Monday 12 May 2014

Inside a Luxury Z-shaped Manhattan Rental with an Amphitheater, Bocce ball Courts and Outdoor Pool

The Mercedes House rental building between 53rd and 54th St. on 11th Ave. has a giant outdoor pool.

There are moments, standing in either of the 30,000-square-feet outdoor courtyards at the Mercedes House rental building between 53rd and 54th St. and 11th Ave., looking up at the hulking steel and glass structure, that you are not in this city, this country or possibly this world.

Standing outside in the northern courtyard, trees and manicured gardens surrounded you. There are curvy orange outdoor chaises, bocce ball courts and an amphitheater on one side. On the other is an elevated outdoor pool perched on a metal and wood-wrapped pedestal adjacent to a giant Japanese weathervane sculpture by Susumu Shingu.

The ziggurat-shaped building rises high around you. Zen-style sunscreens block the sun to give the structure the feel of a giant civic building in a futuristic science-fiction world where only bright skies exist. Several renters have terraces that go up and down the Z-shaped building. It’s like nothing this city has ever seen before.
That’s great architecture. It was developed by Two Trees Management Company, the Walentas family-owned group who created the neighborhood of DUMBO, and designed by Enrique Norten’s Ten Arquitectos. The building is a glimpse into more of what New York needs. It’s mammoth, its use of indoor and outdoor space allowing triple the air and light of other New York dwellings.

All of this gives this zigzag building as much if not more of an architectural oomph than New York Gehry, the tallest rental building in the Western Hemisphere in lower Manhattan. This building, though, did not lose power. From above and below, inside and out, you feel its mass and see its ingenuity.

Inside, that design and programming drives usage and rental figures. Three stories above the ground, on the just- opened 100,000-square-foot amenity floor, young people work out in the state-of-the- art gym. They drink at the Elixir juice bar. They shoot pool at the billiards table. Some work on laptops as they sit on curved wooden seats over a gray slate floor.

For a moment again, you’re not sure where you are. It could be a new building at a modern university. It could be the set for a Ridley Scott film. It could be a learning center for the mentally advanced. After all, with studios starting at $2,985, the minimum income requirement starts at about $120,000.

The 220 homes in the first phase of the building rented in 90 days. Now, as soon as apartments come open, renters wait to scoop them up. Already, only 140 of the 470 homes in phase two are left to rent. Two Trees sold the top 10 floors of the building, which consist of 162 homes, to institutional investment company Invesco, recapturing their initial investment and then some. In general, this building is a roaring success, fetching up to almost $76 per square as opposed to the $58 that Two Trees projected.
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“As a company, we like to do a good job,” says Jed Walentas, the company’s owner who handles all construction details. “Also, we feel a responsibility to New York to do something better, more design-oriented. We think great can increase people’s desire to want to be there. Other buildings make renters gravitate to mediocrity. We’re proud to be a part of a group of developers who are proving that differentiating yourself and your properties is good business.”

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