Tallest Residential Building on Earth Gets Chinese Partner

Extell Development has agreed to a $300 million partnership deal with a Chinese investment firm to keep its Central Park Tower afloat. The $3 billion project on Manhattan’s Billionaires’ Row will now be a joint venture with China’s SMI USA, a subsidiary of Shanghai Municipal Investment.

Central Park Tower, presently under construction on the increasingly crowded Billionaire’s Row, will soon become the tallest residential tower in the world. 

The giant building being built at 217-225 West 57th Street will rise 1,550 feet above street level, putting it 182 feet taller than One World Trade Center - without its spire.

Once again, the city will boast the tallest roof in the country, robbing Chicago of the honor with its 1,451-foot Willis Tower.

When completed in 2019, Central Park Tower (aka Nordstrom Tower) will rank second only to One World Trade Center, among the city's tallest buildings.

The new luxury condominium building, just east of Broadway between 57th and 58th streets, will offer sweeping views of Central Park a block to the north.

Construction of the building is moving forward quickly at a time when a new type of skyscraper is beginning to emerge on the Manhattan skyline.

The skyscraper at 217-225 West 57th Street is expected to rise 1,550 feet, as it glides to a pointed peak above the skyline. The 85-story building will be just up the street from Extell's One57.

Central Park Tower will become the latest in a family of super-tall buildings in the area—111 West 57th Street, One57, 432 Park Avenue, 53 West 53rd Street, among others.

The tower's bottom seven floors will host a massive Nordstrom department store—the city's first.

For decades, office towers accounted for most of the towers built more than 600 feet high, while top residential apartments were generally found in Upper East Side cooperatives.

But now a handful of developers are building very tall, slender luxury residential towers, betting that the wealthy will pay for great views.

Extell, currently one of the city's most prolific developers, has been on the vanguard of this change.

A few blocks east of the Nordstrom tower site on 57th Street, the company is wrapping up work on One57, a 1,004-foot tower, where two buyers have agreed to pay more than $95 million each, for two penthouse apartments there, a record price.

As with all skyscrapers, it's the economics that makes them possible - and it is a strong market. Moreover, In Manhattan particularly, people are willing to pay a great deal—millions and tens of millions of dollars for apartments in the sky. There is a huge market for that.

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