Can 123 Third Avenue save 14th Street? First it has to take care of itself. The long-in-the-making but now very quickly rising 19-story condo building at the corner of 14th Street and Third Avenue tossed up some signage last week and debuted a teaser site, and now the Times brings us the first official rendering reveal (you'll recall the earlier bootleg looks from 2008). The building will have 47 apartments?another commercial condo unit will be a Capital One bank to offset the Bank of America across the street?and amenities include a ground-floor garden with an outdoor movie screen connected to a second-story lounge and gym by floating staircase. While crosstown traffic may drown out the dialogue, the apartments will be been given smaller windows with sound-dampening glass to help deal with the 14th Street menace. And the prices?
According to C.J. Hughes, the asking prices have been given a post-Lehman 17 percent discount off the original offering plan. Prices were set to start at about $1,200 a square foot, but now one-bedrooms will start at $1,000/sf, or $515,000. And about the potential game-changer:
Still, the stretch bordering the East Village, east of Third Avenue, existed as a relative time capsule. Discount clothing stores still dot blocks as they did when the area was a popular middle-class shopping district, side by side with 100-year-old brick tenements. But stirrings of change are noticeable in the neighborhood, say brokers, business leaders and developers, many of whom are betting that renewal will continue its march along 14th Street.
We thought such bold broker predictions about forlorn blocks going upscale died along with the in-building sommelier trend, but apparently that's not the case. But to change the world, the building needs a catchy name, and developer Andrew Bradfield tells us 123 Third is just a placeholder, while a new name is currently in the works. Any helpful suggestions from Curbed Nation?
· Former Outpost Angles for In Crowd [NYT]
· 123 Third coverage [Curbed]
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