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Pampering and Sex Sell West Broadway Condos Sex sells. But can it sell a $5 million apartment? The developers of a 13-story hybrid hotel/condo building, to rise at West Broadway and Chambers Street, are luring buyers with eye-catching views—and not just the ones up Hudson Street.
The project coincides with a big shift in Downtown demographics. A recent census study by the city’s Department of City Planning showed that three-fourths of residents moving to Lower Manhattan in the last five years were men. And most were young, ages 25 to 44. “I believe the residential portion will be purchased by young professionals who want something in New York as a home base,” said Bill Brodsky, a partner with Elliot Ingerman in Tribeca Associates, the developers of the project. “I do not think it’s a family building.” True enough, though Brodsky called his marketing a “much more PG-13 version” than the X-rated shots first proposed by the campaign’s creators, Stribling Marketing Consultants.
“We wanted to build something in the same vein as a Carlyle, Pierre or Marc,” said Brodsky. “A Downtown version of elegant residential hotel buildings.” Room rates for the hotel have yet to be set, but will likely be at least $450 a night. Apartments will sell from $1.2 million for a 600 square foot studio to $5 million for a 1,600 square foot penthouse. Tribeca Associates paid $24 million for the land, previously the site of a bank building and a shoe store that had been in business on the block for 56 years. Across the street, at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, where rooms go for $175 a night, manager Larry Bader said he is looking forward to his new neighbor. It will improve the block, he said, and bring hotel-goers to the area. Competition, he said, is not a concern. “It’s a different animal completely,” Bader said. “[The Smyth] is going to be one of your chi chi hotels. I’m your basic guy.”
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