Luxury living: Manhattan's Beatrice is a new high point in New York rentals

BY JASON SHEFTELL
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Friday, January 7th 2011, 4:00 AM

The luxury rental has come a long way from granite countertops, health clubs, roof decks and retail banks at the base.

That was so six months ago.

With a rental property, hotel, two restaurants, three elevator banks, 500-car public parking garage, 54th-floor resident lounge, two ballrooms and three bars, you could get lost in and around the Beatrice, a mixed-use building at Sixth Ave. and 29th St. This is now, and when it comes to the competitive landscape of luxury rentals, "now" means a total living experience.

As much food and entertainment complex as rental, the Beatrice sits atop the 23-story Eventi Hotel, a public plaza with a stadium-size seven-figure-priced television screen and two red-hot restaurant concepts. The 301 rental units start on the 26th floor, meaning the views from every apartment are some of the best in the city.

In five months, the building is 77% rented with four $20,000 penthouses coming on the market next month. Studios start in the mid-$3,000 range with one-bedrooms hovering around $4,500.

"These apartments start 300 feet in the air, meaning our views begin at a height where most of our competition's stop," says Evan Stein, president of J.D. Carlisle Development Corp., the lower Park Ave.-based, three-decade-old developer of the project. "The idea from the beginning was a condo-quality luxury rental. You have to deliver a one-of-a-kind, quality product to draw people today."

From corner units on higher floors, the entire city lays out in front of you. This building gets residents closer to the top of the Empire State Building than any other. From every apartment, bridges and rivers are part of the view. New York-based Perkins Eastman, architects of the pending Flushing Commons in Queens and 123 Third Ave. on 14th St., designed the building that rises above Sixth Ave. like an exclamation point. The interiors, by midtown west's Philip

Koether Architects, are heavy on high-tech.

Walking through FoodParc and Bar Basque, the two Beatrice restaurants conceived and operated by Jeffrey Chodorow's China Grill Management, the group who created Asia de Cuba, you feel like you're in some futuristic movie set.

Bar Basque, one of the largest Spanish restaurants in the United States, is deep red with a long lounge, dark passageways, curvy interiors and a by-the-glasse wine dispenser. The dining room sits under a solarium with retractable roof. It looks directly at the stadium-size screen that plays old movies and sporting events. With the screen on, a movie buff may feel like he or she is in "Blade Runner," the 1982 cult film starringHarrison Ford as a bounty hunter looking for rogue clones. Koether designed the restaurant with Syd Mead, the legendary Hollywood set designer famous for "Tron," "Blade Runner" and other sci-fi hits.

The same tech-savvy design carries over to FoodParc, a stark white free-WiFi kiosk-styled food court with an elevated dining area that's more amphitheater than restaurant. To move people through the ordering process, customers select items using digital touchscreens located throughout the establishment. One food kiosk, RedFarm Stand, offers Chinese fare from Joe Ng, the chef at Chinatown Brasserie in NoHo and formerly at World Tong Seafood in Brooklyn. 3B's (bacon, burgers, and beer) has farm-fresh Wisconsin bacon and a top-rated city burger. A menu of microbrews rounds out the menu.

‘We didn't want anything to be normal in the entire complex," says Stein, who started as a super and construction manager in the company founded by his grandfather. "There is nothing average here — not the views from the apartments, or the food and design."

Bar Basque has already become a draw among Spanish tourists and foodies, who make the restaurant a destination for its food, size, and design.

"This is the first really big Basque restaurant to open in New York City, and it's become a source of pride for many Spanish people," says Terry Zarikian, creative director of Bar Basque who rents an apartment in the Beatrice. "While we are proud of the design, the emphasis is on cuisine. The Basques are one of the most innovative cultures in the world for food, and we want this to be a center for tasting and enjoying their creations."

A stairwell from Food Parc to Bar Basque allows diners to go to and from both restaurants. Different areas of the building are connected physically and virtually, by passageways, stairwells and sightlines. The restaurants operate as the hotel's room service and banquet kitchens, allowing the developer to maximize space. J.D. Carlisle's construction arm handles all of the construction for their buildings.

"That's how we were able to afford to get this built with the different components," says Stein, whose company also marketed and built Morton Square in the West Village. "Doing our own construction allows us to keep costs down, make fast decisions and control budgets and deadlines. If we had to rely on someone else, we'd still be building."

Stein, 38, who named the building after the "most elegant woman" he'd ever met, his grandmother, learned the business from Jules Demchick, 71, who learned the business from Stein's grandfather, the company's founder. For J.D. Carlisle, this generation-based mentoring mixes youth and maturity to bring innovative, well-timed real estate products to the New York market every three to four years.

