PARK IT: Midtown’s Bobby Van’s plans to stay in place through at least 2028. (Stephen Yang)
Fingerprinting may be a politically incorrect no-no, but a Chinatown Mitchell-Lama housing project is already screening its residents with biometrics and facial recognition.
Soon a low-income project in Harlem and a new luxury condominium will be getting the high-tech security system.
A one-building pilot project at the 1,600-unit Knickerbocker Village has been using the SafeRise program from the Israeli-based FST21 that is now rolling out to all dozen buildings.
The company is headed by former Israel Defense Forces Major General Aharon Zeevi Farkash, who says it’s the ultimate answer to lost ID cards and security guards who don’t really examine IDs.
“Everyone who tried the system, was, ‘Yes I want it,’ ” said Farkash. “This is the best way to introduce new technology.”
In a typical installation process, residents of a building or students in a dorm or workers in an office get a facial — scan, that is — during a fast enrollment process that also looks at other body measurements and movements.
After that, the individuals can simply stroll in and look at the camera to be cleared.
“We don’t do traditional face [scans],” explained Daniel Peled, vice president, sales and marketing. “It is a fusion of identify technologies — one is facial recognition [but] there are behavior analytics and other items that are part of our patented technology.”
These also include voice recognition.
Much like Apple iPhone’s Siri, the system speaks to and screens visitors in either a man’s or woman’s voice. It can dial any predetermined phone, so you can speak to visitors and/or see them, decide to let them in, or shut them out. Visitors can also speak with a central monitoring station, a building’s concierge or security desk.
At Knickerbocker Village, the system speaks both English and Cantonese — while Mandarin is being added. Other languages are also available.
The cameras, which can also read license plates for entry into garages, are also specially designed to be vandal-resistant.
The company is now beginning pilot projects at 50 other private buildings, including the four 35-story Taino Towers in Harlem.
A new Charles Gwathmey-designed luxury condominium at 323 Park Ave. South, with 14-units that are in contract from $1.975 million to $8 million and starts move-ins soon, will be the first luxury project to use the security system.
Broker Efraim Tessler of Keller Williams, whose father, Yitzchak Tessler, developed the project, said, “It’s also a smart doorbell that gets you around the world on your phone. And if you have a visitor staying for a week, you can give them a QR bar code.”
Several commercial buildings are also set to begin pilot programs soon, Farkash said.
Mayor Bloomberg caught heat last week for suggesting residents of Big Apple public housing projects be fingerprinted to enable the use of higher-security, hi-tech systems.
At other housing projects, that type of more secure future has already arrived.
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When it closes today for $50,237,500 — or $1,034 a buildable square foot — a vacant seven-story garage in Greenwich Village will have fetched the highest price per square foot for a condominium conversion and will total a mere 48,583 square feet.
The site at 17 E. 12th St. is just steps from Fifth Avenue and outside the historic preservation district, so the buyer, Rigby Real Estate Fund II LP, led by Peter Armstrong of Rigby Asset Management, will create a “super luxury” contemporary project with what he says will be “prewar” interiors.
By adding just over 9,000 square feet, the new 11-story building designed by Bromley Calderi Architects will have just nine high-end family units, running roughly 4,000 to more than 5,000 square feet — complete with parking for nine cars.
“There will be multiple terraces in the building and fireplaces with both gas and wood,” said Armstrong, who expects to start construction in November with move-ins by 2015. “The exteriors will be brick, limestone and glass.”
According to Building Department applications that are still undergoing tweaks and approvals, he intends to spend at least $10 million to re-stack and rehab the entire structure.
“If you are selling condos for north of $2,500 a square foot, then $1,000 per foot seems reasonable,” said Justin DiMare of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, who marketed the garage for the Brauser family, obtaining bids from over two dozen large and small developers. “We remain supply-starved in terms of land and units,” DiMare added of the interest and high pricing.
Currently the highest price paid for a residential development site is $741 per buildable square foot — paid for a future development of 40,090 square feet at 1108 Park Ave.
Developer/broker Michael Shvo and Victor Homes are in contract to buy 239 Tenth Ave. by the High Line in Chelsea for $566 per square foot that, with added air rights, will bring the tab to over $800 for a 41,475 square-foot building.
The Brauser family, which has owned the garage since 1982, is in contract for another property to comply with 1031 tax-free exchange rules, DiMare said.
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You can still stick a fork in it. Bobby Van’s Steakhouse just renewed its restaurant lease at 230 Park Ave. for the next 15 years. The 3,100 square-foot restaurant at East 46th Street was represented by Dana Moyles of Dana Moyles Real Estate. Jordan Berger of Monday Properties represented the building owners Monday Properties and Invesco.
The asking rent was $225 per square foot.
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A nonprofit psychotherapy training institute, The Albert Ellis Institute, has sold its six-story townhouse at 45 E. 65th St. for $20 million and will move to 8,000 square feet at 145 E. 32nd St.
The office space is a sublet of the entire ninth floor from Ameripath, a subsidiary of Quest Diagnostics. Other floors in the building currently have an asking rent of $55 per square foot.
Steve Chasanoff of Colliers International arranged both the sale and sublease on behalf of Albert Ellis. Keith Cody of CBRE represented Ameripath in the sublease. The building is owned by Colliers brokers Eric and Marty Meyer.
Colliers would not disclose the buyer or comment on the price.