Reply With QuoteThis is very good news, but construction will not start this year, its on the right track so to speak, but its not quite there yet.Originally Posted by New York Daily News
New York Daily News:
18M puts High Line on track
Elva Ramirez
The conversion of the old High Line tracks into an elevated West Side park is $18 million closer to reality, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan) announced yesterday.
"I love the idea of New Yorkers being able to move blocks and blocks through Manhattan without encountering a single car, bus or truck," Clinton said in announcing the congressional funding.
The 1.45 mile-long elevated rails that run from W. 34th St. to Gansevoort St. have not seen a train since 1980.
The nonprofit Friends of the High Line has lobbied for six years to turn the structure into an open green space mixed with commercial and retail uses.
Nearly $68 million of the estimated $100 million budget is now in place, and ground-breaking on the project is expected this year.
This is very good news, but construction will not start this year, its on the right track so to speak, but its not quite there yet.
The Museum at the End of the Line
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/ar...a+fHxCX2NedU/g
A digital image from a preliminary design for the conversion of the High Line, once an elevated railway, into a park and commercial space. Made before Dia's proposal, it shows the corner the museum is to develop.
By CAROL VOGEL
Published: August 7, 2005
GAZING at a derelict shell of a building in the meatpacking district of Manhattan one recent rainy morning, Michael Govan was imagining a not-so-distant future when the Dia Art Foundation will make its home there.
"I'm a light fanatic," Mr. Govan, the foundation's director, said. "We plan to keep the structure low so that it will have open views to the north and light from the Hudson River on the west." He gestured from underneath his umbrella. "Most of the galleries will have north-facing skylights."
It is hard to picture a distinguished exhibition space in this booming neighborhood, a strange mix of trendy nightclubs, expensive boutiques and industrial meat lockers. But for Dia, that is the dream - one it hopes to realize in as little as two years at an estimated cost of $33 million.
The dream did not start that way. Eighteen months ago, Dia closed its two exhibition spaces on the westernmost block of West 22nd Street in Chelsea for a full-scale renovation to address chronic problems like leaky roofs, an antiquated elevator and a lack of air-conditioning. But once the project got under way, foundation officials realized that it would cost upward of $8 million to make the buildings - a four-story warehouse and a converted garage across the street - work. Even then, they say, neither would have afforded the kind of vast open space Dia wanted.
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York TimesA view of Dan Graham's "Rooftop Urban Park Project: Two Way Mirror Cylinder Inside Cube, " at Dia's former Chelsea space.
So from Harlem to the financial district, Mr. Govan began scouring Manhattan in search of a sprawling new home. Then he heard about 820 Washington Street, just a stone's throw from the High Line, an abandoned elevated railway overgrown by weeds and wild shrubbery.
That melancholic landscape, which the city was re-envisioning as an elongated park, was crucial to Dia's decision to relocate in the meatpacking district. Plans now call for the foundation's galleries to be contiguous and level with the park, allowing visitors to gaze upon lush greenery while soaking up contemporary art.
In an age when name-brand architects are building museums around the world that are as much a statement as the art they house, Dia's plan for its new space seems oddly modest. Rather than hire a celebrity architect, Dia enlisted Roger Duffy, a partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill who has worked on other projects with the foundation and is known for his low-key designs.
If the city, which owns the site, approves Dia's design plans, the building will be a plain two-story structure with 34,000 square feet of gallery space spread over two floors. Meat markets will operate at ground level on its west side.
The new building's understated look is in keeping with the pioneering spirit and style of Dia, which opened in Chelsea in 1987, more than a decade before contemporary art galleries began their stampede into the neighborhood. This move will make it the only cultural institution amid the 1.5 miles of the High Line, one whose visitors can enter it directly from the park.
But Dia officials don't see this as much of a gamble.
"We brought people to Chelsea in the beginning," recalled Lynne Cooke, Dia's curator. "Then Chelsea grew up around us." She predicts that the new site will attract more visitors, both those who now frequent Chelsea's art galleries and people trooping along the 22-block High Line, which will run all the way north to the 30's.
After all, Dia has pulled off more improbable feats. Two years ago, when it opened a 31-acre outpost along the Hudson River in Beacon, N.Y., many in the museum world doubted that it would draw much of an audience. Today, that giant, sky-lighted museum, with 250,000 square feet of gallery space devoted to installations of works by artists who emerged in the 1960's and 70's, attracts almost 100,000 visitors a year, more than twice the number Dia ever drew in Chelsea.
