Edward Minskoff, a member of one of New York's storied real-estate families, is hoping to begin construction in July on what would be the city's first large "speculative" new office building since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.
Mr. Minskoff says he will begin construction without any pre-leasing on a Maki and Associates-designed, 430,000-square-foot tower on a site overlooking Astor Place that he acquired in late 2007. Just outside the trendy East Village, it's an unorthodox location for an office building. Most of the city's modern office space is in Midtown and the Financial District.
But in a recent interview, Mr. Minskoff predicted that the building would attract high-tech companies, investment banks, insurance and advertising firms. "It's an area that a lot of young people want to work in," he said. He plans to charge about $65 a square foot per year, a modest amount for new space.
Somehow this neighborhood once known for sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll keeps getting better. If this place were a rock band, in the 1990s it would have been a raucous merging of the Sex Pistols meets the Rolling Stones. Today, it’s more mellow indie rock meets John Mayer.
One person scored a $1,900 one-bedroom on a fourth-floor walk-up. About $3,000 will get you a small two-bedroom. The farther east one goes, towards Avenue C and D, the less one pays, but the closer one gets to housing projects and traditional, immigrant areas known for their local flavor.
Parts of this area gets gritty, but public gardens fill the empty lots, some with Roman amphitheatres, others with weeping willow trees and small ponds filled with gold fish.
As you can see in these new renderings provided by the building's architect, Gene Kaufman, it has light up balconies that will shimmer at night, bringing a bit of that dance-club flare back to the cleaned up thoroughfare.
And people thought the Bowery was bad in the "old days"? I'd take the Salvation Army building over this any day.
Pretty much everything new going up on the Bowery now says "crap-tastic" + "major ego at work". This new building looks like the winner of a contest where crazed architects are asked to design their weirdest fantasy buildings.
Eventually the Bowery will have a NEW reputation, as the place tourists can go to see the absolutely *ugliest* collection of buildings in NYC.
Odd to think that the Bowery was actually better and had a peculiar, if worn and gritty, charm before qualified "designers" took it upon themselves to show the uneducated masses how things might be. As it stands, they should rename it the Rue de Pretension.
Cookiepuss said...
Both of these images horrify me! The skinny structure every time I see it, either in person or in a photograph brings me all the way back to points in my life where I experienced trauma. Both structures mimic the symmetry of Hitler's army. Sometimes I think that architects and developers are trying to create a new and superior race!
Bowery Boy said...
The merits of each individual hotel on the new Bowery can be debated, but taken as a whole, this is about to be the worst stretch of Manhattan ever planned. Ok, maybe not planned, but developed. It looked better as Skid Row. The individual developers are getting their money, so they don't care, but one-by-one they are turning the Bowery into an architectual freak show. So sad.
cvinzant said...
Does anyone know what those ridiculous white boxes are that jut out for no purpose? Are they made of stone? Metal? How much will the pigeons enjoy roosting on them?
It would be cheaper and more useful just to blow up the building and leave a 30-foot crater.
Someone told me today that there is a STARBUCKS rumored to be opening on Avenue A sometime in the near future. Personally, I don’t care for burnt coffee or impersonal service, but I still fear it’s going to give all of my beloved cafes in the area a run for their money…
“They won’t choke me,” Hank Penza, the longtime owner of Mars Bar, said of the developers, adding, “I didn’t get off the boat yesterday with a pound of spaghetti in my hand.”
Mr. Penza said that he wasn’t too concerned about the lost revenue, noting that he’ll ultimately get a space that’s three to four times the size. The developers, he said, “are good people” — and that seemed enough for him.
If a current plan to build low income housing on a parcel of land on lower 2nd Avenue is approved by Community Board 3, the borough president, and the City Council, it will lead to the two year shuttering and eventual rebuilding of famed East Village dive Mars Bar.
Near the eastern end of this stretch is Tompkins Square Park, that wonderful 10.5-acre patch that continues to lure the bohemian legions yet resists gentrification against all odds. Originally planned as a farmers’ market, it has been used as a public park since the 1800s and has weathered many seasons since. On any given day, there might be a band making noise, codgers playing chess, schoolchildren all in a line, and a Police Department van slowly cruising through. The echoes of demonstrators yelling “Die, Yuppie Scum” may be very faint these days, but there is no Shake Shack ... yet.
