1) They won't let us in the building, but the Times' new development sizer-upper Suzanne Slesin had no trouble getting a look at 15 Union Square West. Everyone has been talking about what the designers did with the tall arched windows of the original Tiffany and Co. building, and now we finally see it. The dog-run views must be mesmerizing. And adorable! [Window Shopping/Suzanne Slesin]
2) Some may think that The Ludlow, the massive luxury rental building on the Lower East Side, is targeting "fratty douchebag investment bankers" with their marketing, but you'll be surprised to find out that the building's first ever tenant was a woman in her 40s. How she got around the snipers, we're not quite sure. [Habitats/Dan Shaw]
3) Corcoran Sunshine just spent $100,000 to produce 85,000 copies of a glorified sales brochure for Riverhouse that explains how eco-friendly the building is (look for it in a garbage can near you). Also, 15 units in the eco-madness Toren have sold this month. [Posting/C.J. Hughes]
4) Living in Midtown may seem like a nightmare to most people, but not to a computer geek and his wife who moved to New York from Boston to take a job at Google. Being a nerd, here's part of his hunting strategy: "Mr. Bolay listed each building’s walking time to work, assuming one minute per street block and three minutes per avenue block, and calculated the value of his travel time according to his salary." No wonder Long Island City didn't make the cut. [The Hunt/Joyce Cohen]
5) The Department of City Planning announced a rezoning plan for five neighborhoods on the Rockaway Peninsula, including Far Rockaway, the Hamptons of the '30s long since ruined by crappy development. No more high-rises casting shadows on the beach? It could be too little too late. [The City/James Angelos]
Floorplan Porn, PriceChopper, Celebrity Real Estate Wrap—the tale of Hudson Blue fits all of the above. As reported this week in your tabloid of choice—and New York—Leonardo DiCaprio bought an apartment at Riverhouse, the new luxury Battery Park City building that swears up and down it's eco-friendly (we're sure that underground parking garage will be filled with Priuses). But, wait, wasn't Leo supposed to move in to Hudson Blue, the boutique building along the West Side Highway no doubt inspired by the nearby Richard Meier towers? He sure was, even after the rest of the eight listings were pulled off the market and reconfigured as six units.
So what happened at Hudson Blue? In a shocking twist, the building is now being marketed as a single-family townhouse priced at $21 million (down from $25 million two weeks ago, per StreetEasy). Because this building was never supposed to turn out this way, the stats are slightly ridiculous. The Sotheby's listing has it at 11 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms and 5 half-baths, a total of 15,000 square feet. The freakin' thing is 10 floors! What family could possibly handle a house that big? Probably none, which is why the listing says a buyer can "develop as two or more condominium units." What made this one such a stinker?
· Listing: West Village Mansion With River Views [Sotheby's]
· Hudson Blue to Try, Try Again with Sotheby's [Curbed]
· Celebrity Real Estate Wrap: Leo's Baby Blue [Curbed]
The least-sexy, most revealing High Line photo ever.
We'd like to borrow a page from our friends at Eater and do a little Open House New York recap, hangover style. The city's great annual architecture and design dorkfest is now done, and while we didn't make it out to many sites, the ones we did ... woo boy.
1) Let's start with the High Line. Good lord, is this thing happening fast. Above you see the 30th Street Spur, the border of the city-owned Phase 2 (Chelsea) and the jeopardized, West Side Rail Yards-straddling Phase 3. As you can see, Phase 2's tracks have already been removed and the platform cleaned. Phase 1, down in the MePa, will open next fall. Friends of the High Line have kept this thing completely on schedule, which is probably why it's still floating under the radar. That, and the whole can't-see-it-from-the-street thing. Developers' bids for the Hudson Yards are due this week, so the future of High Line North may be revealed soon.
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