While large-scale museum projects tend to cause a neighborhood uproar as soon as they are announced, Dia has met with no such resistance since it publicized its Washington Street plans in May.
Neighborhood advocates are quick to explain why. One of the community's biggest fears, said Jo Hamilton, co-chairwoman and co-founder of the group Save Gansevoort Market, is being overwhelmed by too much night life. "In 2001 and 2002 we fought the Jean Nouvel residential tower," she recalled, referring to a proposal for an apartment building of more than 30 stories that was scaled back and later abandoned. "Back then, we discussed the beginnings of a 24-hour neighborhood. There are something like 44 liquor licenses within 400 square feet."
"So to bring in Dia makes it a more rounded neighborhood, helping to anchor it in a good way," she said.
A longtime protégé and former deputy of Thomas Krens, the maverick director of the Guggenheim Museum and its far-flung satellites, Mr. Govan is accustomed to negotiating with neighborhoods, from the Upper East Side to SoHo to the Basque city of Bilbao.
Yet Dia could well be described as the art world's un-Guggenheim. Both institutions are developing a network of spaces; both embrace contemporary art. But while Mr. Krens has pursued outposts around the world designed by big-name architects like Enrique Norten and Frank Gehry, Mr. Govan is fashioning a network of spaces closer to home that are as unobtrusive as possible.
"It's the inside that counts," he said.
And while Mr. Krens routinely shuttles exhibitions and collections from one Guggenheim to the next, from Manhattan to Bilbao to Berlin to St. Petersburg, Dia prefers that each of its spaces foster its own distinct artistic program. Like its Chelsea spaces, Dia's Washington Street galleries will feature site-specific installations by contemporary artists that will stay a minimum of six months.
In addition to its Beacon outpost, the foundation also oversees site-specific art installations like Walter De Maria's "New York Earth Room" and "Broken Kilometer" in Manhattan and "Lightning Field" in New Mexico; and with support from the Lannon Foundation, Michael Heizer's "City Project" in Nevada and Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" earth sculpture in Utah. Dia also oversees the Dan Flavin Art Institute in Bridgehampton, N.Y., and works closely with Donald Judd's Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Tex., the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and the Cy Twombly Gallery in Houston.
Created in 1974, Dia was never meant to be a conventional art institution. Its founders - the German art dealer Heiner Friedrich; his wife, the Houston arts patron Philippa de Menil; and Helen Winkler, a Houston art historian - simply bought works by artists they loved, like Flavin, Judd, Mr. de Maria, Joseph Beuys, Warhol, Mr. Twombly, John Chamberlain and Fred Sandback.
The foundation has carried on in the same tradition, focusing on specific artists who took off in the 60's and 70's and who revel in large scale. It has added major sculptures by Richard Serra, Judd and Mr. Heizer; it commissioned a series of eight paintings by Agnes Martin before her death last year. In Beacon, it opened three galleries of works by Robert Ryman dating from 1958 to 2003.
Not everyone agrees that this focus is good. Michael Rips, a writer and lawyer who provided pro bono counsel to Dia in the late 1990's, described the foundation as "a difficult place to get involved if you feel you want to influence the direction of the collection."
"Their focus relative to other museums is rather narrow," he said. "That structural limitation has an effect on who they are able to convince to go on the board and how long they are willing to remain on the board."
In 1996, the foundation's chairman, Ashton Hawkins, resigned, and nearly half of the trustees followed him, citing a loss of confidence in Mr. Govan. The departures coincided with the start of a $12 million fund-raising campaign to establish a permanent endowment to erase Dia's $750,000 deficit and provide operating funds. Since then, Mr. Govan has cultivated a new generation of board members and has raised about $10 million each year.
Recently the board has expanded to include some of today's new contemporary-art collectors and philanthropists, like James M. Allwin, president of AetosCapital, a Manhattan investment firm; Timothy Mott, a founder of Electronic Arts, the video game company; Bradford J. Race, a lawyer who was the former chief of staff for Gov. George E. Pataki; and the Manhattan collector Nathalie de Gunzburg. So far Dia has raised more than half the $55 million it needs to build its new space and to form the separate endowment for Manhattan programming. The biggest benefactor by far has been Leonard Riggio, chairman of Barnes & Noble, who has been Dia's chairman since 1998. He donated some $30 million toward the Beacon site and over the years has helped finance such acquisitions as "Torqued Ellipses," three monumental steel sculptures by Richard Serra.
Carrie Boretz for The New York TimesRichard Serra's "Torqued Ellipses" at Dia: Beacon.