"Jules always taught me that in times of trouble there will always be a flight to quality," says Stein, explaining why the Beatrice rented so quickly in an economic downturn. "It's the simple things that drive luxury rentals, like embedding the shower rod in the ceiling or having a 24-hour concierge on call for every resident, whether they want a restaurant reservation or helicopter to the airport."

Renters in the building include a heavy percentage of corporate executives and international professionals looking for location and high-end services. Several major subway stops are within blocks. Penn Station and Madison SquareGarden are 10 minutes on foot. The building also has a yoga studio and full-service fitness center. Its lightning-quick lease-up might be due to a combination of characteristics.

"Even people renting the bottom floors have views that clear the entire area," says Clifford Finn, head of Citi Habitats Marketing Group, leasing this building and most of the other top rental products in the city. "Everyone who rents here has the feeling that they are on top of the world. I think people also love being on top of the hotel."

Demchick, considered a real estate marketing guru for delivering high-quality product after high-quality product, recognizes views as a main draw but says the unique size and location of the building site gave the project definition.

"I'm a student of zoning," says Demchick, Carlisle's chairman. "When I realized this site had no real height restrictions, a full-frontal block for retail, and we could build a 500-car garage, the idea took shape. It allowed for a real hotel, not boutique or trendy, and it gave us the chance to build apartments on top, something I've always wanted to try. For the restaurants, we needed an operator who could create a buzz and deliver food and entertainment to the hotel crowd, renters and locals. That's not easy, but we were able to do it." 

Go to beatricenyc.com for more information.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/real_estate/2011/01/07/2011-01-07_luxury_living_manhattans_beatrice_is_a_new_high_point_in_new_york_rentals.html#ixzz1AO0hpNTI

Sentury II released

“Sentury II,” The long awaited next book from legendary Syd Mead has finally arrived after nine years. Loyal fans and art enthusiasts will rejoice in being able to view what Syd Mead has been imagining for nearly the past decade. Having illustrated the future for us for the past 40 years, Syd Mead continues to amaze and surprise us with his stunning pieces no matter how much of the future we have seen from the start of his career to present day. Looking through his unrivaled artwork, we still find ourselves continuously waiting for his future to be in our present.

 To purchase:

http://www.sydmead.com/features/senturyii/

New York Times review of FoodParc

OF all the big ideas packed into FoodParc, a food court that slices through the ground floor of the new Eventi Hotel on Sixth Avenue (between 29th and 30th Streets), the most riveting is the design. The elliptical columns and white banquettes are from the mind of Syd Mead, the designer behind “Blade Runner” and “Tron.”

Mr. Mead, 77, calls himself a futurist. Sure enough, FoodParc seems as if it’s from the future, though it’s less a far-off dystopia than a spotless mall opening in Seoul next year. Once Mr. Mead made moviegoers reflect on the dark promise of technology; now he has given New York a slick place to get a burger.

Full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/dining/reviews/17under.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

FoodParc & Bar Basque

by Philip Koether Architects on Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 5:02pm

DESIGN CONCEPT / PROJECT OVERVIEW:

FOODPARC and BAR BASQUE
 
In the Fall of 2006, noted architect Philip Koether had a visionary idea for an interior design partner for a new restaurant concept — award-winning Visual Futurist Syd Mead.  Koether had long been a collector of artifacts from Mead’s revolutionary work Blade Runner.  Even though Mead had not designed a fully commercial interior space, Koether was convinced that he could translate Mead’s ideas into a workable restaurant space.  Although they had never met, Koether approached Mead at an awards ceremony where Mead was receiving a Special Jury Award from the Cooper-Hewitt/National Design Museum/Smithsonian Institution.  The two hit it off immediately, and Mead’s initial sketches of design concept had the exact dramatic flare that Koether desired.  Over the next several months, and years, it was Koether’s challenge to take Mead’s ideas, refine them, and make them plausible.  The result is a spectacular, cutting-edge design space that pleases them both.  

Commenting on the partnership, Syd Mead says, “A critical element in the progression from concept sketch to finished installation was the interpretation of my drawings into construction documents.  Without Philip Koether’s precise translation of concept drawing to finished documents, my design ideas would never have come to realization.  The team provided me with a coherent, constant update on progress as they worked at times under duress due both to budgetary and time constraint issues.”

Philip Koether agrees, “Partnering with Syd was literally a dream come true, especially after years collecting his work.  The process of translating his vision into reality was wonderful.  As an Art Director both in Hollywood and Detroit, Syd was very adept at making adjustments quickly and with an eye towards the project’s budget.” 

