It was recently reported that Jimmy Fallon and his wife are selling their New York City Penthouse in Gramercy Park. It's listed for $15 million. In looking at the photos, it's pretty much what I would have expected. It's fun and quirky. And they have a "saloon room" that looks like it could be in Wyoming. But what I also find interesting is how they assembled this apartment over time.
It started in 2002. Jimmy Fallon was single and he bought his first place in the building -- a one bedroom for $850,000. According to the article, he couldn't really afford it. But as he was nearing the end of his run on SNL, Lorne Michael encouraged him to buy his own place. So he went and did that in Gramercy Park in a building that dates back to the 1800s.
As life evolved and as Jimmy got married, he and his wife started buying contiguous apartments -- three more to be exact. Their penthouse apartment is now about 5,000 square feet and spans three floors in the building. It's an interesting case study in the flexibility of multi-family buildings. Here is a building that was built in the 1800s and has probably seen a myriad of changes over its lifetime.
Future flexibility is something that is talked about here in Toronto in the context of new construction. We talk about "knock-out panels" so that someone like Jimmy can grow into a larger suite. I'm not sure how often this actually happens, but I would imagine the frequency is relatively low. But it's very possible and not just in older buildings like The Gramercy Park.
Here are a few interesting stats from a brief report that New York City published this month about their supply of new housing units:
From January 1, 2010 to June 30, 2020, New York City delivered 205,994 net new housing units across the five boroughs.
This total includes 202,956 units from new construction and 29,161 units from the alteration/conversion of existing buildings. However, it also factors units that were lost as a result of demolition (-17,400) or alteration (-8,723).
Brooklyn saw the most supply, followed by Manhattan. The four highest-growth Community Districts were responsible for 1/3 of all new housing additions. These CDs are all formerly non-residential areas that were rezoned to allow living.
Manhattan saw the greatest loss in housing units as a result of alterations (people combining units). This was most prevalent in wealthy neighborhoods such as the Upper East Side, Upper West Side, and Greenwich Village.
What is interesting about this last point is that it shows you that cities are far from static. New York City lost 26,123 housing units during the above time period, with 8,723 units being lost to alterations and people combining units.
The orange areas on the above map are neighborhoods which actually became less dense over the last decade. And of course, this phenomenon is not unique to New York City. We are seeing the same thing play out in some/many neighborhoods in Toronto.
What this mean is that the role of new development is really twofold. It allows a city to grow (i.e. house new New Yorkers), but it also replaces lost housing and relieves some of the pressures on the existing housing stock. I don't think many people appreciate this dynamic -- or perhaps they don't care.
For a copy of the full report (it's only two pages), click here.
Fred Wilson (venture capitalist) and Joanne Wilson (also an investor) have been working on a passive house apartment building in Brooklyn for the last five years. Their development company is called Frame Home. And this past week they received a pretty great Christmas gift in the form of a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy from NYC Buildings.
At 5 storeys and with only 10 two-bedroom units, you could classify this building as the kind "missing middle" housing that gets so much air time here in Toronto. And so not only have they managed to build relatively small, but they've done it using passive house design principles.
Here are some of the apartment building's features:
Cross-laminated timber (CLT) structure
Passive house design approach
Triple-pane windows
Interior polished and insulated concrete walls (presumably to act as a thermal mass to moderate heating/cooling throughout the year)
Solar panels installed on the upper facade and roof (passive house design should, in theory, allow these to supply a big chunk of the building's energy needs)
No fossil fuels used throughout the building -- everything is electrical
Fully sub-metered units
Outdoor circulation spaces/stairs, providing access to a shared rooftop courtyard (I'm assuming these also serve as required egress for the building)
Dedicated elevator entrance for every suite (i.e. no interior circulation/corridor spaces)
Composting facilities within the building
Bike room connected to the ground-floor lobby
There's also a co-working and community space planned for the ground floor called "Framework." Interestingly enough, they have already responded to the current pandemic. Instead of open-air desks, you rent fully enclosed 8' x 8' pods that are sound-proofed and come with their own HVAC systems.
Congratulations Fred and Joanne on such an exciting and pioneering project. (I would love to see the development pro forma!) If you'd like to learn more about Frame 283, here is their website and here is a profile that the New York Times did on the project back in January. Building with CLT is apparently prohibited in NYC. Frame 283 got an exemption.