As New York State reports the lowest percentage of positive COVID-19 tests since the pandemic began, Governor Cuomo announced that New York City is on track to enter Phase Two of the four-part reopening process on Monday, June 22. This means that real estate showings can resume, outdoor dining can commence, barbershops and hair salons may open, and office workers may physically return to work. Everything will occur with face coverings, social distancing, and additional health and safety measures in place.

Last October, the Brooklyn Music School (BMS) announced it is partnering with the Gotham Organization to build a new, 20,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility for the 110-year-old cultural organization in addition to 120 affordable homeownership opportunities above. Sited at 130 St. Felix Street squarely in the Brooklyn Academy of Music Historic District, the contextual design by FXCollaborative will need the approval of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The hearing is scheduled for next Tuesday.

The new building will soar 24 stories (285' high) from a long-vacant lot just behind One Hanson Place (Williamsburg Saving Bank Building) and next door to the Hanson Place Central United Church. A gradiating facade, vertically fading from light to dark, is proposed to envelop the 167,000-square-foot structure. The crescendo of color won't be the first NYC building to utilize the technique, most famously 55 Central Park West ('the Ghostbusters building'), employs a brick and terracotta skin that fades from dark to light, giving it the illusion that the sun is always shining upon its upper floors.

The development team explains the planned building’s massing and Neo-Romanesque design was carefully crafted to create a transition between the church and the tower on adjacent lots. The project will double BMS’ instructional space, and expand the headquarters by 20,000 square feet adjacent to its existing facility. Above the school will be a residential amenity floor and 21 floors of apartments. Thirty percent of the 120 units will be allocated for moderate-income affordable homeownership opportunities, while the remainder will be market-rate condos -necessary for the financial viability of the project.

Most New Yorkers understand that unless you live next to a park or body of water, your view isn't sacred (we're not London for St. Paul's sake). But when a near-and-dear perspective is lost, whether from your home, your office, or even from the street, it's hard not to take it personally, even if you played no part in creating the view.

Bryant Park, one of Midtown's too-few respites, provides one of the most romantic street-level views of the Empire State Building. Behind the park's library-covering green roof/ice skating rink and a row of pre-war gems that include American Radiator Building is the Empire State Building, rising mythically due to its stepped silhouette, great height, and removed distance some six blocks to the south. One such view of the building from the park, seen from the block-through pedestrian walkway shouldering the Bryant Park Grill, has been erased by a new 27-story hotel under construction at 24-30 West 39th Street. Now, instead of the iconic top of the Empire State Building providing a greater sense of place, there is now a new wall of reflective glass.

The new 323-foot-tall, 300-key hotel is being developed by Fortuna Realty and designed by Peter Poon Architects. From the way the building breaks away from the streetwall to its lack of exterior articulation, it appears the tower offers no redeemable qualities other than the payout for investors and the guests who will enjoy a classic view of the Empire State Building stolen from New Yorkers. One piece of consolation is that the building is planned to be topped by a rooftop bar. So anyone willing to fork over $16 for a cocktail or smoothly evade bar staff can behold a front-and-center view of the city's most iconic building.

With New York to enforce occupancy restrictions for indoor restaurants and retailers during the Phase Two reopening, venues hope to take their customers to the great outdoors through a city-backed plan where restaurants can utilize adjacent street space, roof decks, patios, sidewalks, and even nearby plazas and parking lots. By now, many who've hunkered down in the city during the lockdown are yearning for less concrete and more jungle. Some of the new spaces promise to bring New Yorkers new vantage points of their city.

Several permits and applications have come through in recent weeks showing a glimpse of how owners/developers are adjusting their plans for a more open-air future. Up for review at Landmarks on Tuesday is a new dining/drinking roof deck at 234 Fifth Avenue and a seemingly similar concept at 1177 Broadway. Recently the LPC approved plans for a sidewalk cafe outside the upcoming Restoration Hardware Hotel in Meatpacking.

According to Crain's, "Open-street seating will begin in July and will be coordinated by the Department of Transportation and community groups. Backyard and patio seating will be permitted at appropriate restaurants. And there will be a plaza-seating component, one that will entail business-improvement districts working with restaurants to extend seating into public plazas following Department of Transportation approval."

Earlier this week, the Regional Plan Association (RPA) released a report that details plans for a 425-mile bikeway that could be constructed over the next five years and provide a continuous, safe connection between the boroughs. Full 6sqft story here.

In a 6-3 vote, the Rent Guidelines Board voted to approve a rent freeze on all rent-stabilized apartments in New York City with one- and two-year leases. The ruling imposes a rent freeze in the first year, and allows a 1% increase in the second year. The changes affect leases renewed after October 1.

For tenants who have struggled to pay their rent in the wake of the pandemic and economic fallout in the efforts to contain it, the news comes as a relief. However, mom-and-pop landlords feel betrayed by the ruling. Steve Mangione, a spokesperson for the Rent Stabilization Association, says, “Politicians have created a narrative that landlords are sitting on big cash reserves, well it’s certainly not true for the small guy.”

