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March 03, 2005
I-SeS
What is the terminus of Luxury Condo construction in Manhattan? How many buyers can really be in the market for five hundred thousand dollar studios. In unremarkable hi-rise towers. In neighborhoods without grocers. How many euro trash pied-a-tierres can we swallow before the market explodes with inventory, and penniless Cocoran brokers talking about the early two-thousands?
Everywhere you turn, another, sometimes noteworthy (Perry St Towers, 80 South St), but most of the time trite, lux condo tower is under construction, just completed, or on the Globe St. broadsheet. I support density, and new residential construction, as a rule. But Please. If it happens to be a noteworthy building, the 500 grand studio, already so outrageously priced, jumps to atmospheric heights. Is it unimaginable for middle-income New Yorkers to live in a hi-rise and not in a row home? Does everyone in Vancouver make 6 figures?
Besides the explosion of towers on the ladies mile, and the similar blowback of shadows in Hells Kitchen, the district around the Empire State Building/Midtown South, seems to be budding with new lux hi-rises - and the ball may have just started bouncing.
So here, what better reason to kibosh the CT based developers shitty neighborhood branding and come up with a new monkier, I-SeS, or, In the Shadow of the Emprire State. Perfect I-Gnorance.
The northern most lux condo tower of the newly minted I-SeS neighborhood is the 617 ft, 57 storey, Michael Grave's sheathed 425 5th Ave. On the west end of the district, on 6th, the 463 ft, 46 storey Atlas, and in the center, on 33rd st, another cartography stimulated building, and perhaps the most appalling looking, the 348 ft, 34 storey, Magellan. And the southern most, on 31st st, the 450 ft, 41 storey, Tower 31. Supposedly a project by Trump bed partners Costas Kondylis & Partners, although the project isn't credited on their site... Heres to hoping this tower can slow I-SeS from futher architectural banality, and not end up in twenty years looking like Kips Bay hi-rises or Murray Hills monstrosities.
So that brings us to the newest finger in I-SeS hand - the 471 ft, 47 storey, 325 Fifth Ave. Which all of the photos in this post have originated from, the giant hole excavated for 325's foundation. The renderings leave me a little cold and distant, but perhaps, against my better cynic, we'll get something akin to architecture at 325 5th Ave. But I'm not crossing my rebar. So heres to I-SeS, I hope you can do something with your good bad self, cause you're home to the interminable and lovely ESB, and I've always loved how the sun shines so brightly up 5th ave from the Flatiron, and your 70's fab Broadway dirty with soot, and meat sticks, the sidewalks littered with belt wrappers, and cheap perfume boxes. Keep it togehter for us.
Posted by jmarston at March 3, 2005 04:48 PM
Comments
don't you mean indomitable instead of interminable?
really like the blog
Posted by: w at March 3, 2005 08:44 PM
thanks!
no, i mean interminable, as in everlasting, snatch.
Posted by: dave at March 4, 2005 09:55 AM
I-SeS is a freakin' terrible marketing name. Aside from the absurdness of creating these arbitrary microcosms, how the hell is it pronounced? At least Dumbo and Tribeca are made into words. I-SeS is postmodern acronymism run amouk!
On a side note, have you seen the site for Jean Nouvel's new residential tower in Soho? Broadway and Grand, I believe. It was fenced off and foundation work may have been underway the last time I was in NYC. I couldn't really tell because I couldn't see through the fence and it was New Year's so nobody was working. Just wondering because it looks like a quality piece of architecture from the few images I saw in this book.
Posted by: John at March 4, 2005 05:51 PM
i know its a terrible name, i meant it as that, to demonstrate the absurdness of it, because there have been alot of attempts to christen microcosms and they fall just as flat as this, purposely does.
no, i haven't, but i'll post some photos when i do.
Posted by: dave at March 7, 2005 10:12 AM
Oh, I didn't realize you made up that name. I must have missed that in my skim of the post.
Posted by: John at March 7, 2005 05:52 PM