A more conservative developer during an earlier market cycle might have bought the 24-foot-wide lot at 243 East 7th Street, between Avenues C and D in Alphabet City, and built a rental project with a dozen apartments spread over the less than 10,000 square feet of allowed residential space. But today, the site – picked up for $3.15 million in early 2013, $200,000 off the price paid by the seller in 2008 – is destined for just two multi-floor apartments.
Developer Olivier Jaillon hired Studio Razavi Architecture – headed by Alireza Razavi, whose portfolio includes a number of projects in France, along with the Battery Park Pavilion in New York – to design the building.
243 East 7th Street, rendering by Studio Razavi Architecture
The lower unit will take up the second and third floors, while the upper one will be a triplex, spanning the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors. The ground floor will be a common area, with the Schedule A filing indicating a pool. Razavi sent YIMBY the following statement, describing the project’s design:
By relying on a variety of different window sizes on the street facade, our wish was to architecturally express this very specific blend of living typologies while providing a strong overall unity. The use of cast-in-place concrete provides a beautifully vibrant background over which to compose the openings. These are all enhanced by tapered steel frames, celebrating the windows openings even more. This will be a two wall concrete system with embedded insulation. The outer wall acts as a rain screen, and the inner wall is structural and exposed.
While the project is of a much higher caliber than most Alphabet City product, it does have some precedent in the Flowerbox Building, a condo project that opened just a few blocks down in 2006 at 259 East 7th Street. The penthouse there sold for around $5.9 million in 2009, the highest price sale in Alphabet City, according to über-appraiser Jonathan Miller. But assuming that the triplex at No. 243 sells for upwards of $1,000 per square foot (likely, given that a sale at No. 259 was made last year closer to $1,500 a foot), it might soon snatch the crown and set a price record for Alphabet City.
Construction is slated to begin next year.
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