Russian-backed skyscraper at 262 Fifth Avenue disrupts Empire State Building views; Cladding underway

By CityRealty Staff | From Future New York Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Rendering of 262 Fifth Avenue looking south (Credit DBOX)

On the southwest corner of 29th Street, 262 Fifth Avenue spent a few years sitting fallow, including at the height of the pandemic. However, the site is anything but quiet now: The concrete structure is fully up, cladding is on the rise, and both professional and armchair architecture critics the world over are up in arms about its impact on the New York City skyline.

The venture is being steered by Israeli-Russian billionaire Boris Kuzinez, operating under the alias Five Points Development. Over the last decade, the firm quietly assembled a three-building parcel to the tune of $102 million with enough untapped development rights to either build a slender soaring tower or a girthier mid-rise. The firm decidedly chose to go with the former and spun off 260 Fifth Avenue, the southernmost building in the assemblage, for $52.5 million in mid-2021. Construction permits were approved a short time later in fall 2021. Since then, the new tower has risen to dethrone the nearby, 673-foot-tall 277 Fifth Avenue as the tallest building on the avenue.

Designed by the Moscow-based architecture firm Meganom, the new supertall has sharply interrupted an iconic view found between the Flatiron Building and the Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue. In March 2024, The Guardian spoke to Downtown residents who used to be able to see the Empire State Building from their homes, but can now no longer see it in full below 28th Street. Some accepted the new building and evolving skyline as the price of living in New York City, while others viewed it as emblematic of the city’s housing crisis and the divide between the super-rich and the rest of us.

Renderings credit of Mir.no via Meganom and Five Points Development

East elevation with its porthole-like windows (MIR.no)

NYC supertall skyscraper condo 262 Fifth

Looking up from Fifth Avenue (Mir.no)

But while the design is extremely disruptive to the local streetscape, it will be highly beneficial to the tower's future residents. With sheer walls positioned to the east and west and glass curtain walls facing north and south, the design allows for column-free living spaces that best capitalize on sweeping views of downtown and Midtown. Deviating from the central cores typically found in Manhattan skyscrapers, the core, which houses mechanicals and elevators, is shifted to the tower's western perimeter, giving units interruption-free spaces and likely the feeling of floating above the city. The voids at and near the top of the tower are likely to mitigate the effects of the wind on the slender tower.

FNA Engineering Services, P.C.is the engineer of record for the excavation and foundation support, CM & Associates is the project manager, and SLCE is listed as the architect of record. While the design is rather offensive and somewhat sinister, the engineering is cutting edge. This can-do spirit of engineering is what New York was built on and the prospect of making ever-larger profits (and flaunting it) has driven more than two dozen supertall condo developments into the sky in recent years and in years to come.

Initial reports said there would be 41 condo residences in the 54-story building, but that number has been revised to only 26 units, with at least one quadruplex among them. An offering plan filed in November 2017 did not list a sellout price; but given the caliber and scale of the project, its homes will be unapologetically pricey. Amenities are to include a fitness center, a common terrace, a swimming pool, and an incredible shared roof deck with views nearly-equivalent to those seen on the Empire State Building's 86th-floor observatory.

The building also applied for 23 parking spaces, 18 more than allowed under current zoning regulations. Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine called on the city to deny it, calling it "contrary to our citywide goals of combatting and reducing the effects of climate and carbon emissions" (h/t Crain's New York Business).