The next stop on the Upper West Side demolition derby is expected to be 267-273 West 87th street, where developers Simon Baron Development and Quadrum Global have signed a 99-year-lease for two properties now occupied by a parking garage. They intend to knock it down and build “a new 18-story, 100,000-square-foot luxury residential building with possible parking below grade,” the Commercial Observer reported.
The owner “held it for a long period of time and rather than selling the property, they wanted an ongoing income stream for themselves and future generations,” one of the brokers told the Commercial Observer. The garage will stay open until they’re ready for construction — the exact timing isn’t clear right now.
Development sites like this that are leased and not owned have to be rentals or co-ops, but can’t be condos, according to the New York Post.
The property is between Broadway and West End Avenue.
Image via Google Streetview.
This looks like the site of the 87th Street Market, a small, family-owned market that we went to when I was growing up on 86th St. in the 1940’s and 50’s. I believe the owners’ name was Glick. Does anyone else remember it?
Have been trying for ages to decipher to faded signage on the more western part of the building. Have been curious about what the former business was. Now that the garage is going to be demolished (I use it often, what a shame!!), I should try to snap a photo.
Another landmark worthy structure is going to bite the dust, hard to believe!! Those 70’s era metal gates… so infrequently seen these days.
I hope the developers are going to be required to include affordable garage spaces with their new construction…..
Sally, I don’t go back that far, but the building looks very much as if it was built as a garage and always has been (see the “Shaftways” visible in the photo). If the market was on the north side of 87th between Broadway and West End, my guess is that it occupied the site of the rather nondescript 70s? brick apartment building immediately east of the garage, which now hosts the Fauna pet shop on the ground floor.
Would be nice to incorporate the garage into the new structure – would be great loft like units.
That was done recently in the Village on 13th street and 12th street off Fifth Avenue to much success.
Enough already with all the apt. buildings — co-op and condo, etc.
New York is becoming nothing but high rise residential buildings. The uniqueness of each neighborhood in the City is gone and everything is now so generic.
The quality of life is not getting better. The City just does not have the infrastructure — water, sewer, electric, etc., nor the transportation capability to accommodate this massive influx of new people.
How I miss the City of the 70’s and the real, nitty, gritty Time Square when it wasn’t yet Disneyfied.
Indeed, aren’t our critical resources already overburdened?
I wonder how much longer it will be before the developers will have overplayed their hand; when the overcrowding, lack of open spaces, blockage of natural light and excessive exhaust fumes and other pollution will start to send real estate values into decline.
As someone who grew-up on the Upper West Side during the 70’s and 80’s, I, too, have many times lamented the loss of so much of the character of the neighborhood I remember from then. Authentic, local character lost to corporate commercialization and homogenization.
But let us not allow our nostalgia to paint a deceptively romantic, selective picture of the past.
Wasn’t there considerably more violent crime and squalor in the area during the 70’s and 80’s?
I can remember being able to see, from my window, garbage thrown out of windows from the welfare hotels on our block.
Among the other less-than-romantic memories I have of the area are that of being mugged, sometime in the 80’s.
As far as Times Square, I certainly have no love for Disney. In addition to the soulless commercial homogenization they bring, I find much of their corporate philosophy and actions no more wholesome than the sleaze and slime that used to characterize the area. Still, I’m not going to lament the loss of the latter. Or maybe I will. For, when it comes to such delicate matters, let us consider the present reality. This is, widespread denial notwithstanding, one in which every child has practically unrestricted access to any and all manner of even the utmost depths of depravity and degeneracy. This is the hideous, inexorable reality that the digital age has brought (or wrought). In comparison, the Times Square of a bygone era, even at its seediest, can seem nostalgic.
Actually, Manhattan had more residents in the 1950s than it does now. And, if you’re complaint is about too many tall buildings I’m not sure why you’d choose to live in New York?
I will assume, for the moment, that this claim of yours is correct, as I am neither able to confirm nor dispute it. (I do challenge you, however, to cite a source.)
First of all, how many more residents? How great was the difference in the residential population of Manhattan between the 1950’s and today?
And how much longer, at current rates of development, birth and immigration, before the residential population of the 1950’s will be met and surpassed, respectively?
Perhaps most relevant: What about the total number of people– residents, commuters and tourists– present in Manhattan on an average day, week, month or year? How do those numbers compare between past eras and today?
1.) So, you are saying: Either accept nearly unlimited further development or get out of Manhattan? Love it or leave it, eh?
Do you not accept as reasonable any restrictions on development?
Can you not imagine that there may be people who accept or even welcome a certain number of high-rises, perhaps even many, but feel that Manhattan already has enough or too many?
I have to wonder, should you ever find whatever views, light and open space that you may currently enjoy threatened by some proposed or planned development, whether you might suddenly find yourself singing a very different tune.
2.) Do you even know how much choice Liz actually has in the matter of where she lives? (Do you even know that she lives in Manhattan?)
Family obligations, employment and medical requirements are among the circumstances that often dictate or greatly limit one’s options and choices with regard to place-of-residency.
Look no further than Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Manhattan
1950: 1,960,101
2013: 1,626,159
Change: -333,942
And, given how few new apartments are added yearly I don’t expect the number to climb very quickly. One important factor in the declining population is the increase in average apartment size: Many older apartments have been combined, and new construction tends to favor larger spaces.
I’d imagine that the thousands of foreign owners who do not actually occupy their apartments and who are not “residents” of the city, do not pay resident taxes and do not contribute anything else are not included in those numbers. There are also those who have a home in the surrounding exurbs or suburbs and keep their primary residency there are also not included. I wonder how much of a percentage of the whole all of those people would turn out to be.
as per Nathan:
Manhattan population
1950: 1,960,101
2013: 1,626,159
Change: -333,942
now look at the manhattan peak:
1910: 2,331,542
700,000 people more in 1910 than now!!!!
Somehow the infrastructure could “support” that many people then… although with much less plumbing, etc.
With the dismantling and demolition of the “old-law” overcrowded tenements, Manhattan will never again get close to that population.
In 1910, in low rise buildings 16 people lived per floor…today only 4 (source— https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/realestate/how-many-people-can-manhattan-hold.html
In 1910 there were 90,000 apartments in manhattan….without ANY windows!
In 1900 the lower east side had the highest population density in the world, 735 people per acre (versus 25 in brooklyn, 16 in chicago and 129 for manhattan as a whole)