Mr. Govan, for his part, does not see Dia's mission as limiting. "Our program in New York is all about commissioning contemporary art," he countered, and "it hasn't been hard attracting board members."
What has been difficult, he said, is securing corporate sponsorship for Dia's programs. "We don't travel shows," he explained. "Nor do we do theme or group exhibitions, which is what most corporate sponsors want these days."
Given Dia's maverick status, Mr. Govan bristles at any suggestion that crowds or expansion is the foundation's overriding priority. "As an institution, we've always had the same three-part plan," he said. "The first was to put the permanent collection on view and grow it. Then, to complete and provide public access to projects out west. And finally, to continue what we have done in Chelsea."
The decision to abandon Chelsea was not easy, Dia officials say. It was the success of Beacon, with its sprawling, naturally lighted galleries and enthusiastic visitors, that opened their eyes. Over time, the reality of what Dia had achieved there made the limitations of the Chelsea buildings seem "even more glaring," said Ann Tenenbaum, Dia's vice chairman.
The flow within its main space, a four-story renovated warehouse, was too awkward to accommodate its 60,000 annual visitors. The former garage across the street could not easily be adapted for screening big video and sound works. "As the nature of art changes, we have to be able to change, too," Mr. Govan said.
Fleetingly, Dia's board considered giving up New York altogether, he noted. "But we'd miss the pulse of the city," he said. "The artists feed off each other."
And when Mr. Govan found the space on Washington Street, he said, it felt right. For one thing, the Beacon and the meatpacking-district site would be symbolically linked. "There's a nice poetry to the fact that the rail and the river connect these two spaces that once connected them in their industrial past," Mr. Govan said.
Ms. Tenenbaum said that Mr. Govan's proposal provoked lively discussion among the board members, but that nobody opposed it. "Everyone loved the idea of being in a different neighborhood," she said. "We like being pioneers."
At the moment, Dia hasn't decided whether to sell the Chelsea buildings, which Mr. Govan estimates are worth about $20 million, or lease them. But those assets could provide a cushion, enabling the foundation to add to its endowment or expand its programs' support. Mr. Govan speculated that the buildings' value could be harnessed to finance a separate endowment for the programs in its new space.
Meanwhile, the foundation is conducting feasibility studies on an expansion of the Beacon site, home to its permanent collection. Although the galleries there are unusually large, some works cannot be displayed, in some cases because of the placement of the building's structural columns. Dia envisions the creation of 70,000 square feet of additional exhibition space at Beacon within a series of pavilions designed by Peter Zumthor, a Swiss architect. That way it could exhibit, say, Mr. de Maria's "360° I Ching," (1981), an installation of 64 elements in a square grid surrounded by 64 elements in a circle; and some monumental towers by Louise Bourgeois.
However the Beacon site changes, the success it has already become, and the role he has played in it, seem to have whetted Mr. Riggio's appetite for the meatpacking-district move. And his support, of course, is crucial. "The idea of capping the High Line with a building only two stories high is great," he said. "It's the same architecture and northern light as Beacon."
At this point, Mr. Govan said it was still too early to say exactly what the new building will look like. No materials have been chosen, but it is clear that Dia officials envision a no-frills design. The new galleries will be simple, large, uninterrupted spaces. Mr. Govan said he saw the main gallery, conjoining the High Line, as "a factorylike space," roughly more than 200 feet long and more than 100 feet wide.
And with the added space, the foundation will be able to commission more ambitious projects, allowing the art to dominate its green and gritty surroundings.
High times along the High Line
New condos rise with park views
Christopher Mathieson, managing
partner of JC DeNiro & Associates, stands
above the future High Line park
(right, background).
By Tom Acitelli
September 2005
An elevated promenade could be the ribbon that unwinds through Manhattan's next hot neighborhood, changing what it means to live 'on the park.'
The area of West Chelsea around 10th Avenue to 11th Avenue, from 16th Street north to 30th Street, could in the next few years see some of the briskest condo development of any area in Manhattan. And much of that development will happen around what's being called the High Line, a 6.7-acre span of former elevated train track running 22 blocks ending at 34th Street that's expected to become a park.
Groundbreaking is slated by the end of 2005, and nearly $70 million in public funds has already been allocated for development.
The pending park and a recent rezoning of the area by the city have united like weather fronts over most of West Chelsea to help rain development on a neighborhood dominated by high-rise rentals and aging manufacturing and commercial space.
