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Mapping ODA's Dozens of New Boxy Buildings in NYC

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It seems like every week, plans for a new building are filed by the architecture firm ODA. Over the last two years, we've written about nearly three dozen different projects by ODA, ranging from towers on the Brooklyn waterfront to small boutique buildings on the Upper West Side. The firm has clearly become a go-to for developers big—TF Cornerstone tapped ODA for phase two of Hunters Point South—and small, and the firm has solidified its position as the experts of Jenga-tecture, i.e. buildings that look like stacked boxes. To track this proliferation of Lego-like structures, we mapped 34 of ODA's most recent commissions—some of which think outside the box.
—With research and writing by Wesley Yiin

· ODA [official]
· All ODA coverage [Curbed]

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190 South 1st Street

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In South Williamsburg, a 13-story ODA creation is replacing an old one-story warehouse. The new building’s facade is mostly glass—condo buyers love those floor-to-ceiling windows—with bands of masonry separating the floors and wrapping the terraces. ODA also designed the interiors of the 32 condos, which are now on the market with prices starting at $565,000.

22-22 Jackson Avenue

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Perhaps the boxiest of ODA’s boxy buildings, 22-22 Jackson Avenue, right next to the 5Pointz (RIP) site, is wrapping up construction, and its reality is very close to its rendering. Interestingly, the building used the same cast-in-place construction technique as 432 Park Avenue. The windows of 22-22 Jackson feature maroon frames, and the jenga-stacking allows for a lot of the 175 units to have private outdoor space.

Brooklyn Bridge Park - Pier 6

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ODA’s latest commission is the firm’s highest profile: two new buildings in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The towers, near Pier 6, have courted controversy for months now (neighbors would really prefer they just not be built), and the first renderings were revealed in early July. The designs are very square, and the industrial-looking windows mimic those of One Brooklyn Bridge Park. The taller building will hold market rate condos, while the shorter structure will be affordable and market rate rentals for a total of 339 apartments.http://ny.curbed.com/tags/pier-6

22-12 Jackson Avenue

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Another ODA project will rise directly beside 22-22 Jackson Avenue. Developer Adam America tapped the firm for this site as well. No renderings have been released, but it will rise 11 stories and hold 186 apartments.

165 Chrystie Street

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On Chrystie Street, a 10-story, 9-unit building by ODA will replace a kitchen supply store that was recently demolished. The front facade will be dominated by large windows clad with what could be copper. The lot-line facade will be covered with a dark brick, and feature a faceted pattern.

Rheingold Brewery

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Bushwick will be treated to a green roof-topped jagged donut of an ODA building at the former Rheingold Brewery site. The 400,000-square-foot structure is dotted with balconies, and includes a 19,000-square-foot interior courtyard, urban farming areas, a climbing wall, a screening room, and co-working spaces, as well as the aforementioned 25,000-square-foot rooftop terrace. There will be 392 apartments.

150 East 23rd Street

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This building deviates from the jenga-style, and looks more like a mini Fortress of Glassitude that was half eaten by a standard box o’ condos. Two buildings will be razed to make way for the new 19-story structure, and there will be 54 apartments, including a top-floor penthouse with a private rooftop deck.

420-430 Kent Avenue

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Former governor Eliot Spitzer tapped ODA for his

75 Nassau Street

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In the Financial District, ODA deigned a 500-foot tower with a rooftop forest for developer Lexin Capital. It will bring 197 apartments to the neihghborhood, and of course, many of those apartments have private outdoor space, thanks to ODA’s knack for carving out facades.

510 Driggs Avenue

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Renderings for this 5-story building were revealed late last year, but new building permits have yet to be issued (previous building permits were issued in 2007), so the status of the project is unclear. Even so, last October, ODA discussed the designs with Arch Daily, explaining that they are striving to bring the “qualities of a private house” to the building. As such, each apartment has two exposures and private outdoor space.

303 East 44th Street

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On East 44th Street, ODA is designing a 600-foot-tall building with 16 "hanging gardens" that wrap around the facade. The tower will have one- and two-bedroom apartments on its lower floors, and have full-floor apartments from the 21st floor up, which means they will likely be very expensive. Construction should start in September, with completion expected in late 2017.

1444 Third Avenue

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Eschewing stacked boxes for glass strata, ODA revealed the rendering for this UES building three years ago. But even as the previous structure on the site comes down, the permits for the ODA-designed, DRK Third Avenue-developed building still have yet to be approved, and some are wondering whether or not the design will have to change.

