Pulse.
Notes from my desk.
Permits filed for a 32-story, 418-foot building at 30 West 37th Street. 95 units, mostly rental. Two stories become 32.
The building isn't the story. The zoning is.
First permit under the Midtown South Plan with the R12 FAR cap repealed. That block couldn't build tall for decades regardless of what the market wanted. The plan changed. The permits followed.
Density doesn't happen through rezoning headlines. It happens through the first permit that proves the new envelope works.
The Netherlands Embassy is selling its Ploenchit site and moving to Dusit Central Park in August. The sale price is probably large in absolute terms, but meaningless for a sovereign government. Maybe not the real reason.
Perhaps the real reason is zoning. Bangkok's land use code allows high-rise construction on parcels surrounding the embassy. Once towers go up on all sides, the compound fails basic security standards: sight lines, perimeter control, the works. You can't fix that with money. You move.
Bangkok once designated a diplomatic corridor from Wireless to Sathorn. Never enforced it through height controls or use restrictions. Land prices did the rest. The British Embassy sold and left around the same time. Maybe for the same reason.
CIM is converting the former Watchtower complex at Columbia Heights into 661 rentals, 25% affordable, with vertical additions on two of the five buildings. Morris Adjmi on design. ULURP still ahead.
The basis story here is interesting. JW sold to CIM, Kushner, and LIVWRK for $340M in 2019. The original plan was Panorama: retail and office. Kushner and LIVWRK pulled out in 2018 before that went anywhere. CIM has been holding a $340M waterfront assemblage in Brooklyn Heights for seven years while the program evolved around it.
This is not a 467-m conversion play. These are warehouse and office buildings getting vertical additions and a full ULURP. The entitlement is still being manufactured. The profit, if there is one, gets made when that ULURP closes.
The basis was set in a different market, under a different program, with different partners. Whatever pencils now has to work against all of that.
Thai real estate financing is over 70% debt. Green loans offer 0.10–0.50% rate reductions. Access clusters at large-scale commercial. Mid-size residential largely can't get in.
The bottleneck isn't size. It's reporting capability and ESG risk documentation. Developers who can speak the bank's language get cheaper capital. The ones who can't pay standard rate.
Capital structure is a design decision. So is how you document the building.
LPC formally installed markers for the Central Harlem–West 130th–132nd Streets Historic District. Designated 2018, 160+ late-19th-century row houses between Lenox and Seventh.
Landmark designation isn't a freeze. It's a filter. Additions still happen. Developments still get approved. LPC just makes you be deliberate about it.
What changes structurally: unused development rights become transferable air rights. The district is a sending site. City of Yes expanded the receiving radius. The rights were always there. More of the city can now absorb them.
Bangkok is overhauling its master plan around the transit network. Three new CBDs, reduced floodway zones, density following the rail lines.
The sites that get repriced first are the ones already assembled and waiting. Location didn't change. The plan did.
Rockefeller Group and Atlas Capital are acquiring the Church of Holy Name of Jesus on West 97th for $96M. The church stays. The school, convent, and rec buildings get redeveloped into mixed-income rental.
The deal structure is the story. Underutilized portions of the campus unlocked without displacing the primary use. Partial-site redevelopment done right.
Barnett assembled the site in 2018. Six years later, 1520 First Ave is the first ground-up medical office tower in Manhattan in decades. Asking $125/SF on tower floors.
The premium exists because it was purpose-built. Buildings retrofitted for medical use had to discount to fill. Build for the tenant from the ground up and you set the market.
Assemblage patience. Product clarity. That's the gap Extell found.
Bangkok's zoning isn't as rigid as it looks. Central's 761-rai Rangsit site just cleared rezoning after 13 years. Industrial to commercial, via Section 35 petition outside the standard 5-year cycle.
Acquire underutilized land/restrictive zoning. Identify the pathway. Execute.