![]() “That was the happy ending,” says a beaming Senbahar: In nine months the tower cleared $1 billion in sales, including a penthouse deal for $47 million. Slowly, as the recovery took hold, Senbahar and company began to look around again for new financing, and in 2013 they felt confident enough to resume sales and construction. “The day Lehman went under.”Īs the world economy entered a terrifying free fall, sales dried up completely, and the 56 Leonard team decided to halt work on the project. “It was September 15th, 2008,” he recalls. ” He then launches into the vexed his tory of the site at the corner of Church and Leonard streets- how he traveled to Switzer land in 2005 to meet his would-be architects how more than a year passed before they were able to secure the necessary permits how the design was formulated and refined, and construction began to move forward and then, amid great fanfare and high hopes, how they first opened the sales office. “I’ve never been in a war,” he begins, “but this. “I can give you the long story, if you want,” says Senbahar, with a weary laugh: As the founder and president of real estate giant Alexico Group since 1988, Senbahar is no stranger to the vagaries of the Gotham development world, but his most recent undertak ing is in a class of its own. The journey of 56 Leonard from con-ception to construc tion is an object les son in the pleasures and perils of building big in New York. Also present was Ascan Mergenthaler, senior partner at Herzog & de Meuron and the point man for what has been, incredibly, almost a decade-long saga to realize the project. On a slightly overcast day in June, Pierre de Meuron and developer Izak Senbahar were in the sales office of the 60-story tower that marks the designers’ first foray into New York’s booming residential high-rise market. Says Wong, “No other luxury building has Herzog & de Meuron.”įor the Pritzker Prize-winning designers, the process of creating this tower has been, to say the least, an enlightening one. Even in Tribeca, the new address stands out. All this has drawn a number of other downtowners, who constitute some 80 percent of the building’s soon-to-be occupants. Its singular features include a swimming pool with an outdoor terrace, sweeping views that are unique for the area thanks to a grandfathered-in zoning clause against height, and custom floor-to-ceiling fireplaces in the penthouses, also grandfathered in and likely to be the last of their kind downtown. But they’ve recently decided to move up-technically, further downtown, but to a much bigger space, in a much bigger building.ĭue to be fully completed in 2016, with the first residents moving in this winter, 56 Leonard is the latest project from famed Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron. Graphic designer Robert Wong and his family have been living in downtown Manhattan for six years now. A light conversation with David Lynch on Transcendental Meditation, the unified.
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