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Business & Labor
Luxury on the Rise in Hell's Kitchen
(newyork.construction.com,
August 2006 issue)
By Diane Greer
A new 42-story condominium building
will hang over its neighbors on columns and cantilevers
while accenting its up-and-coming Manhattan neighborhood's
historically gruff style.
 Hell's
Kitchen, still one of Manhattan's fringe neighborhoods, is
getting a slicker feel with a wave of new high-end condominium
developments.
The historically gritty neighborhood
at times gets obscured when real estate agents or developers
stretch the definition of Midtown West or call the area by
its formal name, Clinton, to attract buyers and renters to
the area west of Times Square and Columbus Circle. The roster
of new condominium developments in that vein includes properties
such as the $74 million Clinton West on 47th Street between
10th and 11th avenues, which opened last year, and the $170
million Mosaic on 10th Avenue between 51st and 53rd streets,
which broke ground in spring 2005 under its original name
of Clinton Green.
But New York-based Elad Properties is
playing off of the neighborhood's edgy image to market the
Link, a sleek new 42-story condominium rising on West 52nd
Street between Eighth and Ninth avenues.
"We like the juxtaposition of a
high-end glass tower with a cutting-edge design in a neighborhood
not known for being high tech and cutting edge," said
Tom Elliott, vice president of market and design for Elad
Properties.
The $80 million, 265,000-sq.-ft. project
designed by New York-based Costas Kondylis and Partners will
also have two six-story town houses sited on the half of the
100- by 100-ft. property that is located in the Clinton Preservation
District, which limits building heights to six stories.
Construction of the cast-in-place concrete
building started in April 2005 after crews demolished the
Studio Instrument Rental Building to make way for the new
structure. Topping out ceremonies took place at the end of
May, and the building is slated to open in May next year.
Elad bought the property on Eighth Avenue
- along with air rights for an adjacent Howard Johnson Hotel
- from Hampshire Hotel Group in 2004. The air rights enabled
construction of the tall tower and the extension of the building's
floor plate over a portion of the hotel and an adjoining parking
garage, said Yoel Shargain, senior vice president at Elad.
Hampshire has since sold the hotel property
to Hampton Inn.
On the east side of the building, starting
at the fourth floor, the floor plate extends 22 ft. over the
Hampton Inn. The initial designs would have supported the
extension with two columns threaded through the back of the
hotel, said Martin Loy, project manager for Tishman Construction,
the construction manager on the project.
But the plan changed. Now, shear walls
going up to the eighth floor and additional concrete support
the cantilever, Loy said.
"It slowed down work on the superstructure
on the lower floors but helped in the long run because we
didn't have to drop columns through switchgear rooms in the
hotel," he added. "We ended up going with a true
cantilever to save on that work."
To the south, the floor plate
also extends by 22 ft., in this case over the garage, starting
at the third floor. A deck for a third-floor roof garden extends
over the remainder of the garage to 51st Street.
To support those structures, the
project team stuck to the original plan to use columns on footings,
threading four large steel beams through four floors of the
garage. Crews had to relocate existing M-E-P equipment in the
garage and avoid walls, oil tanks, and other obstructions in
order to install the columns.
Another complication in construction of the footings was access
to the garage, which is operated by HJ Parking and leased from
the hotel. The only way in to the two cellar floors is via a
lift that the garage needs to move cars, requiring the project
team to seek another entry point.
"We ended up saw-cutting a hole
in their second cellar wall and then left a hole in our foundation
wall so we had access to the cellar," Loy said. "Once
I was able to get those four columns dropped in, the hard
part was over."
The team used pulley and conveyor systems
to remove excavation debris from the footing dig.
Constructing the tower on a tight lot
along a busy street, across from a school, meant dealing with
a lot of traffic, Loy added. In order to keep deliveries off
the street, the team left out the second-story floor slab
in the town houses, and now uses a hoist in the courtyard
to bring materials into the back of the structure.
The tower façade features a window
wall panel system made of aluminum and glass that extends
from slab to slab without using knee walls, while still fully
covering the columns and slabs. The town house façades
are of charcoal-glazed brick.
The panels aim to evoke an "edgy
building," said Costas Kondylis, principal of his namesake
firm.
"We wanted to have a very glassy
building to maximize the views and the light inside the apartments,"
he added. "You have to make sure you create a design
that has value. We wanted it to look great 10 to 20 years
from now."
Tenants will enter the building through
a glass cube placed in a landscaped plaza.
"We took the vestibule out of the
lobby," Kondylis said. "This gives us some identity
at street level."
The interiors of the 215 apartments,
designed by Gal Nauer, feature low-profile cabinetry, glass
tiles, hardwood floors, and high-end appliances. The condominiums
are on the market on a range from $640,000 to $4 million,
with the town houses selling for $3.2 million and the penthouses
for $3.5 million to $4 million. More than half of the units
have sold.
The building is designed with sections
that jut out of the main footprint to create six corners.
The layouts combine the living room, dining room, and kitchen
into one large room placed at the corners, which provide wraparound,
two-directional views through floor-to-ceiling windows.
Amenities include a fitness club, lobby
garden, and 2,500-sq.-ft. meditation garden on the outdoor
deck.
"For Hell's Kitchen, we have a
lot of outdoor space," Elliott said.
Key Players
Owner: Elad Properties, New
York
Construction Manager: Tishman
Construction, New York
Architect: Costas Kondylis
and Partners, New York; Gal Nauer Architects, New York
Structural Engineer: WSP Cantor
Seinuk, New York
M-E-P Engineer: Cosentini Associates,
New York
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