The foundation of the Jenga tower at 56 Leonard Street has sat untouched for more than three years, while its starchitects Herzog & de Meuron planned a copycat tower in Beirut and OMA masterminded a similar one in Bangkok. But it's NYC's turn now. The Tribeca Trib and Tribeca Citizen report that construction will resume on 56 Leonard?next week. It will still be a while before the building depicted in the renderings exists in reality: it will take three months just to put in Con Ed utility vaults, and another year and a half to build the superstructure. Facade work will begin next summer, and the building will be finished in spring 2016. All digits crossed, please.
Earlier reports had us anticipating minor modifications to the design, but it actually sounds like the only potential alteration is that the planned Anish Kapoor sculpture may no longer sit at the building's base. Nor did neighborhood opposition fade over the years that the site sat empty. CB 1 member Bruce Ehrmann called the project "a meteor that's landing in absolutely the lowest-rise section of Tribeca." The construction manager has set up a hotline for locals to call with complaints.
There's no intel yet on whether developer the Alexico Group plans to keep the 2008 pricing for the building. But back in the day, the 145 units were set to start around $3.5 million, with the highest-priced penthouse asking around $35 million. (The developer spent $135.5 million to buy the lot from New York Law School.) The project's website is still live, so there are potential floorplans enough to keep us busy until 2016.
· Official site [56leonardtribea.com]
· Work to Begin on 56 Leonard St. [Tribeca Trib]
· Here Comes the Jenga Building [Tribeca Citizen]
· 56 Leonard coverage [Curbed]
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