The Curbed Cup, our annual award for the New York City neighborhood of the year, is kicking off with 16 areas vying for the prestigious (fake) trophy. This week we'll have two matchups per day, and all the results and the full tournament bracket will be reviewed on Friday. Voting for each pairing ends 24 hours after it begins. Let the eliminations commence!
Next up: sixth seed Nomad squares off against eleventh seed Astoria.
A few years ago, Nomad hardly registered as a a blip on the exciting neighborhoods radar, but these days its one of the most activeand priciestareas in New York City. Just north of Madison Square Park, as its name suggests, and running from about Sixth to Lexington avenues and 25th to 30th streets, Nomad is a hotbed of new residential and hotel projects. In 2015, Ian Schrager's New York Edition Hotel premiered in the Met Life Clocktower along Madison Avenue, where it commands upwards of $675 a night. Other hotels like The Ace, Nomad, and Martha Washington all thrive nearby. New residential projects abound in buildings converted from commercial space. In 2015, 212 Fifth Avenue debuted with 48 2BR-plus apartments asking from a not-insubstantial $3.9 million. The formerly-stalled rental tower at 160 Madison Avenue topped out after nearly a decade and started courting tenants. The neighborhood's forthcoming projects are nothing to scoff at, either: Morris Adjmi is bringing a 40-story apartment tower to 30 East 31st Street, and Rafael Viñoly has designed a 52-story looker for the corner of Fifth Avenue and 30th Street. And of course, there's Moshe Safdie's huge development that will rise on the site of the historic Bancroft Building, which was dismantled this year in the name of progress. In 2015, Nomad also became home to the beloved Rizzoli Bookstore, uprooted from its longtime home on 57th Street, and shone bright on the new dining front with restaurants L'Amico, La Pecora Bianca, and, of no lesser importance, with the reopening of the city's flagship Shake Shack.
The traditionally low-key neighborhood of Astoria also made some major strides this year. The urban planners behind Astoria Cove and Hallets Point, the two major developments set to bring approx. 7,000 apartments to the northern Queens neighborhood in the next decades, announced that they're working on plans for two more major waterfront developments that would, if built, not only bring hundreds more apartments to the neighborhood, but also create a continuous 2.5-mile greenway along the northern Astoria waterfront. It wasn't only a big year in ideas for the neighborhood; The Marx debuted, bringing 26 one- to three-bedroom condos priced from $605,000 that are now all in contract. Getting to Astoria might get even easier in the coming years. In July, the MTA announced that it might revive the W line to Queens, which is big news for commuters. But big news for those working from the borough: a WeWork is coming to 36th Street.
Which neighborhood deserves to advance in the fight for neighborhood of the year? Cast your vote below.
· All Nomad coverage [Curbed]
· All Astoria coverage [Curbed]
· All Curbed Cup 2015 coverage [Curbed]
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