"Dating back 10 or 12 years ago, it was strictly kind of a gritty, warehouse area," said Stuart Siegel, managing director at Grubb & Ellis, which is marketing a new 20-story commercial condo building called the Chelsea Arts Tower on West 25th Street, an office and art gallery development among the many residential projects set to rise.
Siegel has worked in the area for more than a dozen years. "It was kind of a blighted area," he said. "Not much money had been spent in the buildings."
The site for the Chelsea Arts Tower, which is going up on a former parking lot, was bought for $9 million, said Siegel, who helped broker the land deal. The glass and concrete tower, set to open in early 2006, will feature galleries and terraces for exhibits and collections, with some of the space projected to sell for up to $1,000 a square foot.
Other developments bolster the story of West Chelsea's emergence.
There's 555 West 23rd Street, two new luxury rental buildings with 337 units being redesigned by Andi Pepper and Stephen B. Jacobs as condos. One-bedrooms, according to the New York Post, will start at $550,000 and two-bedrooms could go as high as $1.6 million. Douglaston Development topped out the buildings just this spring, making their short lives as rentals a telling example of the rush to capitalize on West Chelsea's changing residential face.
The former eyesore that's become a beacon for the neighborhood has lent its name to another bright spot, the Highline 519. The project at 519 West 23rd Street features 11 floor-through condos marketed by Prudential Douglas Elliman. Although it's about one block from its namesake, Andy Gerringer, director of Elliman's development marketing, said the Highline 519 was started more than two years ago, "before all the hoopla about the High Line became serious."
Studios there will start at around $700,000 and two-bedrooms may go as high as $1.75 million. These prices are well above Manhattan norms: The average sales price was $380,073 for a studio in the second quarter 2005, according to appraisal firm Miller Samuel, and $1.54 million for a two-bedroom.
The Related Companies is also planning a residential building between 16th and 17th streets on the east side of 10th Avenue, fronting the High Line. Further south, a new luxury hotel is planned at Little West 12th and Washington streets. Developed by Andre Balazs' Hotels AB, it will be dubbed the Standard, New York. Details remain scarce, but Polshek Partnership has been named as the architect.
Overall, between 7,200 and 10,000 new residential units may be built in West Chelsea in the next seven to 10 years, according to broker estimates. As many as 900 could spring up within a single square block, around 23rd Street between 10th and 11th avenues.
"It's really going to be creating a whole entire neighborhood onto itself," said Christopher Mathieson, managing partner at JC DeNiro & Associates, which is nearly doubling the size of its Ninth Avenue office in anticipation of the residential influx.
As Mathieson drove down the West Side Highway in early August, rolling past recent residential developments in the West Village, he posed a question he thinks many will soon ask about 10th and 11th avenues farther north.
"It'll be the same way for West Chelsea," he said, pointing out newer high-rises in the West Village. "People will say, 'Remember when nothing was here?'"
Copyright © 2003-2005 The Real Deal.
These are from my recent trip to Paris where I saw the Promenade Plantee (Paris' Highline)...
^Oh very cool... Thanks for the photos! That Pari's Highline one looks amazing!
All the pictures are of the Promenade, it may be hard to tell. Some were taken on top of the actual 'park' while the first and last were from the ground.
High Line High-Rise Surprise!
Towers Pop Up; Even Gehry’s In
HIGH-RISE CHELSEA DRAMA High Line 519
(above) may lack a view, but hotelier Andre Balazs
gets to see Uma Thurman every night.
By Matthew Schuerman, Michael Calderone
September 7, 2005
Benigno Serrano bought 12,350 square feet adjacent to Chelsea’s High Line for just $900,000 in 1986.
Last year, he turned down $10 million for it. This year, a developer named Alf Naman finally got it for $12.5 million, according to city transfer records.
And that’s just the beginning. Welcome to the great High Line development cash-in! While the elevated railway itself is still just a rusty, weed-covered insurance liability, speculators and developers are already squeezing money from it. The towers of West Chelsea are on their way!
The developer who lost out on Mr. Serrano’s property is David Kislin. He’s building a 12-story condo tower called High Line 519 on an adjacent property that he purchased two years ago. High Line 519? “We had wanted to create a name with some association with the neighborhood, but something more than just the address. We considered something tied to history, but it didn’t really fit,” Mr. Kislin said. “New Yorkers are not that big on history. I am a huge history buff, but this name is looking forward.”
The architect on the building is up-and-comer Lindy Roy, who devised a sleek, glassy façade with geometric screens that function as railings for the French doors that open—watch it now—directly onto 23rd Street. Prices range from $860,000 to $3.4 million. Five of the 11 units are already sold.