630 Lorimer Street

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This one isn't really a stack of boxes—maybe just one box? The small four-story Williamsburg building will house eight units once it's completed, which is expected to be sometime around December of this year.[Image via Brownstoner]

505 West 43rd Street

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One of ODA's more restrained designs, these Hell's Kitchen apartments haven't had their permits approved yet, so there's plenty of time before we'll see this grayer structure realized. If and when it materializes, the El Ad Group-developed building will contain 106 apartments, with 26 affordable units.

51 Jay Street

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This DUMBO building looks very DUMBO-y, without much of the "stacked boxes" look that we've come to expect from ODA. The 74-unit condo building, developed by Adam America and Slate Property Group, hit the market in January, with studios priced at $875,000 and penthouses going over $5 million.

251 West 14th Street

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Leave it to ODA to use creative geometry to gobble up every last buildable square foot of a site, which is exactly what they've done with the cantilevering stack of condos at 251 West 14th Street, right off of Eighth Avenue. The building will have 11 floor-through condos starting at $3 million. B+B Capital is developing the project on the Chelsea/West Village border.

224 West 22nd Street

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ODA's been tapped to gut-renovate the townhouse at 224 West 22nd Street by Steven Ostad and Andre Sakhai, who first asked $9.45 million for the finished product. The conversion will nearly double the townhouse's size through the excavation of its cellar, where the firm plans to build out a sauna and a theater. The project will also add an entertainment room, "rooftop spa" with a Jacuzzi, and an outdoor shower and barbecue area to the house.

173 Chrystie Street

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Since ODA signed on to design a residential building for 173 Chrystie Street at the end of 2014, not much else has come out about the project. What is known: it'll be 10 stories tall and have 13 apartments averaging about 2,000 square feet.

436 Albee Square

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An anonymous LLC announced plans to erect an ODA-designed tower on Gold Street between Willoughby and Fulton streets in November. The building at 436 Albee Square will rise 28 stories, have 150 apartments, have three stories of ground floor retail, and kind of look like every other building popping up in Downtown Brooklyn at the time.

134 Vanderbilt Avenue

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This Fort Greene building, revealed at the end of last year, is impossible to describe without the word "jenga." The building, developed by Joel Goodman of All Year Management, will contain 45 units and some community space as well.

10 Hubert Street

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This smaller Tribeca building is less buzzed-about than some of the other projects on this list, but the apartment conversion will comprise four units. Streeteasy lists past rentals at $6,500 for a two-bedroom and $14,950 for a three-bedroom.[Image via Buzz Buzz Home]

608 Franklin Avenue

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The renderings for this glass box of apartments were only revealed in October, but given the anticipated quality of the 120 units, we suspect that rents will be high, though 20 percent of them will be priced below market rate. The building will sit on the block of the Nassau Brewery in rapidly developing Crown Heights, though YIMBY reported that a separate developer will update and maintain the existing Brewery building.

1800 Park Avenue

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The rental tower at 1800 Park Avenue was originally intended to have 32 stories, but after its application was denied roughly one year ago. This year, developer Continuum Company, led by Ian Bruce Eichner, came back with a proposal for a 24-story tower—and it was approved. The 25 percent cut in height might seem significant, but at the very least, the building, containing 682 rental units, 20 percent of which will be priced affordably, will still take the title of tallest building in Harlem once it's finished.

100 Norfolk Street

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This LES condo building will tower over its neighbors—literally. On one side, the rendering shows how the building extends out like a staircase, making for one of the most defined cantilevers we've ever seen. The building, which contains 38 units, hit the market last fall.

15 Renwick

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15 Renwick has had quite the interesting history, despite only just hitting the market last fall. Nine years in the making, the Soho project was stalled until last year, when developer IGI-USA bought the building and got ODA to redesign it. Since then, the team has embraced this steampunk aesthetic, with scalie characters and a costume-y sales gallery launch, to boot. The most recent item of absurdity? The announcement that the building is selling three parking spaces for $1 million a pop.

Franklin Place

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Franklin Place, which omitted the "5" from its name three years ago, went through several architects and designs before getting to ODA. As of last year, the building, developed by the Elad Group, with interiors designed by Andres Escobar & Associates, had just two of its 53 condos still on the market. The rooftop pool will be something to look forward to!

93 Worth Street

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Developed by IGI-USA, this was one of the best-selling buildings of 2014, with 79 of 92 units sold by the end of the year. Some notable additions to the historic building (which was constructed in 1925) by ODA include seven penthouses, which range in price from $7.55 million to $10 million. Curbed had the opportunity to tour one such penthouse last year and its accompanying amenities.

