Image via Complex Original
Once a rickety walk-up with a McDonald’s on the ground floor, the tower at the south end of Madison Park has been stuck in its own construction quagmire for years. In 2006, plans were revealed for a ground breaking slender high-end luxury tower that would change the neighborhood skyline permanently. The Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff celebrated the tower as a “dazzling addition to a street that includes two of the city’s most celebrated skyscrapers:” The Met Life and the Flatiron Building.
Read on for the story of how the building came about, and why it remains almost entirely vacant.
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Yet Another Bail Out Plan is Enacted
By late 2012, Related Co. bought out Shapiro; Jacobs had long since walked away from the deal. At first, they put units up for rent, an oft used strategy for other failed condo developments. But now it finally seems that buyers may be biting again. Construction has resumed, and a smaller non-Koolhaas sister building is also almost complete. The aim is to have everything done by the end of the year. But that was also the plan last year, and the year before that, and the several preceding that as well. Should we hold our breath?
Rome Fell in One Year
But by 2009, in the fall that we have all gotten tired of reading about, this project, along with many others, went bust. First the second building with Rem was canned, then the construction on One Mad came to a halt. For years the almost completed structure has been sitting languishing over the skyline. Only 12 units in the building were sold, and the rest has been vacant.
A Seemingly Flawless Branding Plan
By the time construction started in 2007, it was one of the hottest new addresses in town. The pair of developers managed to brand the building exceptionally well, getting non-stop coverage on Curbed, and renaming it One Madison Park after its northerly neighbor. Celebrities were said to have purchased apartments. The top penthouse was to come with its own butler as part of the deal and an apartment to house him in. They even managed later to incorporate starchitect Rem Koolhaas into the deal, first by giving him the purvey over the interiors, and then by branding the smaller sister building that would serve as the main entrance to both.
An Envelope-Pushing Aesthetic
The tower was the dream of two relatively minor NYC developers, Marc Jacobs (not the fashion mogul) and Ira Shapiro. Their architect is similarly little known, but the firm Centra/Ruddy did team up with Cook + Fox for the hideous Ariel towers on Broadway and 99th Street. Cleverly, the team discovered that, despite being between numerous landmark districts, the building’s lot was clear to build with little restriction. With a plan that included purchasing the air-rights of adjacent lots, they managed to pull off the 50-storey tower that seems to violate the city’s anti-sliver-building laws. (It doesn’t.)