If only the most well located new condo projects are getting financing in the credit crunch, then Related's Superior Ink building at 70 Bethune Street (also to be known as 400 West 12th Street) in Manhattan's West Village would seem a good candidate to weather the storm. The PR machine behind this one is attempting to make this a downtown version of 15 Central Park West - incredible location, Robert AM Stern architects, historicist design. It's a straightforward formula for success. But word on the street is that Related's bean counters have value-engineered some of the life out of Stern's plans. Don't expect the no-expense-spared m.o. lavished on 15 CPW. While Stern's uptown loveletter to New York will be for the ages, this one seems unlikely to gain such widespread applause. Still, if you want only the latest in new construction and you must be in the West Village there isn't much to choose from. After the jump, a little more detail.
Maybe it's just us, but that row of houses on Bethune Street in the rendering looks more like Reston Virginia than the far West Village. Perhaps it's the color of the brick or the too-white trim, but this has a theme park faux feel to it. We appreciate the low scale and the single-family rarity of what's on offer here, but nobody will ever mistake this for the real 100-year-old thing. A smart hybrid of new and old would have been a better choice here. We would have kept the idea and scale of the townhouse intact but pared down the slavish pattern-book copying that seems to have taken place here.
The tower itself is better, and will be 15 stories. Originally reported as having 84 condo apartments, but the web site says the number is now just 69, plus a row of seven townhouses. We'll have to wait for clarity on that point. The exterior of brick and large windows will seek to echo the large WestBeth apartment complex across the street. The next large site in this area yet to take shape is the block-long Whitehall Storage facility a few blocks south of this site. We'll see if the credit crunch keeps that one on ice until the next boom comes along...
See also One Jackson Square for another West Village newcomer.
Return to Triple Mint main page
