Posted on December 24th, 2013 On the heels of One Madison Park’s enormous success (Yoko Sanada on our team is currently selling a unit there), is more news about developer Ian Bruce Eichner’s planned neighbor, 41 East 22nd Street….possibly the first New York Continuum? Eichner had great success with the Continuum Towers in Miami that continue to set pricing records, but many in the industry are whispering that when Mr. Eichner starts building in New York, it usually signals the end of a boom….. Permits have surfaced for the 58-story, 81-unit tower, which will rise 718 feet between Broadway and Park Avenue South. Eichner reportedly spent more than $100 million for the land and air rights….air rights that the original developers of One Madison Park had claimed they had bought up to protect the views for their building: apparently not. The cost of these air rights, combined with the vastly hiked costs of building and supplies should result in a building where pricing will have to be north of $3,000/sf to break even. This building will be added to a vast collection of mega-towers either in planning or building right now that seemingly all cater to the exact same buyer. I find this troubling. What exactly is the depth of this $10m+ ultra-luxe, tower-buyer-pool? If they are to buy in a tower would they buy here or closer to Central Park? 56 Leonard and One Madison Park are the only exceptions. The 372,000-square-foot project will supposedly have a host of amenities on the 47th floor and will be capped by a triplex penthouse on the 56th through 58th floors, according to filed plans. The tower, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associations, will be just 50ft wide at the base but widens near the top like a champagne flute, cantilevering over neighboring buildings. Its challenges will be similar to those of One Madison Park: a small footprint, minus elevators and stairs leaves for limited options in layouts…..for $ 10m apartments. Add in the blocked views to the North West and the ho-hum Eastern views and this is a design challenge that hopefully Mr. Eichner can overcome. Building this could be good news for the City as it will generate well over $50m in closing transactional taxes, not to mention the real estate taxes which should be somewhere around $ 500k per month once built…..for life. We wish him luck. The words of Mayor Bloomberg keep ringing in my ears when he was asked about how to bring housing prices down in in Manhattan. His answer was: “Build more!”