Renderings have been revealed for 301 East 71st Street, a 30-story residential tower on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Designed by SLCE Architects and developed by The Torkian Group, the 340-foot-tall structure will yield 70 rental units, with 18 designated as affordable housing. The property is located at the northeast corner of Second Avenue and East 71st Street.
The renderings look northeast at the tower, which will begin with a multistory podium that steps back at the seventh floor. The tower will rise uniformly for nearly 20 stories before culminating in a stepped crown and bulkhead that will be illuminated at night. Soaring cutout terraces at the 23rd floor will be among the building’s amenity spaces. The façade will be composed of light gray limestone surrounding floor-to-ceiling windows arranged primarily in four-story segments. Cornices will cap the uppermost rooflines, as well as the tops of the loggia terraces.
301 East 71st Street. Designed by SLCE Architects.
301 East 71st Street. Designed by SLCE Architects.
The affordable apartments will be reserved for households averaging 60 percent of area median income (AMI) and will be spread across the height of the building, as opposed to the typical practice of colocation. The affordable units will consist of four studios, five one-bedrooms, and nine two-bedrooms. The market-rate apartments will include four studios, 15 one-bedrooms, 23 two-bedrooms, 26 three-bedrooms, one four-bedroom, and one five-bedroom. A handful of units will come with private terraces.
The project was presented to the Community Board 8’s Zoning, Development, and Housing Committee last Tuesday and is currently under review. The Torkian Group assembled air rights from three low-rise residential properties to the north, as well as from the Knickerbocker residence at 1749 Second Avenue. The project is set to be built using a transit easement for the nearby 72nd Street station along Second Avenue, served by the Q train.
The site is currently occupied by a low-rise residential building, as seen in the below Google Street View image. The Torkian Group purchased the property in September 2024 for $25 million.
301 East 71st Street. Image: Google
A construction timeline for 301 East 71st Street has yet to be formalized, and likely will not be announced until the project secures a Universal Affordability Preference (UAP) regulatory agreement. Work on the all-electric tower is expected to take approximately two years to finish.
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Wow… A lot going on in this section of the UES.
while this is a nice building.. it is a bit sad that everywhere pre-war tenement walk up on the Avenues east of Lex appear to be doomed. I am a big proponent of building but also landmarking.
What was kind of cool of the area was the towers mixed in the tenements. The tenements housed the cool restuarants on the UES.
I wish we can keep the ones that remain – or some of them.
Compare that with 9th Avenue hells kitchen -where the same type buildings cannot be demolished at all due to zoning height restrictions. Surely that area could handle some more towers
Landmarking tenements building that otherwise don’t have significant historical value. Ain’t happening!
I had a friend who briefly lived in a tenement east of Union Square with a bathtub in the kitchen and a private toilet out in the hallway. The front of the building was pretty with ornate terra cotta, but this would be unworthy of preservation.
I’m with you. I’ve seen projects on New York YIMBY that show that new high-rises can coexist with low tenement buildings. The new kind of rising from the old. Good development combined with historical context. Better than a city of borning glass boxes.
Although the top is a bit of a mess, it’s a very decent design that still proves SLCE is no Ramsa. Creating 18 affordable units is a step in the right direction, but more than that will be lost. Allow more floors to add more affordable units.
Love the height and the top of the building
Thanks Yimby for freely sharing this news with the public, unlike uppereastsite.com that blocks information behind a paywall
This will no doubt provoke controversy but when my wife and I tried to buy our first house in the town in Ct. that she was raised in we simply couldn’t afford it. Nobody gave us any “affordable” options nor did we seek them. We moved a few towns away that were more affordable and had a great life there. The entitlement of the “affordable crowd” kvetching about equal access to amenities which others pay for is mind boggling. Where is it written that folsk who cant afford to live in prime neighborhoods should be given handouts?
Here’s the response with em dashes removed:
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Ah yes, thank you for sharing this truly harrowing tale of being unable to afford a house in a specific Connecticut suburb, a story so universally relatable to the working poor of New York City that it practically writes itself.
Let’s pause to appreciate the breathtaking intellectual gymnastics on display here. You, a person shopping for a single-family home in a desirable Connecticut suburb, couldn’t stretch the budget quite far enough, so you bought a different house, in a different town, and by your own admission had “a great life there.” The tragedy of it all. Someone alert the Red Cross.
You’ve somehow concluded that this experience, being a homebuyer with options, is comparable to a major American city deploying a policy tool to prevent the complete economic cleansing of working-class residents from a place they already live. These are nurses, teachers, sanitation workers, and bus drivers, you know, the people whose labor actually keeps a city like New York functioning, being priced out entirely by the very market forces your letter celebrates.
The program you’re sneering at doesn’t give anyone a penthouse. It reserves a modest percentage of new units at rates people can actually afford. The “amenities” you’re clutching your pearls over are things like a roof and proximity to their job.
But sure, your Connecticut house hunt was basically the same thing. Totally comparable. Riveting stuff.