Earlier today, YIMBY came across what might be the strangest permit filing we’ve ever seen. At 701 West End Avenue – the site of a seven-story postwar brick building, going by the address 711 West End Avenue – Kaled Management, led by Edward Kalikow, is seeking to build a new 10-story building.
But there’s a twist: rather than demolishing the old seven-story postwar Upper West Side apartment building on the site, it appears – but we cannot be sure, since nobody at Kaled immediately returned our call – that the new building will be erected right on top of the old one.
The first hint is the new structure’s height. At 185 feet, it’s far too large to be a normal 10-story building. But stick it on top of an existing seven-story apartment building and it makes a bit more sense.
Secondly, there’s the Schedule A filing. The document claims that the first floor will be referred to as the eighth floor for marketing purposes – consistent with the building being plopped right on top of the current one. This pattern continues on the second through ninth floors, referred to as the ninth through 16th floors for marketing purposes.
The new structure, which could also go by the address 306 West 95th Street, would spread 65 apartments over nearly 125,000 square feet of net residential space, for a roomy average unit size of nearly 2,000 square feet – surely condos. The “cellar” of the new building – which may very well be dozens of feet into the air – would contain the lobby, while the “first” floor (marketing eighth) would include recreation rooms and some mechanical space. Above that, the second through fifth (new) floors would include 11 apartments each, with seven on the sixth and seventh floors, five on the eighth, and two on the ninth .
These would all be presumably in addition to the 145 apartments and 192,000 square feet of gross floor area at the existing 701 West End Avenue, built in 1951.
Platt Byard Dovell White Architects is listed as the designer. The site lies just outside of the Riverside-West End Historic District, so Landmarks Preservation Commission review does not appear necessary.
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