How the High Line Has Changed Manhattan: Part 3

Here's the last of our three-part tour of the High Line and the West Side development it has sparked (and if Star Wars is any indication, it's hard to stop at just a trilogy). Check out Part 1 and Part 2.

Eastern Consolidated’s Adelaide Polsinelli walked the High Line with us and tells us that for all the residential momentum along the park, especially in Chelsea, office rents have almost pulled even with apartment rates. In that marketplace, owners will go office, considering that office buildings have 20% more leaseable area than resi (if everyone would clean out their closets, maybe there'd be more room in residential buildings, too). Hence Albanese Org’s 510 W 22nd St, which we snapped and which CookFox Architects (known for One Bryant Park) is turning into a gleaming glass office overlooking the High Line.

This massive residential complex was way ahead of its time when it delivered in the 1930s. Our other guide, New York Historical Tours’ Kevin Draper, tells us the 710-unit London Terrace Towers was one of NYC’s first co-ops, including a swimming pool, spa, and rooftop terrace. It’s actually four buildings at the corners of Ninth and Tenth avenues and 23rd and 24th streets. The mid-block buildings, London Terrace Gardens, are apartments managed by Rose Associates. Henry Mandel assembled the full block, which once upon a time was owned by The Night Before Christmas author Clement Clarke Moore. Mr. Moore, incidentally, taught at the seminary we mentioned in yesterday's issue.

We snapped Avalon Communities’ 710-unit AVA High Line apartments at 525 W 28th, which opened last year, as well as the parcel where Related’s 37-unit 520 W 28th condos, Zaha Hadid’s first NY residential building, will rise. Leasing for Related’s 317-unit Abington House (designed by Robert A.M. Stern) on the other side of the High Line at 500 W 30th launched in March.

If you haven’t gone west lately, the 1.7M SF south tower in Related and Oxford Properties’ Hudson Yards—which will be home to Coach, L’Oreal, and SAP—has shot out of the ground.

And that’s where our story and the High Line end—for now. Eventually, the park will wrap around Hudson Yards to the right to meet up with the Javits Center (in the distance in our picture). But there's plenty more to come for this storied corridor. Adelaide says ground-level retail will need to evolve to serve all the residential development. She’d also love a cultural gateway at this end of the park, equivalent to the Whitney at the south, to carry the Meatpacking retail buzz north.