For that price, you get large windows on the front and back. But the cut-outs that promotional materials show in the kitchens, living rooms and bathrooms—the ones that would actually look onto the High Line itself—will, it seems, be blocked by another tower.
Mr. Serrano sold that property, the one wedged between High Line 519 and the actual High Line, to his $12.5 million bidder, Alf Naman. And Mr. Naman is planning to build his own 12-story residential tower on the narrow sliver of land there.
Mr. Serrano’s not exactly grateful for his own windfall. “I wish anybody who got involved in it took a long walk on a short pier,” he said. “People can’t afford a studio around here, because it’s too much ****ing money.”
While Mr. Naman concedes that the coming High Line will increase property values nearby, he argues that his land would have been worth even more had the elevated railroad been knocked down and a full-scale tower built there instead. “Developers and owners gave up a lot by agreeing to sign on to the High Line,” he said.
But the prize for the most dramatic change of heart goes to a parking-lot and storage-facility operator in the area, Jerry Gottesman, who formed the Chelsea Property Owners about 15 years ago to force the High Line’s owner, CSX Transportation, to tear down the structure. (The rail line, which runs from Gansevoort Street to West 34th Street, mostly between 10th and 11th avenues, hadn’t been in use since 1980.)
Back then, the Giuliani administration sided with these folks and asked the federal government to condemn it. It took artful negotiations by the Bloomberg administration—and much fund-raising and civic canoodling by a park-obsessed group of do-gooders—to reverse that course and persuade opponents to give up their fight.
Under the rezoning passed by the City Council in June, Mr. Gottesman and other owners like him will be able to transfer or sell development rights for the parcels underneath and adjacent to the rail line so that they can build even higher on parcels farther away. So Mr. Gottesman became a developer instead. The status of his project is unclear, and neither he nor others at his company, Edison Properties, returned telephone messages.
But the chairman of the local community board, Lee Compton, said board members have seen plans, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, for two towers, one 290 feet high and the other 390 feet, for a parcel to the west of the High Line between 17th and 18th streets.
Small developers like Mr. Naman and Mr. Kislin know that their projects will benefit a lot if the High Line corridor can somehow distinguish itself architecturally from other luxury-condo ghettoes around the city. So in addition to boutique names like Roy and Denari, it’s important to get some real flash in the pan.
Enter the master! Frank Gehry’s first building in New York, the InterActivCorp Headquarters, is going up a half-block away from the High Line, just over on 11th Avenue between 18th and 19th streets. “It’s always been an area that has had a great deal of potential, and it’s one we have lots of confidence in,” said Joe Rose, a partner in the Georgetown Company, who is developing the project for InterActiveCorp, the massive media conglomerate that owns Ticketmaster, Expedia and Match.com.
That “confidence” may mean that Mr. Gehry’s first building, which should be completed by late 2006, may soon be joined by others.
Georgetown and Mr. Gehry may collaborate on two residential buildings just to the east of the IAC headquarters and adjacent to the High Line. Mr. Rose refused to give any specifics regarding his company’s future plans.
But Mr. Compton, the community-board chairman, said he participated in two video conference calls about the project with Mr. Gehry’s office, including one with the great architect himself. One building could go as high as 250 feet.
The Related Companies also has a project in the works, according to Mr. Compton and other officials, for the east side of 10th Avenue between 16th and 17th streets. It would also max out at 250 feet.
It’s the little sky-high strip of neighborhood that could!
One reason the zoning permits the Edison, Georgetown and Related buildings to go so high is that the companies get bonuses for ponying up. The three developers will give $22 million to the city, to be used to restore the portions of the High Line passing through their sites. In addition, the three developers have agreed to construct stairways, elevators, public restrooms and a storage shed for the park, according to a city planning official.
“A lot of people at first said that this would be great if it happened, but it’s never going to happen,” said Robert Hammond, who, with friend Joshua David, co-founded the group Friends of the High Line, which conceived of the park concept. “When people realized it was going to happen, they realized it was a great asset.”
“I don’t think it’s even important if [a building] looks out onto the High Line,” Mr. Hammond said. “It’s like Gramercy Park—you don’t have to look out onto the park, but it will increase your property values if you live near enough to get keys.” Mmhmm!
The tasty quid pro quo arrangements don’t extend south of 16th Street, since that area wasn’t affected by the rezoning. Still, developers down there in the meatpacking district are building up and over the High Line.
