Chambers Street Bursting With Luxury Residential Projects

Chambers Street, the bustling downtown commercial and civic thoroughfare, is exploding with luxury residential projects, as developers hunt for the last opportunities to capitalize on the edges of TriBeCa.

Currently, nearly a dozen residential projects in the form of new construction, conversions or gut renovations and rooftop additions are sprouting up along a two-block stretch of Chambers between Broadway and Greenwich Street.

A senior director for Massey Knakal Realty Services, who specializes in Lower Manhattan, Peter DeCheser, said Chambers Street, once known for its "nickel and dime stores and honkytonk retail," is now booming.

"It is changing from a bazaar atmosphere, to more of a real mixed-use neighborhood," Mr. DeCheser said.

The demand for loft buildings that could be converted to luxury residential buildings began in central TriBeCa, near North Moore and Franklin streets, Mr. DeCheser said. When those sold out, demand spread to the west to Greenwich Street, and then to the East to Broadway. Now, real estate investors are turning to Chambers Street, he said.

"West of Broadway, from Canal to Chambers, there is nothing left to convert in TriBeCa," he said. "If there weren't existing tenants above most of these buildings, Chambers Street would be done already."

Sale prices for prime open loft space, he said, are reaching $2,000 a square foot. "It's unbelievable. I think it's nuts."

Ralph's Discount City, a single-story building with worn linoleum floors where snack packs of Oreos and Pringles share window space with bottles of hair-relaxer and detergent, has been a neighborhood staple since 1961 on the block of Chambers Street between Broadway and Church Street. Now, a developer is seeking to build a 63,000-square-foot building on the site, containing about 30 condominium apartments. The project, which would incorporate the building at 95 Chambers Street, built in 1852, still requires final approval from the Planning Commission.

An architect working on that project, Harry Kendall, a longtime TriBeCa resident, said above the hustle and bustle of Chambers Street are some of the neighborhood's best-preserved facades, dating back to when the street was filled with dry goods stores in the 1850s.

"Chambers has been the psychological boundary," Mr. Kendall said. "It has been a human river of people, making their way from the subways. It remains that way, but it also offers a great building stock that has been hidden from people's view."

"Now loft living is rippling downtown from more central parts of TriBeCa, and it's reinvigorating the facades on Chambers Street," Mr. Kendall said.

On the former site of a two-story building on the corner of Chambers Street and West Broadway, a developer, Tribeca Associates, is building a 13-story hotel with more than 114 rooms, according to filings with the department of buildings. The developer bought the site for $24 million last year.

Mr. Kendall's firm, BKSK Architects, is working with Tribeca Associates on a large conversion project at 157 Chambers, where a 16-story commercial building sits on top of recruiting offices for the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. The developer is spending more than $10 million to convert the building into about 45 luxury apartments, according to records filed with the city.

A 30-story glass and steel condominium with more than 250 apartments at 200 Chambers, at its intersection with West Street, is expected to open its doors to residents next month. It was developed by Jack Resnick & Sons.

On Chambers Street between Broadway and Greenwich Street there are seven more residential conversions or renovations of existing five-story loft buildings.

The director of the TriBeCa office of Warburg Realty, Karen Gastiaburo, said that Chambers Street is undergoing a renaissance.

"Technically, Chambers Street is not the block people would flock to," Ms. Gastiaburo said. "But nonetheless, conversions are being done, and people will eventually go there."

While she said that Reade Street, one street north of Chambers, was the former southern boundary of residential TriBeCa, it could now be as far south as Warren Street, and will continue to move south toward the Financial District.

"When you are running out of space in certain pockets of town, you build where you can," she said.

The chairman of Prudential Douglas Elliman's retail division, Faith Hope Consolo, said the wave of residential development could spark a turnaround of the retail stores, and push up rents.

"Chambers is notorious for discount and fast food, the bottom of the retail ladder," Ms. Consolo said. "Now, it's not just commuters. You have the possibility of getting a real neighborhood, and then you'll get good retail."

Bed Bath & Beyond, Barnes and Noble, and a Whole Foods are slated to open on Murray Street, two blocks south of Chambers Street, sometime next year.