‘X’ Marks an Upper West Side Rental
Featuring Dennis Hughes:
If “X” marks the spot, there might soon be a stampede for 170 Amsterdam, a high-end rental opening this month in the Lincoln Square neighborhood.
The facade of the building, on Amsterdam Avenue at West 68th Street, is crisscrossed by thick concrete columns set at angles. The result is not just a single “X” but a whole series of them, up and down, left and right.
No pirate map is needed: The letters on the 20-story, 235-unit tower are clearly visible from several blocks away.
In breaking with the local Beaux-Arts style — and the look of most apartment buildings, for that matter — Equity Residential, the developer, said it was trying to create more space in the apartments. By putting the building’s skeleton on the outside, instead of the interior, where it typically goes, the developer was able to give the units much more space.
And if the zigzag design, from Handel Architects, helps attract tenants, that wouldn’t be a bad outcome either, said George Kruse, an Equity vice president.
“We’re charging a lot of rent; I think that you’ve got to give them something,” said Mr. Kruse, as he stood on the building’s roof deck.
Studios in the building start at around $3,400 a month. In contrast, the typical studio in Lincoln Square averages $2,800 a month, according toStreetEasy.com, a figure that takes into account sublets of fancy condominium buildings and apartments that are furnished. Lincoln Square runs from Central Park to the Hudson River, and from West 59th to West 72nd Streets.
At 170 Amsterdam, which has rear windows overlooking part of the 1960s Lincoln Towers co-op complex, two-bedrooms will start at $7,300 a month. Three-bedrooms will start at $12,500.
All the apartments have oak floors and floor-to-ceiling windows, and because those columns have been relocated to the outside, tenants can push their furniture right up to the glass. Stacked Bosch washers and dryers come with all the units.
Sitting on land owned by American Continental Properties and leased to Equity for 99 years, for terms that Equity would not disclose, the building also offers a large below-grade amenity area with a purple-felt pool table on one side and a yoga room and gym on the other.
Owing to a quirk in the layout, those columns on the facade actually extend down through the ceiling and slant through the amenity rooms. That is the only place they are enclosed in the building.
Equity, a real estate investment trust, focuses on rentals and has 27 buildings in Manhattan, including 170 Amsterdam, and three in Brooklyn.
If 170 Amsterdam turns heads with its concrete and glass, it wouldn’t be the first building to shake up Lincoln Square. The Aire, a 310-unit rental nearby at 200 West 67th Street developed by A & R Kalimian, also stood out when it opened in 2010, for its shimmering glass walls. Handel also designed it.
With its own gym and yoga room, plus a half-acre private garden, the Aire will likely be a rival of 170 Amsterdam, and the pricing reflects it. Two-bedrooms there start at about $7,000 a month, said Albert Kalimian, the managing principal of A & R. “We’re probably not the cheapest in the neighborhood,” he added.
But the market appears deep for this type of pricey luxury product, said Dennis R. Hughes, an associate broker with the Corcoran Group who specializes in rentals.
In early March, one of Mr. Hughes’s clients was prepared to pay $20,000 a month to sublet an unfurnished three-bedroom on the Upper West Side but lost it to a higher bidder. In fact, he added, there is actually a shortage of that kind of inventory.
Likening the angular appearance of 170 Amsterdam to that of the Hearst Tower in Midtown, Mr. Hughes said that more condos are looking like office buildings. If a building sticks out, he said, it will do well: “ ‘Interesting’ has a market, and it sells.”
Copyright © 2015 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with Permission. Angel Franco/The New York Times.
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