Moneymaking Machines #3: 625 W57th Street

We saw in Moneymaking Machines #1 how New York by Gehry for Forest City Ratner received the financing to make it possible in its present form only one month before the 2008 financial crisis. This window of opportunity would have closed if more time had been spent wrangling over rights of light and other issues.

The Durst Organization, the developer behind 625 West 57th Street made its planning application in 2010, when financing was still difficult and so had to resort to less conventional forms of financing – technically, to what’s known as the EB-5 visa program. Basically, investors who stump up $500,000 per family and create 10 jobs receive a green card.

Here’s a pdf brochure targeting potential investors. We don’t know how successful it was. It couldn’t have been sufficient for, in October, 2014,

“It was a complicated transaction and all parties cooperated to make something that was seemingly difficult relatively easy to get done,” said Jordan Barowitz, director of external affairs for Durst.

Here’s the link to the nyc scheme review online folder. The community impact analysis is based on an assumption of 863 units. Apartment floor plans are absent from designboom, dezeen and ArchDaily. I found this plan here.

It’s one of the lower floors and seems to be mainly 1-bedroom apartments although the regular pattern of walls leaves open the option of converting a one-bed into two studios, or three one-beds into two twos at the last minute if doing so has advantages and the approved total doesn’t change. That decision will be made after sufficient expressions of interest have been received. It’s as instant as accommodation demand and supply gets.

“We haven’t set the rents yet, but we think at the top of the building we can touch $90 a square foot,” he (aforementioned Jordan Barowitz) told MO [Mortgage Observer].

• Another interesting thing about the plan is a corridor more than half a city block long.
• The main elevator lobby is in the top right corner – as you’d expect if you wanted your elevators to go all the way to the top. The garbage chute must close by for the same reason.
• The two long, truncated sides of the building complicate fire escape requiring four fire escape stairs on the W58th side and two more on the W57th side.
• The single-loaded (lower) W57th wing of the building gets out of the way pretty quickly to add value to the profit-dense (upper) W58th wing. For the amount of accommodation the lower wing contains (15 x 1-bed or 30 x studios max?) the complications it causes and the value it subtracts in terms of view and shadow, I can’t believe it was worth building. Shape.

• From this photo, the building is shading itself but not that much more than the building immediately south already is.

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Notice the building immediately behind? It’s time now to talk about The Helena. The Helena is an apartment building by the same developer in the south-east corner of the development site.

Most of The Helena’s apartments are studios but, if you check availability, here’s what $4,100 per month gets you.

The Helena is marketed as a green building – which is nice.

What’s more interesting is how the developers applied to have the entire block re-zoned so the entire block could be considered a single development. As far as I can work out from these documents, this meant that

1. the new portion of the development could exploit any newly created development capacity as well as any development capacity unexploited by the existing buildings
2. rights of light issues internal to the site could be ignored
3. loss of view internal to the site could also be ignored

Nos. 2 and 3 “don’t matter” if the existing building’s tenants are renting from the same developer.

Nevertheless, this view won’t exist any more. Is that a Noguchi coffee table?

Not everyone was pleased.

• The CB4 Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen Land Use and Zoning Committee of Manhattan Community Board 4 voted unanimously to recommend denial unless the project includes permanent affordable housing. (Noland)
• “The City Planning Commission should not allow the project to proceed without a guarantee of permanent affordable housing. It would be short- sighted to affix an expiration date to the affordable housing component, forestalling an adverse socioeconomic impact of this development, but not mitigating it. We understand there are unique challenges to achieving permanent affordable housing on this site. But we cannot support a project that provides an indefinite benefit to a select few with exceptional wealth while offering only temporary benefits to the community.” (Duane/Nadler)
• “The project should provide affordable units through the 80/20 Housing Program if the mini-storage facility is converted to include residential uses.” (Stringer)

“The applicant has agreed to enter into the 80/20 program and would provide 20 percent of the 835 residential rental units on projected development sites 1 and 2 (or up to 167 units) as affordable housing units for a period of 35 years.”