Indeed, a survey from City Housing Improvement Program (CHIP) found that about 25% of residential tenants have yet to pay rent for June, which affects their operating expenses, capacity to improve and maintain their housing stock, and ability to pay their upcoming property taxes. Some landlord groups have argued that if tenants get a rent freeze, they should get a similar freeze on property taxes and utilities.

Down the street from Pratt Institute, and one block away from the Classon Avenue G train station, work is underway on a new residential property at 385 Classon Avenue. Brooklyn-based developer Chaim Landau purchased the property for $1.5 million in 2019, and YIMBY notes that this took place after the foundations were in place.

A recent site visit shows that construction has topped out at four stories high, and next to go up is the classic brick facade and arched windows seen in a rendering. The rendering also indicates that select units will have private balconies, but no other amenities were mentioned.

With the usual volume of celebrity real estate transactions down, the New York Post’s Gimme Shelter column has clearly had time to engage in some detective work. That appears to be how it discovered that at the end of 2019, supermodel Bella Hadid quietly paid $6.1 million for a renovated Soho penthouse under an LLC. The seller, Joe & the Juice founder Kaspar Basse, originally bought it for $5.85 million and listed it for $6.99 million.

Celebrity spotters will note that Bella’s new penthouse is in the same building where her sister Gigi’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, singer Zayn Malik, also owned an apartment (he has since sold it for $9.45 million). However, Gigi Hadid has set up house elsewhere - the same Post news item reports that in a never-reported deal at the end of 2018, she bought the only townhouse in the Annabelle Selldorf-designed 10 Bond Street with plans to combine it with a unit she already owns in the building.

In late May 2020, demolition permits were filed for 752-760 Madison Avenue, home of Giorgio Armani’s flagship store. However, fashion lovers will be relieved to know that the boutique is not a casualty of the pandemic and accompanying economic fallout - on the contrary, plans to demolish the old building to make way for a new, COOKFOX-designed Giorgio Armani flagship with 19 luxury condos on top have been in the works for about a year and a half. Rumor had it that Mr. Armani would live in one of the building, but no word on how his purchase of John Legere’s Central Park West penthouse affects those plans.

Permits are still pending for the new building, but the project in the Upper East Side Historic District has already passed muster with the Landmarks Preservation Commission (“Landmarks”). The Madison Avenue BID, New York Building Congress, Association for a Better New York, members of the community, and Giorgio Armani employees and customers all spoke in favor of the project, which Landmarks ultimately approved in May 2019.

Work on 540 Hudson Street, a new West Village condominium, recently took an important step forward: Demolition permits for the one-story building currently on-site were approved at the beginning of the month. Once this has come down, work on the new seven-story red brick condominium, to be designed by Morris Adjmi Architects, can begin in earnest. As the project sits squarely in the Greenwich Village Historic District, none of the actions could proceed without the approval of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (“Landmarks”).

In addition to being in a historic district, the site is in a highly coveted neighborhood (CityRealty data shows an average condo price of $2,082 per square foot) and less than half a mile from the landmarked Keller Hotel, where Landmarks approved Morris Adjmi Architects’ plans to restore the facade. See more examples of the acclaimed architecture firm’s work here.

Shalom Harlow spent the 1990's as a fashion icon, and continues to take the world of style by storm: She closed Versace's spring 2019 runway show, and appeared on the March 2020 cover of InStyle. Most recently, the New York Post reports that she listed her apartment at One Brooklyn Bridge Park for $1.89 million. A 3D video tour is available online, and FaceTime tours are available upon request.

Ever since New York City’s affordable housing lotteries went online in 2013, the system known as Housing Connect has allowed tens of millions of New Yorkers to apply for apartments priced well below the neighborhood median. Applicants typically used the site to apply for multiple apartments that they might not even have been eligible for, and it could take years for those who qualified to get into their new apartments. This was frustrating, as was the site’s tendency to crash and freeze. Moreover, while the initial applications could be submitted online, applicants were still required to complete some steps, like submitting their financial information, in person.

A major upgrade to Housing Connect is set to address all that. Starting in July, users may create profiles stating their household size and income; from there, they will be shown only apartments they will qualify for. Upgrades will improve the site’s usability and stability, as well as allow users to upload required documents online and view lotteries on their smartphones.

The overhaul has been in the works for quite some time as a key part of Mayor de Blasio’s pledge to create and preserve more than 300,000 affordable units. However, the announcement comes at a time when the need for affordable housing was thrown into sharp relief. Current users will be assured that all applications submitted through the old website will still be active until those lotteries have closed.

The news comes hot on the heels of new affordable housing lotteries at 56 West 125th Street, 1921 Cortelyou Road, 3053 Villa Avenue, and 24 Cedar Street. Details on these and all ongoing affordable housing lotteries here. Please note that CityRealty is not affiliated with the affordable lotteries, and that any questions should be directed to Housing Connect.

CityRealty has released new data for condo sales recorded from June 7-13. The Upper West Side, home of the ever-exciting Waterline Square development among other exciting new construction, took the top spot with an average price of $2,451 per square foot. By sharp contrast, the Financial District/Battery Park City area's average price of $820 per square foot for some of Manhattan's most affordable.

As of this writing, there are 312 condos for sale in this area with a median listing price of $1,495,000 ($1,360 per square foot). Overall asking prices for Manhattan condos are $1,810 per square foot.