Construction Update: Extell’s Controversial 800-Foot Tower Ready to Rise at 250 South Street
After being slapped with a partial stop-work order about three weeks ago for causing a local street to sink, Extell’s Lower East Side mega-development at 250 South Street appears to be back on track. A recent visit to the site shows that piles for the building are again being driven into the bedrock. However, it appears excavation will continue to be an arduous journey since most of the parcel sits on landfill and is only a few feet above street level.
Since its reveal last year, the tower has been met with intense public outrage due to its unprecedented height for the mid-rise neighborhood. The building was first reported to be 68 stories, then 71 stories, then 56 stories, and now the latest filing with the Department of Buildings has a revised height pinned again at 68 stories, or 800 feet at its highest floor. To put that in perspective, the neighboring Manhattan Bridge is only 330 feet tall, and just 170 feet at its roadway—meaning the building will be nearly five times the height of the bridge’s road deck.
As such, with surrounding buildings rising no higher than 200 feet (the current tallest in the area is Two Bridges Tower at 21 stories) and its location facing the East River Esplanade, pretty much any unit above the 20th floor will have panoramic views of the Midtown, Downtown, and Brooklyn skylines. This is of course in complement to the development’s over-the-top amenities, which include a squash court, Turkish bath, golf simulator, bowling alley, basketball court, an 1,874-square-foot lap pool and 137 on-site parking spots. There will also be 29,000-square-feet of retail space at the ground floor.
Like Extell’s other much-contested uptown project along Riverside Boulevard, 250 South Street will also be set up as two income-divided buildings with the main 68-story structure holding 802 luxury units, and a smaller, separate 13-story building containing around 200 affordable units. The latter, unsurprisingly, has already been dubbed the “poor door” building.
You can keep up to date on 250 South Street, including upcoming listings, at CityRealty.
All images courtesy of CityRealty. Aerial renderings based on zoning diagrams.
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I cant wait for prospective buyers to show up and realize they will be among living among 20,000 units of “affordable housing”, I mean projects.
Wow. Thank you for this. Is anyone able to do a graphic of the shadowing affect of this on nearby park(s) and neighborhood? Community Board 5 has done extensive research on the affect of shadowing on Central Park (Sunshine Task Force) due to overbuilt ‘superscraper’ needle buildings. Shadows can make parks unusable in fall and winter where lack of sunshine can drop the temperature of a park by as much as 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
“The Task Force focuses its work on the cumulative effect of outsized development on our infrastructures as well as our natural resources, including access to air and sunlight.
The Task Force is evaluating the impact of new construction and will make policy change recommendations so that NYC zoning laws adequately take into account new construction trends and techniques for extremely large and tall buildings, in order to protect New-Yorkers vital access to air and sun light.”