NEW YORK CITY-In the third major groundbreaking on Manhattan’s Far West Side within the past seven days, developer the Gotham Organization broke ground with city and state officials on Gotham West, a mixed-use 1,200-unit multifamily community spanning West 44th to West 45th Streets from 10th to 11th Avenue on Monday afternoon. Anchoring the $550 million development will be a 31-story tower located on the corner of 45th St. and 11th Ave., which will include approximately 550 luxury apartments. Surrounding the tower will be three- low-rise properties with some 700 affordable units, a 10,000-square-foot interior courtyard and a new public school.
Against the background of the active construction site, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the property was once underutilized, city-controlled land that was slated for redevelopment back in 1975. Four decades later, it will be used to provide new homes for some 2,500 New Yorkers. “We always believed that the Far West Side of Manhattan had the potential for providing what our growing city needs, and that’s more jobs for New Yorkers and more affordable housing for them to live in,” Bloomberg said at the press conference.
We Also Recommend:
- The October Jobs Report
- HFF Markets Pittsburgh's 557,000-SF Penn Avenue Place
- Goldman's $1.25B Portfolio Stake Has Hidden Upside
The development, which is scheduled for completion by the end of 2014, is the largest new construction project in Manhattan under the administration’s New Housing Marketplace Plan. The $550 million project will create over 1,200 new apartments including 700 affordable units, of which, 600 are permanently affordable. It will be financed with primarily tax-exempt bonds issued by the New York State Housing Finance Agency that are credit enhanced by a syndicate of lenders led by Wells Fargo.
As part of this deal, Gotham is also providing $20 million to assist in the creation of affordable housing and an additional $15 million to assist in the construction of a newer and larger school to replace the existing vacant PS 51 at the site. An additional 15,000 square feet of retail/office space will also provide the community with new shopping opportunities.
The city’s investment in public transportation infrastructure will also serve this growing community, Bloomberg said. Scheduled for completion in 2013, the city-funded extension of the 7 subway line west of Times Square is the first major subway addition to the subway system in decades. “It is catalyzing the future of the entire Far West Side,” he said. “It has already led to approximately in $5 billion in additional private projects.”
Gotham Organization’s president David L. Picket said the four-acre site was made possible in part by a six-year public-private collaboration. More than six years ago, Gotham entered into an agreement to partner with the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development to create a community that would pass muster with the Department of City Planning, the Manhattan Borough President, the City Council and Community Board 4. After a lengthy process, the developer received unanimous approval from all stakeholders despite the uncertain and shaky housing market.
“Over the past several years, few industries have been harder hit than the real estate and construction industry,” Picket says. “But Gotham is a New York firm that has seen the city weather far worse in its 80 years in existence. Even as the recession loomed, we invested millions of our own capital to bring this development through to a closing. Long-term, we believe developments like this one are both good for us, good for our tenants and good for our city as a whole.”
Gotham will market the moderate- and middle-income units to households with annual incomes from $66,000 to $135,000. Additionally, there will be an affordable housing component for households with annual earnings of up to $40,000. Picket says the selection process for the affordable units will begin approximately one year from now, and expects between 5,000 and 10,000 applications.
New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said after the 2005 rezoning of the area paved the way for residential usage, she explained that the mix of incomes will help create the diversity the neighborhood needs. “Everyone said it was impossible to find a way to do permanent, moderate- and middle-income housing in Manhattan in the West 40s and 50s,” she said. “The impossible is happening here with this development. What we have today is not just another West Side story, but a West Side success story.”
Want to continue reading?
Become a Free ALM Digital Reader.
Once you are an ALM Digital Member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
*May exclude premium content© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
