut.

Businessman David Koch ranks first in the city, tied for fifth overall with his brother Charles Koch.

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, eighth overall on the list, was second on the list of New Yorkers, followed by George Soros and Carl Icahn.

The magazine also weighed in on Donald Trump’s infamous claims about his finances, ranking the billionaire developer and media personality at 121 and estimating his personal fortune to be $4.5 billion.

Forbes Editor Randall Lane spoke about Mr. Trump’s fortune on NBC’s Morning Joe, discounting the value of Mr. Trump’s “personal brand” that the Republican presidential hopeful has said accounts for several billions in wealth.

“We think we’ve finally settled the issue,” Mr. Lane said. “He’s out there telling everybody he’s worth $10 billion. He’s not.”

One notable exclusion from New York’s wealthiest is William Erbey, whose mortgage financier, Ocwen Financial, was probed by New York state investigators for allegations including conflicts of interest.

Mr. Erbey, who stepped down as executive chairman, saw his personal fortune plummet after Ocwen’s stock fell 76%, according to Forbes.

By CHARLES V. BAGLI    SEPT. 28, 2015

Andrew S. Penson, who bought Grand Central Terminal in 2006, contends that he is being deprived of his property rights.

When he bought Grand Central Terminal nine years ago, Andrew S. Penson figured that the unused development rights, or air rights, over the country’s busiest train station were worth a fortune.

The soft-spoken real estate investor, however, failed to come to terms with a developer next door who needed them, or to sell even one square foot of more than a million square feet of those rights.

On Monday, Mr. Penson filed a $1.1 billion lawsuit in United States District Court in Manhattan that argued that the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, the City Council and the developer, SL Green Realty Corporation, had deprived him of his property rights when the city gave SL Green permission to build a 1,501-foot tall office tower, without having to buy any air rights from him.

The lawsuit involves complex questions of zoning, constitutional law, politics and potential conflicts of interest, but it boils down to what always matters most in New York real estate: millions and millions of dollars.

It is the latest chapter in a dispute that has festered for years, with supporters of Mr. Penson describing SL Green as politically connected, while critics of Mr. Penson dismiss him as a speculator.

The city designated Grand Central as a landmark in 1967, partly to block a proposed office tower that would have risen overhead.

The designation, the city argued in United States Supreme Court, was not an unconstitutional taking of land because the unused development rights over the terminal could be sold to nearby developers.

But Mr. Penson’s lawyers argued in the suit that by granting SL Green the rights to build a tower “for free” that is twice as big as had been permitted by zoning, the de Blasio administration and City Council had rendered Grand Central’s air rights “worthless.”

“Taking the property of a private citizen for the benefit of another private citizen without any public purpose,” the lawsuit contended, is a violation of the Fifth Amendment.

Therefore, “plaintiffs are entitled to be paid ‘just compensation’ by the city for the value” of the air rights, the lawsuit stated.

But SL Green and city officials pointed out that the developer had to commit to approximately $220 million in improvements to the crowded subway platforms and stairwells below Grand Central in exchange for the right to build the oversized tower. Construction of the tower, known as 1 Vanderbilt, has yet to start.

Jonathan Rose, a spokesman for SL Green, said the project would not be “sidetracked by frivolous litigation.”

One Vanderbilt has received broad support within the city, Mr. Rose said, “because of the project’s unprecedented commitment to improving the commutes for millions of New Yorkers and bringing state of the art office space to East Midtown.”

City officials declined to comment on the suit because they had not seen it. But Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for the mayor, said the rezoning and project were “critical” to the city’s future. An investment group led by Mr. Penson bought Grand Central for about $80 million in 2006. The terminal itself had little value, the lawsuit on Monday contended, because the building was under a long-term lease to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for a relatively modest rent that declines over time.

Mr. Penson was betting, however, that the 1.2 million square feet of air rights connected to the terminal, which he bought for less than $60 a square foot, could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in a real estate boom.