At 14th Street, the High Line Building will use an existing base spanning the rail line as a foundation for a 10-story office and retail edifice. Hotelier André Balazs is creating a 15-story hotel to span the rails at 848 Washington Street. The flashy owner of the upscale Chateau Marmont in Hollywood and Hotel Mercer in Soho is excited about developing a moderately priced hotel around the unique structure.
“Because we always do very site-specific places, the High Line is front and center in the entire conceptualization of this building,” said Mr. Balazs.
“No matter what you do—even if you are building from the ground up—you do have this fascinating train track running through your building,” he continued. “While it is obviously a new building in terms of its complexity, I think it is closer to a renovation.”
Reportedly, Mr. Balazs planned to build the first hotel of his Standard hotel chain in Manhattan a few years back at 210 Lafayette Street. But he opted against it, deciding to build the hotel on the High Line, utilizing the Soho land instead to develop One Kenmare Square, his 53-unit luxury condominium currently nearing completion.
Last summer, Mr. Balazs purchased two buildings at 454 West 13th Street and 856 Washington Street for $18 million, according to city records.
Initially, there was speculation that Mr. Balazs had chosen Gluckman Mayner Architects for the High Line project, the firm responsible for the Lafayette Street project. Despite some renderings that floated around popular real-estate blogs, Mr. Balazs ended up choosing Polshek Partnership Architects, whose work he describes at “elegant” and “flexible,” while emphasizing a “culture of collaboration.”
But there was one more additional requirement: The architect had to be Manhattan-based, preferably within walking distance. “In my mind, it was a given that whoever we picked had to be local,” Mr. Balazs said.
Speaking of locality, the Standard will be built just a few blocks from the glitzy Hotel Gansevoort, which opened in March 2004. However, Mr. Balazs’ hotel will be far less expensive than its luxurious neighbor. At the Gansevoort, rooms begin at $325; the Standard will provide accommodations starting at a third of the price.
After completing demolition of the industrial buildings three months ago, Mr. Balazs is looking forward to finalizing the hotel’s plans. However, other than admitting that he will lay the foundation in January 2006, he was unwilling to provide any juicy details.
West Chelsea, nurtured by the white-walled galleries lining the streets, has been a good place to drop a few million for several years now. The next luxury residential development to actually arrive, the Chelsea Arts Tower, is slated to open on West 25th Street in early 2006. The glass and concrete tower will reportedly offer to sell for about $1,000 per square foot. It’s indisputable that the High Line Park plan has made land underneath the structure suddenly valuable, but whether it will make the finished products on either side any more expensive than other Chelsea real estate is, well, speculation.
copyright © 2005 the new york observer, L.P.
^ What do you mean? If you are asking if the park has started on the High Line... the answer is Not Yet.
Yes, very similar situation. It was an unused railway that they restored like you see in the pictures. There is retail in the arches on one part as you can see in the last picture, and more NYC-Highline-like steel structure like in the first picture.
The experience of walking on top is surreal and much better than walking on the street. You can still hear the traffic, but it seems distant.
High Line High-Rise Surprise!
Towers Pop Up; Even Gehry’s In
By Matthew Schuerman, Michael Calderone
http://www.observer.com/finance_financialpress.asp
HIGH-RISE CHELSEA DRAMA High Line 519 (above) may lack a view,
but hotelier Andre Balazs gets to see Uma Thurman every night.
Benigno Serrano bought 12,350 square feet adjacent to Chelsea’s High Line for just $900,000 in 1986.
Last year, he turned down $10 million for it. This year, a developer named Alf Naman finally got it for $12.5 million, according to city transfer records.
And that’s just the beginning. Welcome to the great High Line development cash-in! While the elevated railway itself is still just a rusty, weed-covered insurance liability, speculators and developers are already squeezing money from it. The towers of West Chelsea are on their way!
The developer who lost out on Mr. Serrano’s property is David Kislin. He’s building a 12-story condo tower called High Line 519 on an adjacent property that he purchased two years ago. High Line 519? “We had wanted to create a name with some association with the neighborhood, but something more than just the address. We considered something tied to history, but it didn’t really fit,” Mr. Kislin said. “New Yorkers are not that big on history. I am a huge history buff, but this name is looking forward.”
The architect on the building is up-and-comer Lindy Roy, who devised a sleek, glassy façade with geometric screens that function as railings for the French doors that open—watch it now—directly onto 23rd Street. Prices range from $860,000 to $3.4 million. Five of the 11 units are already sold.
