March 10, 2007
THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD GROWS UP & UP
While most eyes are directed downtown to the massive amounts of development occuring on Manhattan's Lower East Side, my old stomping grounds on the Upper East Side has highrises popping up like mushrooms. Not that Yorkville around 86th St. was a slouching neighborhood of low-rent tenements before. Especially along 86th St. between Lexington and 2nd Ave, there were a number of 20-30 story buildings. Most of the avenues and side streets, however were limited to five or six-story apartment buildings that gave the neighborhood a very cozy atmosphere. This may not be the case for long.
The cornerstone of all this development, given its proximity to the subway, its size and the retail it will offer, is Extell Development's half-city-block behemoth, the Lucida. The limestone-based, glass-curtain-walled building will encompass the area from 85th Street to 86th Street on Lexington and is the U.E.S.'s first LEED-certified residential green construction. Its 18 stories will contain 110 condos, an H&M, a Barnes & Noble, a Sephora and a Bank of America.
One block east, at Third Avenue, is the massive crater that will be the Brompton, a 206-unit condo building developed by the Related Companies. And one avenue over from that, on Second Avenue, three five-story tenement buildings are about to be torn down to make way for a 20-story condo building. (The L-shaped parcel contains 105,000 square feet of buildable space and is coveted by "proven New York City developers," says Alan Miller, a senior director and principal at Eastern Consolidated, the company selling the piece of land.)
To put their proximity in perspective, if you stand on the north side of 86th Street midway between Second and Third avenues, all three sites will be visible once they're under construction.
And there's more.
Residents of the neighborhood can only hope that all the new neighbors occupying these luxury condos will be well-heeled enough to take car services to work, because the 4/5/6 subway line is already stretched well beyond its peak operating capacity. A single delayed train during rush hour is enough to send the UES into chaos, with overflow passengers pouring back up onto the sidewalk at 86th St., jamming buses full, and creating what looks like a stream of refugees heading down Lexington Avenue on foot. With the 2nd Ave. Subway still a decade away at best (I maintain it will never be built), commuter relief is a long way off. Read more about the neighborhood's development in the New York Post
Tagged: condos, development, real estate, subway, ues, yorkvillePosted by Lexiphane at March 10, 2007 12:27 PM
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