Colin Pile has a name for what’s happening to his neighborhood: “the Frederick Douglass effect.”
It’s the phenomenon that started a few years back, when shiny new condos and rentals sprang up on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, to be followed in short order by new restaurants and wine bars…and then more condos and rentals.
While the sample for one specific corridor is admittedly small, since 2007, there has been a 17 percent increase in the price per square foot for residential sales along lower Frederick Douglass Boulevard — outpacing the market as a whole. Back then apartments were trading at $680 per square foot; in 2013 prices were at $796 per square foot, according to Gregory Heym, chief economist for Terra Holdings.
And for commercial real estate it’s an even more dramatic story. “Ten years ago rents on Frederick Douglass Boulevard were around $30 per square foot,” says Faith Hope Consolo of Douglas Elliman. “Six years ago at the peak of the market, prior to the collapse, rents were around $60 per square foot. Today we are seeing rents as high as $100 per square foot.”
Has this effect spread beyond Frederick Douglass and begun making its mark on the rest of the West 120s? Well, there’s no question the area — which is relatively removed from the housing projects at the center of yesterday’s major gang-related NYPD raid — is roaring with eateries, retail and some extremely interesting real estate.
“It’s definitely changed,” says Pile, who lived for several years on 112th Street and St. Nicholas with his wife, Vanessa Yonan, before they moved up to Lenox Avenue between 122nd and 123rd Streets last week. When Pile and Yonan went shopping for something bigger, they were stunned at how much prices had risen. “It made us realize how lucky we were to have gotten something four or five years ago.”
Residents no longer fret about how dangerous the streets once were — they think about the line for Harlem Shake, or they wonder, impatiently, when the Whole Foods will open on 125th.
And Pile and Yonan are not alone. “I was living in Stuy Town,” says Gabrielle Ryan, who just moved into a building in the West 120s. Her apartment is brand-new and has “really nice exposed brick, built-in speakers in the ceiling, a really cool roof — and it’s a perfect location, right by Red Rooster, which is one of my favorite restaurants.”
It’s that marriage between the hot nightlife spots and the nice new real estate that is getting everybody excited about this particular part of Harlem.
Clearly, developers are particularly excited. A 41-unit rental building, for instance, is opening later this month at 2270 Frederick Douglass Blvd., on the corner of 122nd Street, where rents should start at $2,100 for a studio and one-bedrooms at $2,700. The building will include many of the luxe touches found in new rentals in the pricier parts of the city: Gym, video doorman, roof deck, common garden and a washer/dryer in every apartment.
A block north, rentals are popping up all along West 123rd Street; Jeff Krantz, of Halstead, is getting ready to unveil a 12-unit rental at 145 W. 123rd St., which should be ready by the late summer, and should be priced between $2,400 and $2,500. This is just down the block from another building Krantz debuted two months ago; a 10-unit conversion of a brownstone at 139 W. 123rd St., where all of the rental units were snatched up within six weeks; convertible two-bedroom units were going for $2,600 a month.
But, then, the entire stretch of West 123rd Street, starting at Frederick Douglass and going all the way to Mount Morris Park West, has been simmering for years.
“This was the third property on that block we bid on,” says another Harlem owner/resident, Jim Hone, who teaches engineering at Columbia. He is at the tail end of a three-year long renovation at 124 W. 123rd St., which should be finished in the next week or so, and will consist of two two-bedroom units. (Hone and his wife will live in one unit and plan on renting out the other.)
Hone and his wife had been looking for six to eight months before they found their property. “That block was one of the last ones south of 125th Street that had any inventory,” he says.
Back in 2011, however, that inventory required some imagination; many of the houses on the block were rundown — including the one Hone purchased. But he has done a complete gut renovation of the property, which he picked up for a scandalously low $253 per square foot, according to StreetEasy. For those still looking for inventory on the same block, there is a brownstone on the market at 208 W. 123rd St., with Maria Goncalves of Coldwell Banker Bellmarc for the sky high price of $2.93 million (about $832 per foot).
A lot of improvements along this stretch of West 123rd Street have already happened, or in motion, such as the lush, 0.14-acre West 123rd Street Community Garden. And there’s the eight-story, 60-unit, affordable housing project called Ennis Francis II, which is in the works.
The condo market is no slouch, either; at Windows on 123, which is on West 123rd between Lenox and Adam Clayton Powell and began sales five years ago, a two-bedroom resale that traded in 2011 for $746,752 sold in October for a shocking increase of about 60 percent, at $1.18 million, according to StreetEasy.
And more condos are coming to the West 120s: At 58 W. 129th St., between Lenox and Fifth Avenues, Krantz is unveiling a 19-unit condo which just topped off. “We have a waiting list of about 50 people just from the signage,” says Krantz. Units should start at around $400,000 for studios; one-bedrooms will be in the mid-$500,000 range; two-bedrooms in the low-$800,000 range, with the largest measuring 1,650 square feet with outdoor space.
All this new real estate — coupled with all the commercial happenings — can be very tantalizing. Aside from Red Rooster and the Whole Foods on 125th and Lenox, Nobu co-founder Richie Notar is planning on opening up a music club in the old Lenox Lounge space. Even Lenox Lounge is not simply disappearing into the night sky; the owner, Alvin Reed, is (with some stumbling) still looking to revive the beloved venue further up the avenue.
“It’s weird to say, but it’s got a different vibe over here just over the course of a few blocks,” says Pile. “We’re excited.”