Biggest Development on Upper West Side, Breaks Ground

Riverside Center, a five-tower, 3.3 million square foot development that will one day include 2,500 apartments, a hotel, a movie theater, an auto showroom, a new public school and hundreds of thousands of square feet of retail and office space, has broken ground along Riverside Boulevard between 59th and 61st Streets.

The site, part of the parcel of land between 59th and 72nd Streets along the Hudson River that was once owned by Donald Trump’s companies, is the largest current development project in the neighborhood — and given how congested the Upper West Side already is, it could be the biggest project for years.

Riverside Center is the southernmost development of the stretch. [See ElectricWeb | Blogger, July 27, 2011]

Until recently, auto body shops and a parking lot had occupied the site of Riverside Center. Now, the heavy equipment has moved in. When it is completed, the Riverside Center development will have five apartment towers with a park in the middle.

Locals fought over aspects of the development for months and it was approved two years ago by the City Council. Twenty percent of the apartments are supposed to be affordable. Expect the rest to be luxurious. Carlyle Realty Partners and Extell Development Company are developing the site.

Riverside Center is the final undeveloped parcel in the 77-acre Riverside South mega-project, and will stretch from 59th to 61st Streets, and West End Avenue to the edge of the West Side Highway. Extell expects to develop the parcel over the next six years.

Riverside Center will contain:

•      3.3 million gross square feet.
•      A new K-8 school on West 61st Street - enrolling up to 1,300
•      A 250-room hotel off West 59th Street.
•      A massive underground automobile service center with a street-level showroom.
•      A shallow fountain and scrim that children and adults could walk into.
•      More than 3 acres of public space.
•      12% of the units set aside for affordable housing.

The first building being developed will contain the public school, which is slated to open in 2015, with the entire development expected to be completed by 2018.