STK plans on opening early next year in the Grace Building, on the north end of Bryant Park, and promises to bring its downtown/Meatpacking District meatery vibe to Midtown. (
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MY HOME IS MY CASSA: The new condo (and hotel) Cassa on 45th Street has closed about 20 percent of its 57 residences and has contracts out on another 20 percent. And while the most expensive two-bedroom currently on the market is listed for $2,292 per square foot, one of the building’s Showtime House penthouses will be put on the market for more than $20 million, or more than $6,400 per square foot. (
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GREAT WALL: Dagney Cruz and Rachael Rubin, in the “Wall Street”-inspired apartment at the Setai, which hosted its “Designer Visions” party last week. (ChristiAN Johnston)
Dagny Cruz and her friend Rachael Rubin are lounging comfortably on a bed in a 2,271-square-foot, $7.3 million condo in the Setai, the new 60-story hotel and condo building on Fifth Avenue, three blocks from Bryant Park.
“I think it’s beautiful,” says Cruz, when asked what she thinks of the place. From the window, one can look down on the skyscrapers of Midtown, which are lit up for the night.
Cruz (a model) and Rubin (a photographer) were there for the Setai’s “Designer Visions” party, held last Tuesday. The hotel doesn’t open until November, and condo move-ins aren’t expected until the end of the year, but hundreds of people crammed into three of the building’s plush multimillion-dollar apartments for this maiden party. Interior designers made up each unit in the style of a movie. One apartment is meant to look like the Diane Keaton flick “Something’s Gotta Give” (a 2,130-square-foot unit for $6.95 million), and another is inspired by “Six Degrees of Separation” (2,426 square feet for $8.2 million).
Cruz and Rubin are in the apartment inspired by “Wall Street” (the original, not the sequel), and a sense of riches and entitlement is, indeed, in good supply. On one wall is a painting of dollar signs. The toilet paper is also studded with images of dollars. Wine and caviar are plentiful, and Cruz and Rubin — a lively pair in their early 20s — are enjoying themselves.
But the one nagging question on every real estate maven’s mind is: Would these New Yorkers really want to live in Midtown?
“Are you kidding me?” Cruz says. “With that view of the Empire State Building? Absolutely!”
What about the fact that it’s not even prime Midtown that we’re talking about — rather, it’s southern, almost-Garment District Midtown? (The Setai, on the corner of 36th Street, shares a block with dumpy souvenir shops.)
“It’s not necessarily great if, let’s say, you’re having kids,” Cruz says. “But for people our age?”
“Definitely,” adds Rubin.
Music to developer Bizzi & Partners’ ears. Because there’s no question that the Setai instantly ups this part of the Midtown game dramatically. While the average price of the 184 condo units hovers in the low $2,000-per-square-foot range, each of the “Designer Visions” units (which were sponsored by House Beautiful, Town & Country and Veranda magazines) is well in excess of $3,000 per square foot. And the three-bedroom, $17 million penthouse is more than $4,500 per square foot.
“We wanted simple but elegant,” says Steven Della Salla, director of development for Bizzi & Partners. “We wanted real quality.”
Along with the Setai’s condos, which start on the 31st floor, and 214 hotel rooms, Bizzi & Partners are throwing in a new Michael White restaurant called Ai Fiori, an Auriga spa and a 16-chair Julien Farel hair salon.
“My wife and I actually bought our loft in 2004, which is a block and a half from the Setai,” Farel says. “We can get uptown and downtown easily . . . It’s super-convenient.
And the Setai can take comfort in the fact that it’s not the only one boosting the area’s rep. The 184-room luxury Andaz hotel, up the block on 41st Street, opened this summer; rooms start at around $400 per night. Cassa, a 166-unit hotel and 57-unit condo, which opened for business this fall on 45th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues (and which is hosting the Showtime House), has apartments ranging from $968,000 to $2.845 million.
Then there’s STK, the hybrid of steakhouse and nightlife scene that started in the Meatpacking District, where a $59 porterhouse steak can be had, with foie gras butter for an extra $6. It’s opening its second New York spot, in the Grace building right off Bryant Park, in early 2011.
“People have always discounted Midtown,” says Jonathan Segal, owner of the One Group, which runs STK. “There’s a belief that people need to leave the security of their work environment to enjoy entertainment.”
However, Segal adds, there are plenty of people who come out of work looking for a hip place to dine and carouse.
“STK is all about the energy, the vibe, the DJ — all the traits of downtown — and there’s no reason it won’t have the same energy here.”
Another Meatpacking District pioneer, David Rabin (of Lotus and Double Seven fame) just opened Lambs Club at the Chatwal Hotel on West 44th Street with chef Geoffrey Zakarian (formerly at the Town and Country restaurants), featuring $17 drinks by Sasha Petraske (the mixologist behind Little Branch and Milk & Honey). Fashion Week at Lambs Club brought in revelers like Kanye West and Mick Jagger.
And if one is skeptical about all these pricey prospects, first indications are actually positive. The Setai has inked contracts on roughly 50 percent of its units (mostly focusing on international buyers). Cassa has written contracts on about 40 percent of its units, and closed about half of those since getting its certificate of occupancy a few weeks ago.
“We just put in our fourth amendment for pricing,” says Solly Assa, president of Assa Properties, which developed Cassa. But Assa isn’t sure that even a single buyer is from New York. “We sold it in France, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina.”
“The idea,” says Ilan Bracha of Prudential Douglas Elliman, which is selling Cassa, “is you’re getting hotel services and you’re paying for it for much less than going to a hotel. If you’re coming in for three, four months a year, it’s the same [cost] as a hotel. If you’re going to rent it for the rest, you have an income.” (But there are no rules about having to rent it out.)
Cassa (with units marketed at $1,700 to $1,900 per square foot) is priced lower than the Setai and has been selling for a longer period, but it also represents a big step up in terms of price points in the area. Broker Ariel Cohen of Prudential Douglas Elliman currently has a 700-square-foot, one-bedroom resale at Bryant Park Towers — a massive condo along the park that opened in 2006 — on the market for $895,000 (or $1,276 per square foot).
“A lot is coming together at once,” Farel says. “I think there’s a bit of downtown moving up — and a bit of international style moving in, and ‘traditional’ Midtown commercial residents such as fashion and publishing professionals demanding more of what they need, closer to their offices.”