Condos Coming to Midtown East

Empty Nesters, foreign buyers, young couples, and suburban commuters are all being targeted for 90k SF of condos going up between Madison and Fifth. (If you're young, foreign, and suburban, better buy armor.)

Hidrock Realty has assembled three-parcels on 47th and 48th streets for $47M. Groundbreaking is a year away. This morning, Hidrock CEO Abraham Hidary told us his company closed quickly (just four weeks) with the two sellers after seeing the sites at 12 and 14 E 48th and 13 E 47th. It''ll spend the next nine months working on design and specs and with the Department of Buildings. The entrance will be on 48th, and ground-floor and basement retail (around 5,000 SF) will be included.

Eastern Consolidated’s Stuart Gross has been working with the seller, City Centre Properties, for six years, back when 15 E 47th, the Algerian consulate, also was in play (no deal). The idea then was to do a limited-service hotel, but changes in zoning bonuses prompted a second look. This deal, Stuart says, uses air rights from the 47th Street parcel and adds 2 FAR from a recreation facility bonus to the 10 FAR as-of-right zoning's 75k SF to reach a 12 FAR 90k SF. What exactly a recreation facility bonus requires remains to be fleshed out, though it seems to indicate a private sports facility, he says. (If you're going to build a soccer field, do it now before interest wanes.)

We snapped the existing 48th Street buildings this morning. At the new square footage, Stuart says, hotel developers tapped out of bidding at around $450/SF, but Hidrock, eyeing the property as a resi play, upped the ante to $522/buildable SF. And that’s not a speculative run-up in pricing as can happen in hot areas like the High Line, Stuart says, but rather sharp underwriting and the real value of the land. And Hidrock is thrilled with its basis in the site, Abraham tells us.