DESIGN: FOODPARC

The concept for FOODPARC was to create a visually serene ambience in which food could be featured and enjoyed. This was achieved by specifying a soft, off-white color scheme as a foil that provided background for the food displays and the constant color accents of patrons.  Dark faux ‘electronic’ strips at the column shroud-peaks paid homage to the building’s elaborate electrical infrastructure and the metallic surfaces brought the outside light spectrum into the space.  In turn, the layout suggests an interior urban street linking one of New York’s busiest avenues to the new plaza and park beyond, as referenced in the name, FOODPARC.
 
THE BISTRO: THE LINK

At the plaza (west) end of FOODPARC is a stepped area offering sit-down convenience. In pleasant weather, food items purchased in FOODPARC can also be carried out to the plaza area. The BISTRO is both a stylistic and physical bridge between FOODPARC and BAR BASQUE on the second level. Each seating step has its unique shade, which graduates from the light palette of FOODPARC to the intense red and black of BAR BASQUE as each step rises toward a staircase at the top level.
 
BAR BASQUE: SECOND LEVEL

BAR BASQUE features the robust palette of the Basque region with a strong color scheme of red and black with metallic accents.  The brilliant color red preserves its chroma even as it shades darker producing an optical impression of consistent coloration. Black retains the contrast with red at all light levels so the graphical arrangement remains thematically consistent.  Metallic accents produce specular reflection to activate the visual perspective.  The glowing glass panels that backdrop the bar in the lounge area shift through a pattern sequence that evolves from branches to full leafy silhouette, referencing both the ‘park’ theme at plaza level and the famous ‘Bilbao Tree’ of the Basque region.

 www.sydmead.com

 http://www.tompatti.com/

It’s the place to Bea

Rent above a hotel & food court

THE MIX IS IN: The new 301-unit Beatrice rental building sits atop the 292-unit Eventi hotel. One-bedrooms start at $3,920, and three-bedroom penthouses should be around $20,000.

HIGH HOPES: This studio is $3,325 per month at the Beatrice, where units start on the 26th floor and offer expansive city views.

For years, developers have made all sorts of attempts to marry the hotel with the condo.

They’ve created condo hotels where buyers can purchase rooms that can be used by hotel guests when they’re not there. (In many cases, like at Trump Soho, buyers are required to have their unit used by the hotel for a set number of days each year.) Or, they’ve built high-priced condos on top of their hotels.

But what about merging a hotel with a rental? That’s actually one we hadn’t heard before.

But now New York has the Beatrice, a massive 301-unit rental that sits atop the 292 rooms of the Eventi hotel on Sixth Avenue in Chelsea.

“When we initially decided to go forward, our initial concept was a condo on top,” says Evan Stein, president of JD Carlisle, developer of the 54-story building between 29th and 30th streets.

JEFFREY CHODOROW'S FOODPARC EATERY

But that plan was hatched long before the financial crisis hit (the developer broke ground on the property in early 2006), and adding another expensive condo project to the struggling, crowded market didn’t seem to make sense.

“We thought the layouts would be good, rental-wise,” Stein says. So — with a little tweaking — he shifted gears.

Move-ins just started at the Beatrice, which has rented more than 25 percent of its units since opening its leasing office last month. Studios start at $2,790, one-bedrooms start at $3,920, and two-bedrooms start at $6,075. There are also four three-bedroom penthouses, whose prices have not been finalized but should be around $20,000. And, Stein says, the building is currently offering concessions of one month’s free rent on the first third of the apartments leased.

Not unlike condo components on top of hotels, the Beatrice is trying hard to be its own separate entity. There’s a residents-only gym and yoga studio on the 25th floor and on the 54th floor, a 2,600-square-foot “cloud terrace” (a k a roof terrace) and a 3,700-square-foot “cloud lounge.” The Beatrice’s concierge service (Luxury Attache) is also different from Eventi’s.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no interaction between the rentals and the hotel, which opened in May. “We’ll offer some of the services — like discounted rates at the spa,” Stein says.

And there’s also the proximity to the hotel’s new FoodParc (see story at right), a food court from Jeffrey Chodorow that opened this week. (“Some people say it looks like the cafeteria for the Death Star,” Brett Mitchell, director of food and beverage for Chodorow’s China Grill Management, says and laughs.)

But renters will have to make the trek down if they want to sample the food. They might live on top a hotel, but room service isn’t part of the offering.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/realestate/residential/it_the_place_to_bea_JbEqTtgJDISrxv7Iq1nArI?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME#ixzz10N52gGv0