The New York Institute of Technology has put its building at 1855 Broadway (61st) on the market, and it’s looking to make more than $80 million on the sale, according to The Real Deal.
The building is just across from the former American Bible Society headquarters that is being turned into a new 33-story residential building (with an upcoming Target on the ground floor). A block away, another tower is expected to go up.
The NYIT property is zoned for office and residential use, The Real Deal reports. (NYIT also has a Long Island campus.)
“The bones are an office,” said a source familiar with the property, which the school will seek to lease back for a one- or two-year period. “Or you can tear it down and build condos with some park views.”
I’m guessing it will be high end apartments that appeal to the private school crowd but all of these big new buildings could still have an impact on public schools, which were just redistricted a few years ago to much fanfare.
With all of these big new buildings, the character of the lower part of the UWS is increasingly breaking away from the area above 70th or so – it really is like a different neighborhood – midtown north.
Big issue across the entire NYC housing demographic is a shortage of “large” family sized apartments.
Middle class who wish to live say in Manhattan are in direct competition with high income families seeking those elusive two,three and maybe even four bedroom apartments.
Larger units translate into a smaller amount of apartments per building. They cost more to build, take up more square footage, and thus also cost more to rent/buy. Middle class families cannot afford to pay several million to buy, or $$$ thousands per month to rent such units. So the luxury market is geared towards a particular demographic.
Middle class New Yorkers are either attempting to buy a rowhouse or some other property in the outer boroughs, or just leaving NYC all together for the suburbs.
You may not be able to find a three bedroom apartment in Manhattan for say two million, but you can buy a house out in NJ, Westchester, or Long Island.
Added benefit is that if chosen wisely your kids can attend local public schools from K-12 that offer great to excellent education and extra circulars. This is directly funded by taxes paid, but at least you are getting something tangible for your money.
I agree, for awhile now, and increasingly so, the 60s have been more like midtown north.
I guess this means NYIT is closing its Manhattan location?
Also. Didn’t fans of Lincoln Square Cinemas,I can’t remember its exact name, show movies at NYIT this winter? I wanted to go but couldn’t get tickets. That would be a real shame if they had to end that Enterprise.
And I had just been thinking of the American Bible Society, wondering what had happened to it. I loved going there as a kid, looking at the bibles in do many languages.
I know there is a market for luxury apartments, especially in neighborhoods like the UWS, but I think they should create housing for middle class housing.
LI, the New Plaza Cinemas has been showing films in another NYIT building a couple of blocks north (across from the old Lincoln Plaza).
American Biblle Society relocated to Philadelphia, where it had already sent a few departments around 2003.
The beloved Lincoln Plaza cinema is now New Plaza Cinema and currently rents the auditorium of the NYIT for its screenings. You need to book online in advance to get in.
We’ve been through this time and time again.
NYC costs are just too high for building anything but high end/luxury housing. This is unless developers get into bed with city and state (tax abatements, affordable housing bonus, etc…), which many are loathe to do. That feeling likely has hardened in wake of recently expanded and cemented into permanent law rent regulation legislation.
If land alone is going to cost $80 million (or more), that is just the start. The entire process from demolition of old structure to development of new will push that number up to three or more times cost of land.
On average building anything in NYC comes in around $362 or more per square foot.
You can see how things pencil out in terms of cost/asking price per square foot here:
https://streeteasy.com/blog/cost-per-square-foot-nyc-manhattan-brooklyn-queens-price/
There is still cheap land available for construction of affordable/subsidized housing. The city owns many acres of acquired properties and public NYCHA land, as well as Board of Education properties. The garages on 108 Street were given away to a non profit developer. 3333 Broadway built in 1976 is a perfect example of 1500 apartments on top of a public school. The HS of Art and Design and PS 59 were rebuilt on DOE land using a luxury developer’s money. NYCHA has lots of parking lots that can have new buildings. Land is there but the cost of developing it is high.
@BB You seem to be under the impression that NYCHA residents are the abject poor and don’t have the same right to parking that any other resident of a housing development with parking has access to. Many are hard working middle-class families who last time I checked are human beings with wants and needs like any others.
Residents of NYCHA developments have fought strongly against any taking of their parking lots for development. The irony of those living in subsidized housing feeling they have a right to free or inexpensive parking while same time those advocating for the “poor” claim great need for new development is lost upon them.
Your arguments don’t make much sense.
For starters, the land at Columbus Circle is some of the most expensive land in the country because it is a very desirable area. The city’s inventory of land is irrelevant.
Also, you can’t apply a building constructed in 1976 to today. In case you haven’t noticed the city has changed a bit since 1976.
@ BB-
You’re assessment is correct. Even if the developer wanted to build middle class housing it’s likely not economically feasible.
Besides, this is one of the most desirable locations in the city. It will likely be a high end apartment building.
Sherm
Before anyone starts, saving grace here is that 1855 Broadway is already built high as current zoning allows. In fact both residential and commercial floor to area ratio (FAR) exceeds current zoning.
This is not uncommon and merely means that if building is demolished whatever replaces it would have to meet new zoning and thus actually less dense than current structure.
Ways to get more density would be via acquiring air rights (if any) from adjoining properties. Addition of a public plaza, and using the city’s “inclusionary housing bonus”.
Other way would be to submit an application to Board of Standards & Appeals.
