New York’s condo market is brimming with costly apartments in glittering new towers. Now it’s about to get more pricey homes, this time in a building that’s more than a century old.
Ziel Feldman’s HFZ Capital Group plans to convert 95 empty rental units at the Belnord, a gated complex occupying a full square block on the Upper West Side, into condos that will be listed at $3,000 a square foot on average -- more than the boroughwide average for new-development sales in the first quarter. He’s hired architect Robert A.M. Stern for the project at the landmarked limestone-and-brick building, reaching for a formula that’s succeeded at other properties that have pushed price boundaries in Manhattan.
Stern is taking on the Belnord after having studied it for inspiration for his own ground-up design for 15 Central Park West, the ultra-luxury project by Zeckendorf Development LLC that shattered price records. He also worked on 30 Park Place, Silverstein Properties Inc.’s limestone condo tower atop a Four Seasons Hotel in lower Manhattan, where a penthouse on the 81st floor sold for $26.6 million in January.
“Clearly, Robert has magic dust and we hope some of it rubs off on us,” Feldman said in an interview about plans for the Belnord, on the full block between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue and 86th and 87th streets.
Feldman is testing New Yorkers’ appetites for luxury real estate in a market that’s already oversupplied with high-end homes, including condos his own firm developed several years ago that he’s still working to sell. And while Feldman is embarking on the Belnord conversion, he’s seeking about $1 billion in financing for a ground-up project along the High Line in Chelsea. HFZ is working with architect Bjarke Ingels on plans for about 230 condos and a hotel on that full-square-block site, purchased two years ago for $870 million.
Luxury Contracts
Deals for Manhattan luxury apartments -- those priced at $4 million or higher -- have had a strong start this year, jumping 33 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier to 330 contracts, according to brokerage Olshan Realty Inc. But there’s a lot of inventory to clear. About 4,282 newly developed condos will reach the market this year, about double the number that were listed in 2016, data from Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group show. About 60 percent are considered luxury, costing at least $2,400 a square foot.
The prices HFZ is seeking at the Belnord, completed around 1908, are “not crazy,” given the building’s place in New York City’s history and high demand for apartments on the Upper West Side, where there isn’t much supply, said Andrew Gerringer, managing director of the Marketing Directors, a new-development brokerage that isn’t involved with the project.
“I think it’s got an opportunity to shine, even in a market like today,” said Gerringer, who had marketed previous HFZ projects while at another firm. “But the caveat is, as long as the apartments aren’t ridiculously big.”
‘No Competition’