In June, pawn shop owner Boris Aronov filed plans for a 220-foot-tall office building at 43 West 47th Street, in the block-long Diamond District in Midtown. Now, YIMBY has renderings for the development, which will replace a pair of smaller buildings between Fifth and Sixth avenues.
Designed by Marin Architects, the 17-story development will host 58,000 square feet of offices and stores. Glassed-in retail will fill the first two floors, and the rest of the building will be devoted to office space.
The design is pretty simple, but the floor-to-ceiling windows will offer an improvement on most of Midtown’s cramped, aging office space. Also, the setbacks of the new building will line up with the stepped sections of the 1920s office building next door, which helps maintain the overall look of the block.
The current five- and six-story buildings at 41 and 43 West 47th Street host pawn shops, diamond wholesalers, apartments, and a Bukharan Jewish deli. If the renderings are any indication, the diamond sellers or pawn shops may return to the ground floor of the new project.
The developer, Boris Aronov, owns Modern Pawn Brokers on the ground floor of 43 West 47th Street, which he purchased for $3,550,000 in 1998. He then picked up the building next door for $7,200,000 in 2003.
43 West 47th Street, rendering by Marin Architects
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There is 17-story with modern architecture, I ought to come closer an office building between other design.
First time ever in NYC I stayed in 9 west 46th Street. I was surprised those 2 blocks (46 and 45) were not “developed”. That was 10 years ago… When I left NYC a year ago it was still pretty much the same. Shocking how much the owner/s is holding those buildings (or could be the area’s restrictions)