809 Broadway

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The mixed-use building here, developed by IDM Capital, will consist of seven floors of office space and then just three condos on the top floors. Back in 2013, Blatt Billiards, which previously occupied a 126-year-old, five-story building on the same site, sold the address to IDM. You'd think amenities would be limited for the relatively small development, but nope! There's a dog-washing room!

275 Fourth Avenue

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Sitting squarely within the "canyon of mediocrity," which is what a Wall Street Journal reporter once called Fourth Avenue, adjacent to Park Slope and Gowanus, 275 Fourth Avenue's promise of 78 rental units, commercial space, and community space may contribute to a revitalization of the area. And yet, Silverstone Property Group, which is developing the building alongside Adam America Real Estate, has said that it plans to give the building a First Avenue address to avoid the negative association.

241 Fifth Avenue

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This Victor Homes developed building is unique for the rapidly developing NoMad neighborhood in that it is not a condo conversion, but rather entirely new construction. The building contains 46 condos and amenities such as a fitness center, a yoga room, and a "treatment" center for massages and beauty treatments.

182 West 82nd Street

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You might remember this Upper West Side building because its view-blocking penthouse upset the likes of tenants in 172 West 82nd Street, including Kevin Bacon, so much that they wrote to their community board in protest. These condos and townhouses were converted from older houses by The Naftali Group. Eleven units total fill the building, which launched sales in October 2013.

10 Jay Street

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It took a couple tries, but the interior and exterior makeover for 10 Jay Street, a condominium-to-be fashioned out of an old warehouse in DUMBO, won approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission in March. The most defining feature of the building, which will contain 46 condos, plus retail space on the first floor, will be its crystal-like facade, which is meant to recall the building's history as a sugar refinery. The building, developed by Triangle Assets, started demolition on May 1 and is expected to be completed by fall of next year.

The Bergen

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This Boerum Hill rental building, acquired late last year by a private European investor from The Naftali Group, will contain 84 rental units, ranging from studios to two-bedrooms. A previous version of the project, with developer Karl Fischer, failed to take off.

Hunters Point South - Phase 2

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With construction on the first phase of this Long Island City development mostly wrapping up, attention will soon shift to the second parcel, developed by TF Cornerstone and bounded by 54th Avenue to the north and 2nd Street to the east. These two adjoined towers, designed to evoke Manhattan's Art Deco skyscrapers, will feature urban farming terraces, grey-water recycling for irrigation, a children's playroom, among other amenities. Of the 1,193 units, 796 will be designated as affordable, with 100 of those being reserved for low-income seniors.

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190 South 1st Street

In South Williamsburg, a 13-story ODA creation is replacing an old one-story warehouse. The new building’s facade is mostly glass—condo buyers love those floor-to-ceiling windows—with bands of masonry separating the floors and wrapping the terraces. ODA also designed the interiors of the 32 condos, which are now on the market with prices starting at $565,000.

22-22 Jackson Avenue

Perhaps the boxiest of ODA’s boxy buildings, 22-22 Jackson Avenue, right next to the 5Pointz (RIP) site, is wrapping up construction, and its reality is very close to its rendering. Interestingly, the building used the same cast-in-place construction technique as 432 Park Avenue. The windows of 22-22 Jackson feature maroon frames, and the jenga-stacking allows for a lot of the 175 units to have private outdoor space.

Brooklyn Bridge Park - Pier 6

ODA’s latest commission is the firm’s highest profile: two new buildings in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The towers, near Pier 6, have courted controversy for months now (neighbors would really prefer they just not be built), and the first renderings were revealed in early July. The designs are very square, and the industrial-looking windows mimic those of One Brooklyn Bridge Park. The taller building will hold market rate condos, while the shorter structure will be affordable and market rate rentals for a total of 339 apartments.http://ny.curbed.com/tags/pier-6

22-12 Jackson Avenue

Another ODA project will rise directly beside 22-22 Jackson Avenue. Developer Adam America tapped the firm for this site as well. No renderings have been released, but it will rise 11 stories and hold 186 apartments.

165 Chrystie Street

On Chrystie Street, a 10-story, 9-unit building by ODA will replace a kitchen supply store that was recently demolished. The front facade will be dominated by large windows clad with what could be copper. The lot-line facade will be covered with a dark brick, and feature a faceted pattern.