The lawsuit contended that the air rights were worth $880 per square foot, a not-unheard-of sum for luxury residential projects, but one that most commercial developers believed was prohibitive for an office building.

In 2012, the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a political independent, proposed rezoning the area around Grand Central for taller office towers.

Under the proposal, which was unsuccessful, developers could buy additional development rights from the city or from district property owners, like Mr. Penson.

Mr. Penson’s secret negotiations with SL Green to sell his air rights collapsed after the developer concluded his price was too high.

This year, Mr. de Blasio and the City Council approved a plan to rezone a smaller section of the district known as Vanderbilt corridor. SL Green was allowed to build a 65-story office tower on the block bound by Vanderbilt and Madison Avenues, between 42nd and 43rd Streets, in exchange for the transit work beneath Grand Central.

A full three-quarters of the top Manhattan cash buyers in the first half of the year had Asian surnames, according to the national market-watcher RealtyTrac.

The names Chen, Liu and Wong were the most common on the ranking of the top 20 cash buyers in Manhattan during the first six months of the year, RealtyTrac’s data show.

“Of the top 20 cash buyers in New York City, only five were non-Asian buyers, while the remaining 15 buyers were either overseas Asian buyers or Asian-heritage local buyers,” the company said in its September housing report.

The most common surname in China is “Li,” accounting for almost 7 percent of the population, according to Bloomberg.  “Chen” is No. 4 on the list.

Foreign direct investment in U.S. real estate rose to $104 billion in a 12-month period ending March 2015, a 10.4 percent rise over the prior year, according to an analysis published by the National Association of Realtors.

RealtyTrac’s ranking came from sales deed data, so it’s safe to assume that these are not the buyers purchasing properties through anonymous LLCs.

Earlier this year the New York Times published an investigative series scrutinizing LLC buyers at the Related Companies’ and AREA Property Partners’ Time Warner Center.

The newspaper found that over 80 percent of condo buys at the Time Warner Center were made by shell corporations. Shell companies own 77 percent of the condos at Gary Barnett’s One57 on Billionaires’ Row.

The practice of secret purchases has been criticized for enabling shady corporations and allegedly corrupt government to easily launder money through valuable real estate.

In response, the city instituted new rules in July requiring shell companies buying property to release the names of their members.

According to RealtyTrac’s data, the Chinese represent 16 percent of foreign buyers nationwide.

– See more at: http://therealdeal.com/blog/2015/09/24/majority-of-manhattan-cash-buyers-have-chinese-last-names-realtytrac/#sthash.4URBMO0T.dpuf

Sharif El-Gamal, who had planned to build a Islamic Center there, will build a 667-foot condominium, where units will sell for more than $3,000 per square foot.

It’s been four years since Manhattan developer Sharif El-Gamal shelved plans for a 15-story Islamic cultural center, near Ground Zero, that drew international debate. He’s looking to attract a different kind of attention for his current project on the site.

Mr. El-Gamal’s Soho Properties has proposed a 667-foot condominium tower at lower Manhattan’s 45 Park Place. The glass skyscraper, which has yet to break ground, will include at least 15 full-floor units of 3,200 to 3,700 square feet, and average prices higher than $3,000 a square foot, according to plans released to Bloomberg by the developer.

Prices at that level would be at least 13% more than the second-quarter average for new-development listings in the borough, according to Halstead Property Development Marketing. The ultra-luxury focus of the building highlights the newfound allure of lower Manhattan as an upscale destination, yet it comes amid growing concern about an oversupply of apartments for multimillionaire buyers.

“The tower is going to be a market-maker,” Mr. El-Gamal told us. “We’ve perfected a building that’s really going to share in a unique moment.”

Mr. El-Gamal’s original plans for an Islamic center and mosque at the lot—two blocks north of where the former World Trade Center towers stood—ignited a political controversy in 2010. Protesters called it the “Ground Zero mosque” and said its placement near the site of the deadliest terrorist attacks in U.S. history would be an insult to those who were killed there.

