Another High-End Gym Arrives

 

A Greenwich Village parking garage at 12 E. 13th St. between University Place and Fifth Avenue will be transformed into eight large condominiums, in another sign of the city’s booming ultra-luxury market.

The building, which sold for $32 million in 2012, will feature eight apartments—a mix of full-floor units and duplexes—with expected asking prices range from $7.5 million to $28.5 million for the top triplex, according to the project’s developers. Occupancy is expected by the end of 2014.

The project is a joint development by DHA Capital LLC and Continental Properties.

The developers plan to add four more floors to the eight-story building, which was built in 1930. A portion of the rear will be demolished and replaced with the new stories, and it will also receive a new façade with elongated bricks to make the windows wider.

The 10th, 11th and 12th floors will make up one triplex, while all of the ninth and part of the eighth floor will make up a duplex with an asking price of $18 million. The building will be topped by a glass structure being added as part of the 6,000-square-foot triplex penthouse.

The building will feature a 24-hour concierge, an automated parking system, a small gym, individual storage space and street-level retail.

The building is currently undergoing demolition, and reconstruction work will begin in a month or two.

Steven Fisch of Continental Properties, a family business started by his father in 1957, said this was their first joint venture with DHA Capital LLC, and the two groups looked at other properties before deciding on this one.

“One major factor was the size of the block, the location obviously, and the ability to do something very special, to create almost a work of art with full-floor condos,” said Mr. Fisch. “It’s very hard to find a 67-foot-wide building.”

Mr. Fisch said the two groups decided to create an ultra-high-end luxury building rather than smaller, more affordable apartments because there has been very strong demand for this type of housing over the past five years, and a shortage of supply.

He said they also wanted to distinguish themselves from large buildings featuring 150 and 200 apartments.

“It is in a location, and a time in New York City, when this can happen,” said Mr. Fisch.

Richard Cantor, a principal at Cantor-Pecorella, is marketing the condos. Mr. Cantor said none had been sold yet, but the ultra high-end luxury residential market is very strong.

“There’s been a huge uptick in prices in the high end, it’s a very strong market,” said Mr. Cantor.

He said the building doesn’t have a “pretentious” name, and is just known by its address to keep it simple.

The last tenant at the 45,000-square-foot parking garage was Hertz Rental Car, which vacated once its lease expired.

As you’re well aware, the demolition and construction of The New School site at 65 Fifth Avenue is well underway. On Thursday, The New School revealed for the first time the official design of the building, which includes some of the elements from its earliest sketches, such as the exposed staircases, but is different in two notable ways: the building is smaller than originally planned, and it is partially class in brass, rather than entirely in glass.

The building is being constructed as of right. There is no more debate over design or size. This is pretty much what we’re going to see: a university hub of about 16 stories with eight floors of campus space topped by a smaller eight floors of dormitory housing for 600 students.

To get caught up on what the building looks like and see many photos of the model, click here.

To read the somewhat positive New York Times architecture critic’s review, click here.

A neighbor attended the public viewing of the model and came away with some great facts:

–The loading dock is on 13th street at the eastern most corner of the lot.

–The main entrance to the building is on the southwest corner. This is for everything except the dormitories.

–The dormitory entrance is on 5th avenue, about 1/3 of the way down from 14th street.

–The northern 1/3 of the building at street level is retail – no word on what though.

–Directly above the retail is a cafeteria. It looks like seating for 300, which makes sense considering the 600 person dormitory.

–The dormitory floors are set back on all sides, and shaped in a ‘C’ with a light well on the eastern side of the stack. They are four bed suites, with kitchenettes in them.

–The set-back between the lower and upper halves is a green roof, and they say that for liability reasons it will not be open to the general building population. Pressing on this, and the answer was that while the green roof hasn’t been engineered yet, it is likely going to be possible to have foot traffic on it and will perhaps be open to supervised use (during a class, or for an experiment of some kind). (So no midnight keg parties, we hope.)

The green roof is at the level of 7 East 13^th St/10 East 14^th St, so about the same height as our roof.

— It looks like it’s designed to keep students inside the building, and not loitering on the street. The canopies are small, and the doors aren’t inset, so there isn’t any natural gathering space just outside on the sidewalk.

We hope that this brings everyone up to date on a project that will be a big part of the pulse of the neighborhood for the next two years….and beyond.

There has been some grumbling over the fact that the city may give the pavilion at the north end of Union Square Park over to a private entity to run a restaurant in and around it. We’ll see how that turns out, but in the meantime, some renderings have been revealed.

Farewell soon to Benny’s Laundry on 13th St., just the latest small business to fall to rapidly rising rents. Sigh.

 

Now open in the former D’Agostino’s location is Agata and Velentina, a high-end grocery store with an Italian flair. Lots of meats, cheeses, and prepared foods. Prices sort of on a par with Garden of Eden. One gripe: the store layout forces you to follow a single path and the result can be crowding and claustrophobia at certain times of the day. Try it out.