Rheingold Brewery

Bushwick will be treated to a green roof-topped jagged donut of an ODA building at the former Rheingold Brewery site. The 400,000-square-foot structure is dotted with balconies, and includes a 19,000-square-foot interior courtyard, urban farming areas, a climbing wall, a screening room, and co-working spaces, as well as the aforementioned 25,000-square-foot rooftop terrace. There will be 392 apartments.

150 East 23rd Street

This building deviates from the jenga-style, and looks more like a mini Fortress of Glassitude that was half eaten by a standard box o’ condos. Two buildings will be razed to make way for the new 19-story structure, and there will be 54 apartments, including a top-floor penthouse with a private rooftop deck.

420-430 Kent Avenue

Former governor Eliot Spitzer tapped ODA for his

75 Nassau Street

In the Financial District, ODA deigned a 500-foot tower with a rooftop forest for developer Lexin Capital. It will bring 197 apartments to the neihghborhood, and of course, many of those apartments have private outdoor space, thanks to ODA’s knack for carving out facades.

510 Driggs Avenue

Renderings for this 5-story building were revealed late last year, but new building permits have yet to be issued (previous building permits were issued in 2007), so the status of the project is unclear. Even so, last October, ODA discussed the designs with Arch Daily, explaining that they are striving to bring the “qualities of a private house” to the building. As such, each apartment has two exposures and private outdoor space.

303 East 44th Street

On East 44th Street, ODA is designing a 600-foot-tall building with 16 "hanging gardens" that wrap around the facade. The tower will have one- and two-bedroom apartments on its lower floors, and have full-floor apartments from the 21st floor up, which means they will likely be very expensive. Construction should start in September, with completion expected in late 2017.

1444 Third Avenue

Eschewing stacked boxes for glass strata, ODA revealed the rendering for this UES building three years ago. But even as the previous structure on the site comes down, the permits for the ODA-designed, DRK Third Avenue-developed building still have yet to be approved, and some are wondering whether or not the design will have to change.

630 Lorimer Street

This one isn't really a stack of boxes—maybe just one box? The small four-story Williamsburg building will house eight units once it's completed, which is expected to be sometime around December of this year.[Image via Brownstoner]

505 West 43rd Street

One of ODA's more restrained designs, these Hell's Kitchen apartments haven't had their permits approved yet, so there's plenty of time before we'll see this grayer structure realized. If and when it materializes, the El Ad Group-developed building will contain 106 apartments, with 26 affordable units.

51 Jay Street

This DUMBO building looks very DUMBO-y, without much of the "stacked boxes" look that we've come to expect from ODA. The 74-unit condo building, developed by Adam America and Slate Property Group, hit the market in January, with studios priced at $875,000 and penthouses going over $5 million.

251 West 14th Street

Leave it to ODA to use creative geometry to gobble up every last buildable square foot of a site, which is exactly what they've done with the cantilevering stack of condos at 251 West 14th Street, right off of Eighth Avenue. The building will have 11 floor-through condos starting at $3 million. B+B Capital is developing the project on the Chelsea/West Village border.

224 West 22nd Street

ODA's been tapped to gut-renovate the townhouse at 224 West 22nd Street by Steven Ostad and Andre Sakhai, who first asked $9.45 million for the finished product. The conversion will nearly double the townhouse's size through the excavation of its cellar, where the firm plans to build out a sauna and a theater. The project will also add an entertainment room, "rooftop spa" with a Jacuzzi, and an outdoor shower and barbecue area to the house.

173 Chrystie Street

Since ODA signed on to design a residential building for 173 Chrystie Street at the end of 2014, not much else has come out about the project. What is known: it'll be 10 stories tall and have 13 apartments averaging about 2,000 square feet.

436 Albee Square

An anonymous LLC announced plans to erect an ODA-designed tower on Gold Street between Willoughby and Fulton streets in November. The building at 436 Albee Square will rise 28 stories, have 150 apartments, have three stories of ground floor retail, and kind of look like every other building popping up in Downtown Brooklyn at the time.

134 Vanderbilt Avenue

This Fort Greene building, revealed at the end of last year, is impossible to describe without the word "jenga." The building, developed by Joel Goodman of All Year Management, will contain 45 units and some community space as well.

10 Hubert Street

This smaller Tribeca building is less buzzed-about than some of the other projects on this list, but the apartment conversion will comprise four units. Streeteasy lists past rentals at $6,500 for a two-bedroom and $14,950 for a three-bedroom.[Image via Buzz Buzz Home]

608 Franklin Avenue

The renderings for this glass box of apartments were only revealed in October, but given the anticipated quality of the 120 units, we suspect that rents will be high, though 20 percent of them will be priced below market rate. The building will sit on the block of the Nassau Brewery in rapidly developing Crown Heights, though YIMBY reported that a separate developer will update and maintain the existing Brewery building.