Then-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the project, citing religious freedom and the rights of private-property owners to develop their land as they see fit. (The former mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.)Downtown Renaissance

The community center plan was shelved in 2011 amid a struggle for financing and Mr. El-Gamal’s choice to seek more community input, he said. Now he’s seeking to take advantage of Manhattan’s luxury-condo boom and a downtown renaissance that has sent home prices up 28 percent since 2012.

The median price of apartments that sold in the area south of Chambers Street this year was $1.15 million, a 6.4 percent increase from all of 2014, according to StreetEasy, a property- data website. In 2012, the lower Manhattan median was $895,530. The area has gained 3,000 residents since that year, according to the Alliance for Downtown New York, a business-improvement group.

For Mr. El-Gamal, it’s been a long road toward building the tower, which is scheduled for completion in 2017. He bought the lot in 2009 for $4.85 million, according to public records. The project has $350 million in preconstruction financing from Madison Realty Capital, and construction loans probably will be in place by the fourth quarter, he said.

The developer anticipates breaking ground before the end of the year, with sales starting in early 2016. The plans and pricing are under review by the state attorney general’s office and aren’t officially approved yet.

“Every day that we’ve been waiting, the market has been getting stronger and showing incredible signs of resilience,” Mr. El-Gamal said. “The appreciation and absorption this market is showing is unprecedented.”

Supply surge

About 5,500 units are being planned or are under construction in the area south of Chambers Street, according to the Downtown Alliance. Elsewhere in Manhattan, developers, including Toll Brothers and HFZ Capital Group’s Ziel Feldman, are shifting toward less-pricey condos because the surge in new units has been priced at levels that only the ultra-wealthy can afford.

“There’s growing concern about the volume of new units coming on line that are targeting a fairly narrow bandwidth,” said Jonathan Miller, president of New York appraiser Miller Samuel. “There are already a number of projects with big units online now, so it might be a little late to the party, especially with the recent trend of unit size reductions to lower the actual asking price.”

Mr. El-Gamal sees a rosier picture of a neighborhood in which a penthouse in the Woolworth tower is listed for $110 million, luxury retailers are opening stores, and such media and technology companies as Conde Nast and Time are relocating. His project will still have a lower price per square foot, on average, than the towers being constructed on midtown’s 57th Street, a corridor that’s been dubbed Billionaire’s Row, he said.

Unobstructed views

The planned 70-story skyscraper, with varying tiers of balconies slightly offset from its core, was designed by Michel Abboud, founder of New York architectural firm SOMA, who likened its silhouette to a “mini condensed New York skyline.” Ismael Leyva Architects is translating Mr. Abboud’s exterior design concepts into floor layouts and detailed construction plans.

Unobstructed views to the north begin at close to 300 feet, above which all the apartments will be full-floor units with private elevators, Mr. Abboud said. Those homes will have 12-foot floor-to-ceiling windows, offering panoramic views of Midtown, the Hudson River, and the Statue of Liberty. Two duplex penthouses will sit on the uppermost floors of the skyscraper.

“The surrounding buildings have these slope-y crowns and spires,” Mr. Abboud said. “We wanted the silhouette of our building to stand out against that background and reflect that it was a residential building.”Pool, Concierge

Amenities aim to evoke a five-star hotel, with a 50-foot swimming pool in the basement, concierge service, and a high- ceilinged private lounge, Mr. Abboud said.

Adjacent to the tower, Soho Properties will build a public plaza connected to a three-story Islamic museum and prayer space to be designed by architect Jean Nouvel, Mr. El-Gamal said.

He estimates that by the time the condo tower opens, the offices at the World Trade Center buildings will be filled with tenants, and retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue will have opened lower Manhattan locations.

“The center of gravity is shifting toward downtown, and we are literally in the heart of this new downtown,” Mr. El-Gamal said. “Once all the scaffolding is down, and once all the office space is leased, this will be the most significant residential neighborhood in New York City.”