Last truly great building spree of middle class housing in New York was Mitchell-Lama and Urban Renewal.
That scheme in turn only worked out well because the City then had a surplus of vacant, abandoned, former manufacturing, and other land that could be used. Such land was either cheap, and or simply taken via eminent domain.
Fast forward to nowadays there is precious little “cheap” land in NYC, especially Manhattan. There certainly aren’t large parcels required for big developments. Hudson Yards only came about by building over rail yards at great cost.
Of course city does pick and choose winners and losers. It handed Columbia University large swaths of Manhattanville for their new “world class” campus.
There’s not a Mitchell-Lama on the UWS that was built on vacant land. For every single one of them, poor people were evicted and livable tenements torn down. The commercial tenants were relocated, the residential tenants disappeared.
Which is why James Baldwin and others nicknamed urban renewal “negro removal”.
Due to largely the poor and otherwise disenfranchised being forced from their homes via use of eminent domain (which went part and parcel with urban renewal including Mitchell-Lama schemes IIRC), urban renewal died a quiet death.
It still exists on the books IIRC, and indeed a large part of UWS from about 80th and CPW going up to 96th over to Amsterdam (or is it Columbus?) is still an urban renewal district. But no one is making any plans to take large plots of “blighted” property for redevelopment.
That word; blighted, was how Robert Moses and others were able to pretty much bulldoze entire areas they deemed slums.
The corner of Amsterdam and 105 Street is the northern extent of the urban renewal district. It includes PS145 and is still exempt from any new rezoning initiatives.
The official Upper West Side Urban Renewal Area does end at 97th Street. Above 97 street, land occupied by Park West Village, Fredrick Douglas Housing, PS 145 and PS163 were acquired by eminent domain for various urban renewal purposes. Housing was torn down to build PS145 which replaced PS105 located at Amsterdam Avenue and 104 street, currently a playground. PS163 built in the Park West Village portion. The Public Library on 100 street replaced the building now occupied by the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences. The fire station and police precinct replaced older facilities in the area, 766 Amsterdam Avenue still standing was an old firehouse. NYCHA took over the land from 100-104 streets west of Manhattan Avenue.
https://www.nysun.com/arts/overhaul-of-the-upper-west-side/56521/
https://cooperator.com/article/from-urban-renewal-to-urban-luxury/full
The east side of Amsterdam Avenue above 96 Street before it was torn down, before The East River Savings Bank was built, now a CVS:
https://www.nycvintageimages.com/content/amsterdam-avenue-and-west-96th-street-1919
Everything one finds says Westside URD ran from CPW to Amsterdam from about 67th to 97th streets. There are housing projects further north (between 110th and 125th), but they are outside the district.
https://urbanomnibus.net/2015/06/the-scythe-of-progress-must-move-northward-urban-renewal-on-the-upper-west-side/
Harlem elected officials and politicians made it possible for Columbia to acquire land. Columbia has had to make financial commitments to the community in return for making the project possible.
From the agreement:
Benefits Fund $76,000,000
Affordable Housing $20,000,000
Legal Assistance $4,000,000
CU Facility Access $20,000,000
Demonstration Public School $30,000,000
Many affiliated with the West Harlem Development Corporation will benefit.
https://westharlemdc.org/grants/
West Harlem Community Benefits Agreement:
https://gca.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/2016-11/CBAAgreement.pdf
The Morgan Stanley Pediatric Emergency Room, $50,000,000 in private contributions from Columbia alumni.
https://www.citylab.com/design/2019/05/columbia-university-manhattanville-campus-renzo-piano/587962/
you would think a college that charges 19k a semester for very bland education could easily afford to stay put where they are. NYIT has a long history of real estate deals, some the likes of which the charlatan in chief would be jealous
They may need 30 stories of mechanical space in order to comply with the Green new deal so will end up another 50 plus story building
@Woodcider – Regardless of how much income residents of NYCHA residents make (or don’t), they have no right to expect free parking. Here’s a good correlation…installing bike lanes reduce on street parking. When people complain about this, many commenters respond that if you can afford a car you can pay for parking (i.e. garage)…so if market rate tenants shouldn’t expect free parking, people lliving in public housing certainly shouldn’t. I’d prefer the 4.25% income tax I pay be spent elsewhere.
NYCHA parking is not free. It is offered to residents at an extremely reduced rate.
https://www.nychaparking.com/rates/
Again persons already living in housing at “extremely reduced” rates have crust demanding same for parking.
You don’t hear same usual arguments about streets/land being a precious commodity, and thus ought to be put to good use…..
@nycissues.org,
Yes, those things one knew, but thanks never the less for links. Love seeing old NYC pictures.
Those project mentioned likely received Title 1 funding, which as you correctly point out even though above the official URD, never the less were part of “slum clearance”.
@WoodCider.
NYCHA residents already receive reduced rent and perhaps other benefits. At at time when this city much less Manhattan desperately needs housing to say parking lots on projects property is off limits because residents are “poor” is ridiculous.
Four hundred “hard working people” of all income levels just lost free parking along CPW, we all have to make sacrifices.
City recently expanded that “free” or whatever Metrocard program to include all NYCHA residents IIRC. So some people should practice what they preach, give up the car and take mass transit.
And what will have to the campus ?