12/02/08

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Jagger condo hopes buyers find satisfaction in smaller units

The 57-unit Jade will include Baroco "pods."

Mick Jagger may not be able to give it away on Seventh Avenue, as he once sang, but daughter Jade Jagger's betting she can sell it between Fifth and Sixth.

The celeb child-turned model-turned jewelry designer-turned interior designer is lending her name to a condo conversion at 16 West 19th Street.

Flying in the face of a five-year trend in New York City condo development that bigger is better, the lion's share of the layouts in the new 57-unit project are studios. Prices at Jade will start in the $500,000s.

"You can't find units as small as 400 square feet in Chelsea," says Michael Shvo, whose Shvo Group is marketing the project. "You can't buy in Chelsea for under $1 million."

The Copper Group, Jade's developer, brought Shvo in early on to consult on the layout mix and branding of the luxury condominium, a conversion of a 12-story, 1913 loft building to which it will add two stories at the top. Jade is the first Manhattan project for the developer, which has been active in Brooklyn.

"We believe in his crystal ball," Jeremy Beyda, project developer for The Copper Group, says of Shvo. "Over a year ago he said go with small units -- at a time when there wasn't much noise about small units."

Bryant Park Tower at 100 West 39th Street, a Shvo-marketed condo project that went on sale in the middle of last year, was nearly two-thirds studios.

It was 65 percent sold after four days on the market, according to Shvo, and is now 97 percent sold.

With their more affordable price points, small units could be the new safe market play. "The market is on its way to favoring studios," says Citi Habitats founder-turned-developer Andrew Heiberger, "and it'll be further along next year." Heiberger is also targeting studio buyers with his first condominium, 88 Greenwich Street in Lower Manhattan.

Heiberger notes that renters are facing "20- to 25-percent" rent increases all over town. "Most people," he says, "will pay a 20-percent premium over their rent to own."

Ken Scheff, director of sales for Stribling's Chelsea office, notes that smaller units do especially well if they are in new construction or high-end conversions.

"The beautiful new construction Downtown puts a different slant on the price per square foot analysis," he says, making price per square foot less important than the actual selling price. "And with new construction, there's sometimes greater efficiency in the square footage."

The Jade is serious about efficiency. Intent on turning every last inch of floorplate into functional space, architects Perkins Eastman and Jade Jagger, who works under the auspices of YOO, the European design firm founded by Philippe Starck and John Hitchcox, invented the "Pod."

A "Pod" is an eight-foot-by-eight-foot or 10-foot-by-10-foot cubical module constructed near the middle of the living space. The Pod contains on each of its four sides the bathroom, kitchen, washer/dryer and closet.

"The Pod exteriors," says Jagger, "are made of glossy lacquered door panels that can fold open to reveal an ornate and decorative interior with glass mosaics of brilliant color in the bathroom and kitchen, or closed to neutralize the space again."

With its large bi-fold doors closed, says the building's general contractor Jim Pershin, "all you see is polished wood paneling on all four sides, enclosing everything, so you don't have to look at your stuff all day."

Buyers have a choice of color schemes: The Aristo Pod is green with chocolate leather accents; the Luxo Pod is gold; the Baroco Pod is black, red and white; and the Boho Pod is a soft lapis blue. Each apartment has wallpaper in front of the entry door coordinated with the Pod colors, "so when you walk by somebody's apartment," says Pershin, "you say, 'oh, they've got the Boho.'"

To allow buyers to choose custom colors and have finished Pods installed soon after their purchase, Perkins Eastman developed an attaching system that allows the panels, which are made-to-order in Canada and then finished in Brooklyn, to be clipped in place without extra framing.

To streamline the apartment, the engineers and designers sunk all the heating and cooling mechanicals onto a recessed five-foot-by-five-foot box on top of the module.

"What's your Pod?" is likely to be a common icebreaker up on the roof, a lavish two-level resident's amenity space said to be inspired by Jagger's Mediterranean retreat in Ibiza. The rooftop terraces, built onto the 13th and 14th floors -- the additions to the existing building -- will have sundecks, an indoor fitness club and spa, a "Lapis Lounge" with furniture designed by Jagger and partner Paul Bartlett, and hot tubs with city views.

The building has three penthouses, two of which are duplexes with private terraces on the 13th floor, and one occupying the southern half of the 12th floor. The three-bedroom penthouses are listed at $3.7 million. But the meat and potatoes of the building, which is expected to be ready for occupancy in December, are the 24 studios, 14 one-bedrooms and 11 one-bedrooms-with-home office. There are just four two-bedroom units.

Smaller apartments are historically more sensitive to interest rate moves. According the Max Dobens, an agent with the Jacky Teplitzky team at Prudential Douglas Elliman, "If you have an increase in interest rates, the first people to pull out of the market are the studio and one-bedroom buyers."

But Dobens thinks Jade's smallness should insulate it. "Because Jade is not a 400-unit building, it'll do OK at the end of the day."

Chelsea independent broker Fionn Campbell agrees that the mix of smaller apartments should work. "A lot of investors have been priced out of the market. The price point at the Jade could attract investors buying to flip or parents buying for their children -- and a lot of single people who can't afford other buildings in Chelsea," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if they sell the whole thing in one day."