It’s tough to stand out in Manhattan’s overbuilt luxury-condo market, but James Linsley is working on it. Instead of building a single, skyscraping tower designed by a world-famous architect, he’s putting up three -- on the same site.
The project, by GID Development Group, consists of three glass-sheathed buildings -- one each by architects Richard Meier, Rafael Vinoly and Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates -- rising on Riverside Boulevard between 59th and 61st streets. Linsley, GID’s president, is filling out the final piece of a redevelopment plan along the Hudson River that started two decades ago with Donald Trump.
The trio of towers, where amenities include an underground tennis court, soccer field and aeroponic garden, has 263 condo units in all. GID reports that 53 of them, about 20 percent, have sold since marketing began in June. The most expensive was a $15.5 million, four-bedroom home selling at $4,097 per square foot, a record for an apartment on Riverside Boulevard, according to listings website StreetEasy.
“Half of our buyers are from the proximate area,” said Melissa Ziweslin, a managing director at Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, who’s overseeing sales at the $2.3 billion project, called Waterline Square. Some of them were looking to benefit from a 20-year tax abatement on the new buildings as the rebates on their older Riverside units expire, she said.
City of Condos
Selling pricey condos in Manhattan these days is an uphill climb, as developers keep splashing the landscape with ever more units for buyers to choose from. This year, 4,600 newly developed apartments are expected to reach the sales market, with nearly half of them priced at $2,400 per square foot or higher, according to data compiled by Corcoran Sunshine. That’s on top of the 3,323 new units that were listed for sale in Manhattan last year.
Demand isn’t assured. Closed sales for new units in the fourth quarter dropped 19 percent from a year earlier to 387, according to Miller Samuel Inc. and Douglas Elliman Real Estate. New apartments over $5 million accounted for 20 percent of those going into contract in 2017, down from 25 percent a year earlier, according to a report by Halstead Property Development Marketing.
“We’re always conscious of what’s happening in the marketplace and in our universe of buyers,” Linsley said on a recent tour of the property. “In the end, the market’s going to tell you if you’re right or wrong, and so far what we’ve done seems to be resonating.”
Linsley himself moved into an apartment next door to the project to keep an eye on it. “I open the window and look out before the guys even start work, and I’m out here all the time,” he said. “There’s not a doorknob or hinge or screw in the building that I’m not aware of.”
Trump’s Vision
The master plan for Riverside South, the whole 13-block stretch along the West Side Highway, was first envisioned by Trump, who acquired the 77-acre (31-hectare) site in 1974, sold it and bought it back a decade later, according to CityRealty. He initially proposed a project named Television City that would have included studios for NBC and a 150-story tower.
In the early 1990s, facing financial problems amid a softening real estate market, Trump found Chinese investment partners to get the first buildings off the ground. After helping him put up a set of condo and rental towers bearing his name, the partners sold the rest of the site, setting off a cascade of development by others.