For that price, you get large windows on the front and back. But the cut-outs that promotional materials show in the kitchens, living rooms and bathrooms—the ones that would actually look onto the High Line itself—will, it seems, be blocked by another tower.
Mr. Serrano sold that property, the one wedged between High Line 519 and the actual High Line, to his $12.5 million bidder, Alf Naman. And Mr. Naman is planning to build his own 12-story residential tower on the narrow sliver of land there.
Mr. Serrano’s not exactly grateful for his own windfall. “I wish anybody who got involved in it took a long walk on a short pier,” he said. “People can’t afford a studio around here, because it’s too much ****ing money.”
While Mr. Naman concedes that the coming High Line will increase property values nearby, he argues that his land would have been worth even more had the elevated railroad been knocked down and a full-scale tower built there instead. “Developers and owners gave up a lot by agreeing to sign on to the High Line,” he said.
But the prize for the most dramatic change of heart goes to a parking-lot and storage-facility operator in the area, Jerry Gottesman, who formed the Chelsea Property Owners about 15 years ago to force the High Line’s owner, CSX Transportation, to tear down the structure. (The rail line, which runs from Gansevoort Street to West 34th Street, mostly between 10th and 11th avenues, hadn’t been in use since 1980.)
Back then, the Giuliani administration sided with these folks and asked the federal government to condemn it. It took artful negotiations by the Bloomberg administration—and much fund-raising and civic canoodling by a park-obsessed group of do-gooders—to reverse that course and persuade opponents to give up their fight.
Under the rezoning passed by the City Council in June, Mr. Gottesman and other owners like him will be able to transfer or sell development rights for the parcels underneath and adjacent to the rail line so that they can build even higher on parcels farther away. So Mr. Gottesman became a developer instead. The status of his project is unclear, and neither he nor others at his company, Edison Properties, returned telephone messages.
But the chairman of the local community board, Lee Compton, said board members have seen plans, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, for two towers, one 290 feet high and the other 390 feet, for a parcel to the west of the High Line between 17th and 18th streets.
Small developers like Mr. Naman and Mr. Kislin know that their projects will benefit a lot if the High Line corridor can somehow distinguish itself architecturally from other luxury-condo ghettoes around the city. So, in addition to boutique names like Roy and Denari, it’s important to get some real flash in the pan.
Enter the master! Frank Gehry’s first building in New York, the InterActivCorp Headquarters, is going up a half-block away from the High Line, just over on 11th Avenue between 18th and 19th streets. “It’s always been an area that has had a great deal of potential, and it’s one we have lots of confidence in,” said Joe Rose, a partner in the Georgetown Company, who is developing the project for InterActiveCorp, the massive media conglomerate that owns Ticketmaster, Expedia and Match.com.
That “confidence” may mean that Mr. Gehry’s first building, which should be completed by late 2006, may soon be joined by others.
Georgetown and Mr. Gehry may collaborate on two residential buildings just to the east of the IAC headquarters and adjacent to the High Line. Mr. Rose refused to give any specifics regarding his company’s future plans.
But Mr. Compton, the community-board chairman, said he participated in two video conference calls about the project with Mr. Gehry’s office, including one with the great architect himself. One building could go as high as 250 feet.
The Related Companies also has a project in the works, according to Mr. Compton and other officials, for the east side of 10th Avenue between 16th and 17th streets. It would also max out at 250 feet.
It’s the little sky-high strip of neighborhood that could!
One reason the zoning permits the Edison, Georgetown and Related buildings to go so high is that the companies get bonuses for ponying up. The three developers will give $22 million to the city, to be used to restore the portions of the High Line passing through their sites. In addition, the three developers have agreed to construct stairways, elevators, public restrooms and a storage shed for the park, according to a city planning official.
“A lot of people at first said that this would be great if it happened, but it’s never going to happen,” said Robert Hammond, who, with friend Joshua David, co-founded the group Friends of the High Line, which conceived of the park concept. “When people realized it was going to happen, they realized it was a great asset.”
“I don’t think it’s even important if [a building] looks out onto the High Line,” Mr. Hammond said. “It’s like Gramercy Park—you don’t have to look out onto the park, but it will increase your property values if you live near enough to get keys.” Mmhmm!
The tasty quid pro quo arrangements don’t extend south of 16th Street, since that area wasn’t affected by the rezoning. Still, developers down there in the meatpacking district are building up and over the High Line.