• There should be more than 35 years of permanent affordability. (Restuccia)
• My objection to the Durst pyramid is the fact that the affordable housing unit will be affordable only for 35 years. (Brender)
• The community needs permanent affordability. A high concentration of affordable housing will expire in the next five to ten years. (Klein)
• Community District 4 wants and needs permanently affordable housing. Without permanently affordable units, it cannot maintain its mixed-income residential character. (CB4)
• One thing the community absolutely needs is permanent affordable housing. (Bloomberg)

“The applicant has agreed to enter into the 80/20 program and would provide 20 percent of the 835 residential rental units on projected development sites 1 and 2 (or up to 167 units) as affordable housing units for a period of 35 years.”

• There should be more than 35 years of permanent affordability. (Restuccia)
• My objection to the Durst pyramid is the fact that the affordable housing unit will be affordable only for 35 years. (Brender)
• The community needs permanent affordability. A high concentration of affordable housing will expire in the next five to ten years. (Klein)
• Community District 4 wants and needs permanently affordable housing. Without permanently affordable units, it cannot maintain its mixed-income residential character. (CB4)
• One thing the community absolutely needs is permanent affordable housing. (Bloomberg)

“Takes advantage of a recent rezoning” should read as “rezoning was applied for after the design was completed. The “recent rezoning” could refer to a 2001 rezoning but the 2012 rezoning was so recent it was in the future. I think everyone is caught with their pants down here. Perhaps going back to the BIG site will give us some clues. Point block meets perimeter block, the story goes. The previous setback limits didn’t change along the length of the site. Given that they were relaxed in order to accommodate this building, I can’t see what advantages a tetrahedrish building has over a long slab building directly in front of The Helena. It’s not a question of maximising the number of apartments because that’s already fixed at 853. A long slab building would:

• Have more efficient access and shorter corridors that would, in turn make for more efficient servicing and simplified fire escape.
• Be less vulnerable to possible future development on the north side.
• Be less vulnerable to possible future building on the south side. The site is currently a car park. (Given this precedent for “large-scale general development’ any new neighbours might well want a huge wall of apartments on their northern boundary – or their southern. Or both.)
• Have preserved more views (and thus rental values) for more apartments in The Helena.
• Have meant more expansive (albeit still oblique) views west to the river and a more egalitarian distribution of that view.
• Have meant more people have brighter apartments. Nothing much can be done about direct sunlight into the north facing apartments but having them closer to the centre of the site means they can at least see more sky.

It might have been a bit boring and maybe that’s all it comes down to. Here’s that second sentence again.

“It will fit within the envelope of the site and help preserve the views of another Durst family building next door, known as the Helena.“

It’s always good for buildings to fit within their site boundaries but we now know that those were adjusted to accommodate the design. As for preserving views from the Helena, here’s a plan of its 14th-33rd floors. Apartments D face the Hudson River and you’d think it’s these people who’d stand to lose the most as those apartments have no windows facing other directions, unlike the C and  E apartments. Allowing views for (half of the) D apartments) is good but it completely blocks oblique views from all of the north side apartment types E thru M. Half the building, basically. And for what? This development gives new meaning to the term “view corridor”. There are many, too many, construction pics on skyscrapercity.com. I’m sure the Dursts would prefer the tenants of The Helena to not move or ask for rent reductions, but they have been sold out for the sake of this new development.

• • •

We’ve come to the end. I still don’t know why this building is the way it is. Nobody seems to be telling the truth. Here’s a statement from the BIG website. The developer approached us and asked up to introduce a new housing typology into New York. Any or all of these words could be false. Perimeter block meets point block seems to have taken the worst of both for little apparent gain.

“The 800,000-square-foot polyhedronic behemoth, which will mainly have studio and one-bedroom apartments, is an almost entirely self-contained Epcot-like mini-city. Renters will rarely have to leave the building. And they’ll pay for the privilege. Prices have not been announced, but Durst thinks he can push $90 a foot for the top-floor pads. That means a large one-bedroom will likely go for more than $5,000 a month.“ [therealdeal]

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But man, that’s one helluva fugly corner streetwise. I got the tetrahedral blues.

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