1800 Park Avenue

The rental tower at 1800 Park Avenue was originally intended to have 32 stories, but after its application was denied roughly one year ago. This year, developer Continuum Company, led by Ian Bruce Eichner, came back with a proposal for a 24-story tower—and it was approved. The 25 percent cut in height might seem significant, but at the very least, the building, containing 682 rental units, 20 percent of which will be priced affordably, will still take the title of tallest building in Harlem once it's finished.

100 Norfolk Street

This LES condo building will tower over its neighbors—literally. On one side, the rendering shows how the building extends out like a staircase, making for one of the most defined cantilevers we've ever seen. The building, which contains 38 units, hit the market last fall.

15 Renwick

15 Renwick has had quite the interesting history, despite only just hitting the market last fall. Nine years in the making, the Soho project was stalled until last year, when developer IGI-USA bought the building and got ODA to redesign it. Since then, the team has embraced this steampunk aesthetic, with scalie characters and a costume-y sales gallery launch, to boot. The most recent item of absurdity? The announcement that the building is selling three parking spaces for $1 million a pop.

Franklin Place

Franklin Place, which omitted the "5" from its name three years ago, went through several architects and designs before getting to ODA. As of last year, the building, developed by the Elad Group, with interiors designed by Andres Escobar & Associates, had just two of its 53 condos still on the market. The rooftop pool will be something to look forward to!

93 Worth Street

Developed by IGI-USA, this was one of the best-selling buildings of 2014, with 79 of 92 units sold by the end of the year. Some notable additions to the historic building (which was constructed in 1925) by ODA include seven penthouses, which range in price from $7.55 million to $10 million. Curbed had the opportunity to tour one such penthouse last year and its accompanying amenities.

809 Broadway

The mixed-use building here, developed by IDM Capital, will consist of seven floors of office space and then just three condos on the top floors. Back in 2013, Blatt Billiards, which previously occupied a 126-year-old, five-story building on the same site, sold the address to IDM. You'd think amenities would be limited for the relatively small development, but nope! There's a dog-washing room!

275 Fourth Avenue

Sitting squarely within the "canyon of mediocrity," which is what a Wall Street Journal reporter once called Fourth Avenue, adjacent to Park Slope and Gowanus, 275 Fourth Avenue's promise of 78 rental units, commercial space, and community space may contribute to a revitalization of the area. And yet, Silverstone Property Group, which is developing the building alongside Adam America Real Estate, has said that it plans to give the building a First Avenue address to avoid the negative association.

241 Fifth Avenue

This Victor Homes developed building is unique for the rapidly developing NoMad neighborhood in that it is not a condo conversion, but rather entirely new construction. The building contains 46 condos and amenities such as a fitness center, a yoga room, and a "treatment" center for massages and beauty treatments.

182 West 82nd Street

You might remember this Upper West Side building because its view-blocking penthouse upset the likes of tenants in 172 West 82nd Street, including Kevin Bacon, so much that they wrote to their community board in protest. These condos and townhouses were converted from older houses by The Naftali Group. Eleven units total fill the building, which launched sales in October 2013.

10 Jay Street

It took a couple tries, but the interior and exterior makeover for 10 Jay Street, a condominium-to-be fashioned out of an old warehouse in DUMBO, won approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission in March. The most defining feature of the building, which will contain 46 condos, plus retail space on the first floor, will be its crystal-like facade, which is meant to recall the building's history as a sugar refinery. The building, developed by Triangle Assets, started demolition on May 1 and is expected to be completed by fall of next year.

The Bergen

This Boerum Hill rental building, acquired late last year by a private European investor from The Naftali Group, will contain 84 rental units, ranging from studios to two-bedrooms. A previous version of the project, with developer Karl Fischer, failed to take off.

Hunters Point South - Phase 2

With construction on the first phase of this Long Island City development mostly wrapping up, attention will soon shift to the second parcel, developed by TF Cornerstone and bounded by 54th Avenue to the north and 2nd Street to the east. These two adjoined towers, designed to evoke Manhattan's Art Deco skyscrapers, will feature urban farming terraces, grey-water recycling for irrigation, a children's playroom, among other amenities. Of the 1,193 units, 796 will be designated as affordable, with 100 of those being reserved for low-income seniors.