In the fall the Rockefeller Group launched sales at Rose Hill, an under-construction, 45-story luxury condo at 30 E. 29th St.
The name is a nod to a large 18th-century farm near the present-day intersection of East 29th Street and Park Avenue. The crops- and the Rose Hill moniker- mostly disappeared under Manhattan’s street grid in the early 1800s. But the former agricultural hub has seen quite a bit of sales and development activity in the past few years. And the Rockefeller Group’s approximately 600-foot-tall condo spire might yet revive Rose Hill as a city neighborhood nickname.
The tower’s 123 condos are selling for an average of $3 million, said Meg Brod, senior vice president of development at Rockefeller, with studios starting at $1.2 million and penthouses at $17.5 million. Sales are expected to start closing in the second half of the year.
That’s the same period when another nearby luxury condo spire will begin sealing deals. Units at the 62-story, 199-unit Madison House, at 15 E. 30th St., start at roughly $1.5 million and run to $13.7 million. At 805 feet, the project from JD Carlisle Development and Fosun International will be the tallest building in the neighborhood.
“NoMad allows for structures this size,” said JD Carlisle president Evan Stein. “We found the zoning appealing.”
What’s more, neither he nor Brod is particularly worried about sales at their respective towers despite a more general slowdown in the Manhattan luxury condo market. Both buildings were designed to offer a variety of floor plans at a variety of price points.
The only less-than-rosy outlook in the old Rose Hill farm footprint is at 149 Madison Ave., where WeWork leased 115,000 square feet in October 2018, about a year before a botched initial public offering touched off a crisis at the company.
Landlord Columbia Property Trust expects WeWork to fill the space via subleases. But CEO Nelson Mills said during an autumn earnings call that he was “not entirely clear whether that will be the case.” WeWork’s website says the location will open soon.