At 14th Street, the High Line Building will use an existing base spanning the rail line as a foundation for a 10-story office and retail edifice. Hotelier André Balazs is creating a 15-story hotel to span the rails at 848 Washington Street. The flashy owner of the upscale Chateau Marmont in Hollywood and Hotel Mercer in Soho is excited about developing a moderately priced hotel around the unique structure.
“Because we always do very site-specific places, the High Line is front and center in the entire conceptualization of this building,” said Mr. Balazs.
“No matter what you do—even if you are building from the ground up—you do have this fascinating train track running through your building,” he continued. “While it is obviously a new building in terms of its complexity, I think it is closer to a renovation.”
Reportedly, Mr. Balazs planned to build the first hotel of his Standard hotel chain in Manhattan a few years back at 210 Lafayette Street. But he opted against it, deciding to build the hotel on the High Line, utilizing the Soho land instead to develop One Kenmare Square, his 53-unit luxury condominium currently nearing completion.
Last summer, Mr. Balazs purchased two buildings at 454 West 13th Street and 856 Washington Street for $18 million, according to city records.
Initially, there was speculation that Mr. Balazs had chosen Gluckman Mayner Architects for the High Line project, the firm responsible for the Lafayette Street project. Despite some renderings that floated around popular real-estate blogs, Mr. Balazs ended up choosing Polshek Partnership Architects, whose work he describes at “elegant” and “flexible,” while emphasizing a “culture of collaboration.”
But there was one more additional requirement: The architect had to be Manhattan-based, preferably within walking distance. “In my mind, it was a given that whoever we picked had to be local,” Mr. Balazs said.
Speaking of locality, the Standard will be built just a few blocks from the glitzy Hotel Gansevoort, which opened in March 2004. However, Mr. Balazs’ hotel will be far less expensive than its luxurious neighbor. At the Gansevoort, rooms begin at $325; the Standard will provide accommodations starting at a third of the price.
After completing demolition of the industrial buildings three months ago, Mr. Balazs is looking forward to finalizing the hotel’s plans. However, other than admitting that he will lay the foundation in January 2006, he was unwilling to provide any juicy details.
West Chelsea, nurtured by the white-walled galleries lining the streets, has been a good place to drop a few million for several years now. The next luxury residential development to actually arrive, the Chelsea Arts Tower, is slated to open on West 25th Street in early 2006. The glass and concrete tower will reportedly offer to sell for about $1,000 per square foot. It’s indisputable that the High Line Park plan has made land underneath the structure suddenly valuable, but whether it will make the finished products on either side any more expensive than other Chelsea real estate is, well, speculation.
Yes! Now I can't wait for the park to sart!
City officially acquires High Line viaduct
The High Line: Now under
new ownership
November 16, 2005
Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today that the city acquired this month the title to the High Line elevated rail viaduct from CSX Transportation. The transfer of title – CSX donated the High Line to the city – clears the way for the run-down viaduct's transformation into a new public park running from Gansevoort Street to the Hudson Yards. The first section of the High Line park is expected to open in 2008, just in time to become a nearby amenity for various new developments in West Chelsea.
Copyright © 2003-2005 The Real Deal
Any new condo that gets built near that thing is going to have their value skyrocket because of the High Line.
^ Yeah and also the ones that are going to be built on top of the Highline.
More on the news....
City acquires ownership of High Line
by Catherine Tymkiw
The city acquired the title to the High Line from CSX Transportation Inc., paving the way for the abandoned elevated railway on Manhattan’s West Side to be transformed into a landscaped public space next year.
In addition, the city and CSX signed a Trail Use Agreement, permitting the rail structure to be used as a walking trail. The first section of the High Line is slated to open to the public in 2008. Construction will be carried out in two phases, with the first commencing next year.
“The transfer of ownership of the High Line from CSX to the City marks another important milestone in our efforts to create a one-of-a-kind public space for all New Yorkers,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a statement.
The High Line’s open space will run from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District through West Chelsea to the Hudson Yards.
Nonprofit Friends of the High Line have been lobbying since 1999 for the High Line to be turned into a public open space and the Bloomberg Administration came on board with its endorsement of the project in 2002.
“We’re especially grateful to Mayor Bloomberg and his Administration for their vision and unstinting work to move the project forward. They took a structure that has been mired in legal disputes for nearly 20 years and turned it around, bringing it to the start of construction in just three short years,” said FHL co-founder Robert Hammond in a statement.
The project has received $84.75 million funding commitments from federal, state and local government agencies and authorities. In June, the West Chelsea neighborhood around the High Line was rezoned to support the creation of public space and to allow for new residential and commercial development.
©2005 Crain Communications Inc.
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