Billionaire row tower crane spins like a music box ballerina and drops 8 ft. blades on 57th St.

 

 NY Post

A crane on top of a high-rise apartment building in Manhattan went spinning in the wind Thursday evening, sending debris from the under-construction building falling to the street below. 

The crane, atop a Midtown building under construction on West 57th Street near Sixth Avenue, spun wildly in the wind and rain, video taken at the scene shows. 

Fire officials said the FDNY was responding to building debris at 111 West 57th St. It was not clear if there were any injuries in the incident. The NYPD also warned pedestrians to avoid the area because of falling debris.

“Please avoid the area of West 57th Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues due to an unstable crane and falling debris. 

Expect emergency vehicles and traffic in the area,” the department said in a tweet.

The Department of Buildings said the crane was safely secure, but “weathervaning” in the wind, a normal crane function which allows them to swing 360 degrees when not in use. 

The agency was investigating what caused the debris to come crashing down from the building.

Billionare's row luxury tower apartments on 57th Street are not getting billionaire's interest

NY Post

Swank apartments are begging for buyers on Manhattan’s “Billionaires’ Row” — with more than 40% sitting unsold in towers that top out at 100 stories, The Post has learned.

Five years after the iconic One57 building became the city’s first “supertall” residential skyscraper, only 84 of its 132 pricey condos have been bought — leaving more than a third of them still on the market and none under contract, according to data compiled by leading appraiser and researcher Jonathan Miller.

Six other nearby buildings have as much as 80% of their units available, the figures show, with the total value of all the unsold inventory estimated by one analyst at between $5 billion and $7 billion.

Another building that’s set for completion next year — Central Park Tower, at 217-225 W. 57th St. — will put an additional 179 apartments on the market.

Gary Barnett’s Extell Development, which also built One57, got state permission to start selling a 
Central Park Tower in 2017, but no deals have closed — which would push the overall unsold percentage to nearly 65%.

Online listings show asking prices for available units that range from $2.1 million for a 14th-floor studio at 100 E. 53rd St. to nearly $64 million for a four-bedroom, duplex penthouse on the 76th floor of 53 W. 53rd St.

Top broker Dolly Lenz blamed the stalled sales on the sky-high prices, saying, “When people come here from other parts of the country and from around the world, the first thing they want to see is Billionaires’ Row,” she said.

“We toured them through the properties but many felt they were too pricey for the market — $7,000, $8,000 and $10,000 a square foot,” she added.
Lenz said the high prices were caused by a combination of factors, including the costs of property, construction, financing and high-end marketing — and savvy developers who have clauses in their contracts that keep lenders from forcing them to drop prices, thereby cutting into their profits.

Uh-oh. Could this be why REBNY lobbied Albany to kibosh the pied-e-terre tax?