A part of Chelsea Piers that saw historic ocean liners RMS Lusitania and RMS Mauretania sail out of New York, as well as the arrival of The Titanic’s survivors aboard The Carpathia in 1912, is finally ready to begin its new life. Cunard’s former Pier 54 is now being transformed into an iconic floating park above the Hudson River called Pier 55, designed by Thomas Heatherwick.
One after another, each remaining vacant lot along the nearly 1.5 mile-long High Line is giving rise to some of the most architecturally innovative design across the Five Boroughs. Each of the new buildings has their own identity and aesthetics, jostling to be the next spectacle in West Chelsea. One long-awaited and highly anticipated project is The Fitzroy, at 514 West 24th Street, designed by Roman and Williams and developed by a partnership between JDS Development and Largo Investments. Now, the scaffolding has come down, revealing what hopefully won’t be a once-in-a-lifetime revival of Art Deco stylings, built for contemporary sensibilities.
The newest Bjarke Ingels Group-designed project has now partially topped out. The taller 36-story component of the XI, at 76 Eleventh Avenue in Chelsea, has reached this milestone when just seven months ago, it was merely two stories high. With only a few months in between YIMBY’s visits, the enormous scale of the new building is quite shocking, as it rose incredibly quickly. The theatric nature of the twisting concrete sculpture certainly catches the attention of visitors from the High Line park, where many tourists are already snapping photographs. HFZ Capital Group is responsible for the development.
GDS Development has acquired an additional 7,410 square feet of air rights for their planned condominium development at 500 West 25th Street, in West Chelsea. The air rights were purchased from Brookfield and Related. Valued at $685 per square foot, GDS’ additional investment totals about $5.1 million.
While YIMBY normally covers aggregate new building applications on an annual basis, this year, we have released our first mid-year pipeline report, and the results are surprisingly positive. After two years of declining applications following the frenzies of 2014 and 2015, the preliminary numbers for 2018 appear to be signaling a major uptick in activity. Year-over-year filings of new residential units have grown substantially, rising from 9,134 in the first six months of 2017, to 15,305 in 2018 — an increase of 67.5%.
