MiMA Condos Go Rental

By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor

New York—The Related Cos. is putting 151 more residences at its development MiMA on the market as rental apartments, instead of the condos that they were planned as under the name One MiMA Tower. The new rental offerings are between the 51st and the 63rd floors of the 63-story building, in addition to the 663 rental units on the lower floors, which also contain a hotel and an off-Broadway theater space designed by Frank Gehry.

The move is a frank acknowledgment that rentals are hot, while condos are not, with for-sale residential prices still below their 2008 peak in New York. The units on the lower floors of the MiMA building are now about 90 percent leased.

“MiMA rentals exceeded even our high expectations,” Daria Salusbury, senior vice president of Related, who leads the company’s luxury residential leasing operations, tells MHN. “We achieved rents in excess of $75 a square foot and $80 to $90 a square foot on the high floors. We fully expect One MiMA Tower to capitalize on the success already achieved.”

Those per-square-foot prices translate to roughly $3,800 to $11,500 per month. Since the One MiMA Tower residences were planned as condos, they are generally larger than the rentals on the building’s lower floors, and will thus fetch more, perhaps as much as $4,600 a month for the smaller units, and $20,000 a month for the three-bedroom units.

For that kind of money, tenants will enjoy “helicopter views” of Manhattan from floor-to-ceiling windows (without the noise of rotating blades), as well as interiors designed by the renowned Rockwell Group and a host of high-end amenities. One MiMA Tower residents will also have access to M Club, which features over one acre of health, recreation and entertainment amenities, including the city’s first-ever, residents-only fitness club by Equinox. Residents will also be living in a building designed by Miami’s Arquitectonica that’s expected to exceed LEED Silver certification.