Aerial Location...
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New condo tower planned at 160 East 22nd Street
01-MAR-07
The Kaish & Taub Development Group Corporation of which Norman Kaish and Leonard Taub are principals has begun marketing for a 21-story residential condominium building it is developing at 160 East 22nd Street.
The building has been designed by Kutnicki Bernstein, which also designed 154 Attorney Street on the Lower East Side for Kaish & Taub.
The new project is on the southwest corner at Third Avenue and will feature many corner windows and balconies and will have a few setbacks.
The building, which also has an address of 280 Third Avenue, will have a 24-hour concierge, a screening room, and an "outdoor zen garden."
UBS Real Estate Investments Inc. of New York gave Gramercy Park Land LLC in care of Kaish & Taub a $30,500,000 mortgage on the property last August and construction is expected to begin next year.
Mr. Kaish told CityRealty.com today that the development is "as-of-right," that is, it requires no special permits or zoning variances. He said it will contain 110 to 120 apartments and that the project is still in design.
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No doubt there will soon be TWO BIG BLANK WALLS facing off from opposite ends of this block -- anticipating the in-fill to come.
Posting
They Didn’t Use a Shoehorn
Kutnicki Bernstein Architects
WRAPAROUND CONSTRUCTION A rendering of 160 East 22nd Street shows how the developer of a 21-story condo will adapt to longtime residents who refuse to go away.
By C. J. HUGHES
Published: January 20, 2008
NEW YORK land is pricey — now about $450 a square foot in prime Manhattan neighborhoods — and so are the steel, lumber and concrete needed to put up something new. In order to turn the kinds of profits that make such costly construction worth their while, developers are masterly at squeezing a lot of building into a little space.
But what happens when the neighbors don’t play along and the blueprints need tweaking? The 21-story condominium planned for 160 East 22nd Street, at Third Avenue near Gramercy Park, shows how resourceful a developer can be.
Lenny Taub, a partner in the New York-based firm of Kaish & Taub, owns much of the block; the resistant building was 274 Third Avenue, a three-story yellow stucco structure whose ground floor contains a bar and a fortune teller.
Unable to strike a deal to buy the building, which would sit flush against his own, Mr. Taub abandoned the idea of a single condo tower filling the entire space. Instead he hatched a plan for a tower on one side of No. 274 and, eventually, a small six-unit structure on the other.
To create the tower, he plans to build over the top of No. 274, extending a 3,000-square-foot deck from the condo’s sixth floor. That surface will include a fitness center with an outdoor pool.
Upstairs, there will be 71 one-, two- and three-bedrooms, ranging from 800 to 1,500 square feet in size, and although Mr. Taub’s offering plan awaits state approval, he expects the units to be priced at $1.2 million to $2.25 million. Demolition to make way for the $100 million building begins in two weeks, he said.
Not all holdouts need to be skirted; some can actually be incorporated.
That’s the approach being taken by the 21-story 145-room Cooper Square Hotel at East Fifth Street. A four-story brick tenement adjacent to the hotel — unlike three other buildings on the lot — is not being razed, because its tenants wouldn’t relocate.
Those longtime residents will remain on the building’s top two floors, said Matthew Moss, a principal of the New York-based Peck Moss Hotel Group, the developer. But hotel offices will occupy its second floor and basement, while a library complete with fireplace will take up the 775-square-foot ground-floor space. Hotel guests will be able to reach it via the lobby.
Mr. Moss says he considers it an asset that guests in the $100 million hotel, which opens this summer, may peer down on a tenement roof where laundry is being hung out to dry.
“That’s the kind of thing people want to see,” he said.
Piggybacking new high-rises on top of older structures can sometimes produce a lopsided effect. One example of that is Graceline Court, a 16-story concrete-and-aluminum condo rising at 106 West 116th Street, off Malcolm X Boulevard, in West Harlem. Its bottom five stories are 40 feet wide. But at the sixth story, it drastically widens, bumping out 20 feet over the roof of the mosque next door. Its final 11 stories, at 60 feet wide, might be viewed by some as top-heavy.
Because of the cantilever, the Graceline can add 11,900 square feet to what would otherwise have been just 38,000. That is a significant amount of extra space, said Peter Murray, a principal with Loewen Development, based in Larchmont, N.Y.
Mr. Murray wouldn’t disclose the condo’s development costs, but its 32 apartments, from 630-square-foot one-bedrooms to 1,700-square-foot three-bedrooms, are priced at $500,000 to $1.5 million. And over the last eight months, 50 percent have sold, a pace that Mr. Murray ascribes in part to the condo’s shoehorn-dependent design.
“Curb appeal is important,” he said, “people say that this is a very cool building.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
That looks atrocious...what a shame.
They should it stick with the original plan. Even so, by taking more properties, they are still going to built a 21-story thing?
Call me the odd one out, but I find this kind of interesting. A lot better than a standard condo stack. Having a quirk isn't a bad thing.
^ Bingo!
I agree. That little building will live on, to give a small bit of warmth to that cold stretch of glass and a foil to all of that monotony.
Won't see any businesses like that in the new building, that's for sure!the resistant building was 274 Third Avenue, a three-story yellow stucco structure whose ground floor contains a bar and a fortune teller.
Are there any sketchier businesses in NYC than those street-level fortune teller establishments? Rents for those in prime locations can't be cheap. And I hardly ever see anyone sitting at the table getting a palm read.
Makes ya wonder, eh?
I guess that roof won't be leaking any more.
I agree with ablarc and macreator. Keeping the small building makes for an interesting and rare contrast. Reminds me of something going up near Cooper Square.
Also: I think the rendering makes the building look squatter than it will actually be. Just compare it to some of the previous renderings that show the full height.
I like it too. It's just quirky enough and something you don't see very often, to be interesting. Certainly better than that striped tower next block down.
What's puzzling is how they can build over another property without having at least acquired its air rights.
Yeah, kinda like looking at zoo animals.Mr. Moss says he considers it an asset that guests in the $100 million hotel, which opens this summer, may peer down on a tenement roof where laundry is being hung out to dry.
“That’s the kind of thing people want to see,” he said.![]()
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