Extell’s Riverside Center on Track for Late 2010s Completion

New York–Extell Development Co. received approval for its 3 million square-foot mixed-use Riverside Center development by the New York City Council in a unanimous vote late last year, and the developer says the development schedule is on track. Riverside Center is part of the Riverside South development purchased and developed by Extell and the Carlyle Group in 2005.

The Riverside Center project calls for a long-term schedule. “The projected completion of the project is 2018,” a spokesman for Extell tells MHN. “Nothing has occurred since the project was approved that would lead us to change the projected completion date.”

The project reaches from West 59th Street to West 61st Street and spans West End Ave. to Riverside Blvd. It will replace an eight-acre parking lot and complete the Riverside South development with a structure designed by Christian de Portzamparc, a French architect who won the Pritzker Prize in the 90s and who is best known for his Euro-designs, but also for the LVMH Tower in New York. Portzamparc is designing Extell’s new Park Hyatt across from Carnegie Hall.

The multifamily component of Riverside Center will include 2,500 apartment units and a 250-room hotel. Some 20 percent of the project’s total residential floor area, or about 500,000 square feet, will be given over to affordable residential housing space, according to the developer.

If all goes according to the development plan, also in the mix will be 140,000 square feet of retail space and 104,000 square feet of office space. A K-8 school will be part of the project as well, with Extell paying for construction of the core and shell for the full 100,000 square-foot structure, and the School Construction Authority finishing at least 85,000 square feet of it.