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Posts Tagged ‘Eleventh Avenue’
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
 Posted by Leonard Steinberg on February 14th, 2012
A perfect Valentine’s gift came to-day in the way of proof that the West Side of Midtown will no longer be isolated from the rest of Manhattan: the tunnel connecting 11th Avenue and 34th Street and Times Square is completed and now the finishing process has begun to deliver the # 7 subway extension by the end of 2013. This is great for New York real estate as easily accessible public transportation defines neighborhoods and boosts their value tremendously.
This transportation addition will revolutionize the West Side forever, and area that had been traditionally too far removed from central New York City to be considered convenient. Once the Hudson Yards are built, not to mention the dozens of other buildings sprouting in the area, this neighborhood will become a thriving area, connected to both the hudson River and Central Manhattan.
Seeing is believing!
Friday, July 15th, 2011
 Posted by Leonard Steinberg on July 15, 2011
The question arose this week (and many times before) about the future of West Chelsea as an Arts Center: will West Chelsea go the way of Soho? Will Gagosian become the Gap? Will Prada replace Paula Cooper? Chanel replace Cheim & Reid?
“The biggest difference between Soho’s evolution into a high fashion retail environment and West Chelsea to-day is the fact that now most galleries own their space and don’t rent,” says Matt Amico, a West Chelsea resident and a Prudential Douglas Elliman broker. “When I moved into the Caledonia (450 West 17th Street)it was a brand new construction building: Alternatively, had I moved into Soho years ago, I probably would have replaced an artist.”
Soho artists did own many of the lofts that they moved from, mostly because they had bought them for next to nothing years ago: subsequently they have left behind a huge mess with the AIR program and walked away with huge, often retirement-fund-sized profits (well deserved, as they pioneered the area and transformed many derelict buildings into habitable homes and studios). West Chelsea is very different as the focus is not so much artists as it is galleries….and these (often highly profitable) galleries own their space this time: In Soho most were renting their retail/commercial space.
Another huge value to anyone in commerce is the high concentration of an industry: With about 350 art galleries concentrated within just a few blocks, the ability to lure potential art buyers is so much greater than being spread around the city, or worse, outside of the City removed from easy access. “The experience of visiting West Chelsea is now further enhanced by the fact that the recently opened Highline Park extension acts as a connector between West Chelsea’s arts district and the Meatpacking District, a thriving retail environment: so the area combines everything that Soho was 15 years ago with what it is to-day.”
The Highline Park, the new Avenue’s School, new restaurants, amenities and services combined with the Hudson River Park to the West add fuel to West Chelsea’s fire. When the subway stop is added to Eleventh Avenue and 34th Street, the northern end of the Arts District will be connected to Times Square via a 5 minute subway ride. Add to this a substantial volume of construction planned for the Hudson Yards area, diminishes the urgency to vacate current art gallery spaces to convert them or tear them down for residential use. There are still many vacant/commercial, non-art gallery building sites in West Chelsea to satisfy developers for several years. Walking on the Highline Park the other night amongst a very civilized group of calmer, more elegantly dispositioned New Yorkers, you actually saw the realization of this amazing neighborhood transformation: illuminated landscaping bracketed by exceptional new buildings that arch over the park such as the two stainless steel clad HL23 and 245 Tenth Avenue …..and in the distance a host of interesting new building mixed in with the older residential and commercial structures….and one day soon all this will terminate at a brand new Whitney Museum….
So my conclusion is that the unique flavor that has been created in West Chelsea is here to stay, for at least the next 10 years, and possibly much longer. Remember the entire area was re-zoned too to prevent a big mess, so maybe this is one area that will serve as a textbook case study for responsible development?
Friday, July 16th, 2010
 West Chelsea and the hudson Yards on Eleventh Avenue will be connected to midtown by the # 7 subway expansion: In what City Council Speaker Christine Quinn on Thursday called “a great day for the West Side and the future of New York City,” the year-long tunneling project on the Number 7 subway line expansion was completed. City officials held a ceremony marking the completion of the first phase of a $2.1-billion project to bring the subway line to what will eventually be the Hudson Yards redevelopment.
“For decades, people have talked about the Hudson Yards on Manhattan’s Far West Side as a potential opportunity to provide new office space, housing, parks and jobs adjacent to the world’s premier business district, but nothing ever happened,” says Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a statement. “We’re acting to make sure that it does.”
Up next will be work on station entrances and finishes and support facilities such as ventilation and traction power substations. The new service is expected to open in December 2013, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Whether that new service includes a stop at Tenth Avenue and 41st Street, a block east and seven blocks north of its current terminus at Eleventh Avenue and 34th Street, remains to be seen. The Tenth Avenue stop was originally planned but was scrapped in 2008 when the Hudson Yards Development Corp. said the funding wasn’t there to build two stations. However, following a lobbying campaign led by the Real Estate Board of New York, the Bloomberg administration earlier this month said it was applying for $3 million in federal TIGER II grants for a feasibility study on reinstating the Tenth Avenue station, which would cost about $550 million to build—money neither the MTA nor the city says it can spare.
As reported in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, the administration’s proposed redesign of the Tenth Avenue stop would entail building a station with two entrances and two separate platforms, one for eastbound trains and one for those continuing west to the line’s new terminus at Eleventh Avenue. This would allow the station to be built after the rest of the extension is completed, assuming that funds become available.
Completion of the tunneling portion of the 7 line extension, which involved a pair of 1,000-ton tunnel boring machines, occurs a few weeks after another milestone in the redevelopment of Manhattan’s Far West Side. In late May, Related Cos.—originally chosen in 2008 to develop the Hudson Yards project—announced that it had signed a binding contract on a 99-year lease with the MTA for the 26-acre site. It came to the agreement with a new general partner, Oxford Properties Group, the real estate investment and development arm of Canadian pension fund OMERS, the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System.
The new agreement, approved by the MTA’s board this past spring, delays closing on the project until certain triggers are reached in the city’s real estate market. Related will not be obligated to close on the deal, and start paying its 99-year lease, until Midtown’s office availability rate declines to 11%, apartment sale prices reach an average $1,200 per square foot and the AIA Architectural Billings Index hits 50.
Currently, the availability rate in Midtown is 13.7%, according to CB Richard Ellis, while Prudential Douglas Elliman puts the average apartment price at $1,051 per square foot. Work on the Hudson Yards project, which will also include construction of elevated platforms over the Eastern and Western Rail Yards that are in daily use by the MTA’s Long Island Rail Road, is expected to begin after the 7 extension is done.
Soon Midtowners will easily be able to access the recently opened CHELSEA COVE PARK at 25th Street and the West Side highway. Eleventh Avenue continues its ascent…..
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
100 Eleventh Avenue has closed on several more units as it approaches completion, including to some of the City’s most fabulous of the fabulous crowd…..Richard Pandiscio and Richard Rogers son Roo Rogers with his wife Bernadine Huang owner of OZOCAR, the city’s first car rental company with super-efficient hybrid cars. Also living on Eleventh Avenue: Dolce and Gabbana, Nate Berkus (soon with his own OPRAH show), Jamie Drake, Mario Testino…..
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Wow all those famous people it’s like Hollywood on the Hudson over there now.. so chic