With amenity spaces off limits, lifestyle directors and amenity-service companies are planning virtual classes, workshops and online meet-and-greets to fill the void amid coronavirus

A Date Night dinner demo was in full swing one recent Friday at 525 West 52nd Street, a luxury rental building in Manhattan.

Peter Sheehan, resident experience manager for the 392-unit complex, where rents range from $3,500 to $9,000, greeted residents as they arrived. Then he introduced the head chef from a boutique cooking school who would be teaching them how to prepare handmade ravioli with brown butter and sage.

“We’re just trying to get people engaged and connected, and hopefully doing some good cooking,” said Mr. Sheehan, a 36-year-old former hotelier. “I’ve got my dough wrapped up and my wine is flowing.”

But unlike the many events Mr. Sheehan hosted in the building in the pre-Covid-19 past—whiskey tastings, poker nights, concerts by subway musicians—this Date Night was virtual. The chef, 35 residents and Mr. Sheehan were each in their own kitchens connecting via Zoom, the videoconferencing service.

With the novel coronavirus and strict social-distancing mandates confining New York City residents to their apartments, Mr. Sheehan’s job—keeping his residents connected through a steady diet of events, activities and treats—has gotten a lot more challenging. When they are not planning virtual events, social directors like Mr. Sheehan have become a lifeline for stir-crazy renters, offering tips on which local stores have fresh fruit and short lines, and hooking up online activities for children.

“It helps them navigate trickier times, understanding that there are people here supporting them,” Mr. Sheehan said of the renters.

That Friday morning, he had set out white bags of neatly packaged ingredients in the lobby, tagged with the apartment numbers of residents who nabbed, free of charge, the 35 spots in the limited workshop. Before the lesson began, he checked in with Ken Connors, head chef of City Cooking West End, to make sure the chef’s webcams had good angles on his butcher block and stove.

Even before the pandemic, New York City’s luxury rental buildings had been going beyond fitness centers and plush lounges to offer ambitious lifestyle programs: monthly mixers, book clubs, baby boogie classes, and jaunts to museums and galleries.

For a developer with a high-price building to lease out, it was no longer enough to have a rooftop terrace, you had to have a stargazing party on that terrace with a guest astronomer and catered s’mores.

Although many developers work with amenity-service companies, others have installed in-house lifestyle directors like Mr. Sheehan—a hip reboot of Julie the cruise director from “The Love Boat,” with a bro beard.   

“Peter has been the friendly face of the building, checking in just to say, ‘Hi’ or ‘Here’s something for the kids,’ or a [virtual] exercise class, or ‘If you’re feeling alone, here is counseling they’re offering [through a Zoom workshop],’ ” said Dean Loxton, 45, a filmmaker. He lives at 525 West 52nd Street with his husband and 18-month-old daughter, Maya, in a two-bedroom apartment they rent for $8,200 a month.

Although he has his own office in the building, Mr. Sheehan is employed by LIVunLtd, an “amenity space-management and activation” company that provides a range of services to about 200 residential buildings in New York City and New Jersey—64 of which have dedicated on-site coordinators.

Since the pandemic hit, LIVunLtd has developed a roster of a la carte virtual events: live-streamed yoga and Pilates classes, workshops on perfume-blending and truffle-making, and online meet-and-greets with actors from shuttered Broadway shows such as “Wicked” and “Hamilton.”

Before the pandemic, 525 West 52nd Street’s developer, Taconic Partners, was spending $50,000 to $100,000 a year on amenities programming, according to Vice President Andrew Schwartz.

Residents of the building, which opened in 2017, get access to its club programs for a monthly fee of $85, since suspended. The building’s library, fitness center, golf simulator lounge and other amenity spaces have all closed, but Mr. Sheehan is still coming in several days a week.

In mid-March, Waterline Square, a three-tower complex on Manhattan’s Upper West Side with 916 rental apartments priced from $5,230 to $35,000, was days away from opening its Waterline Club: a 100,000-square-foot amenity space with an indoor tennis court, 30-foot rock-climbing wall, bowling alley and recording studio.

“We had a robust calendar of activities, with more than 25 events planned,” said Kelly Sullivan, lifestyle director for Waterline Square, which opened last September.

When the pandemic shut that down, Ms. Sullivan shifted gears. “We want to give people that sense of community they’re not getting,” she said.

She asked Waterline Club fitness instructors to begin streaming their classes live on the complex’s Instagram feed, clad in club-branded baseball caps and T-shirts. (She has since provided microphones and tripods to improve sound quality.)

Weekly online events targeted different ages. Children were invited to a Zoom puppet show; adults got a Cinco de Mayo mixology class and a virtual comedy night with local talent.

Brian Feinstein, 47, a composer who was in the midst of adapting the “The Bad News Bears” for Broadway when the pandemic hit, lives in a one-bedroom apartment at Waterline Square. He participated in the comedy night and a Zoom workshop on stress-reduction led by a psychology professor.

“He spoke about meditation and how those of us who are carb-loading can be more mindful with food,” said Mr. Feinstein, who got his one-bedroom, ordinarily listed for about $8,250, at a reduced rate through the city’s affordable-housing lottery. “To have these events and be able to see them on the calendar is great. It gives a sense of structure.”

Other lifestyle directors are going beyond virtual events to provide some hands-on support for their residents.

“If we know they have a birthday coming up, we’ve been decorating residents’ doors with streamers and balloons,” said Thea Wittich, co-founder with her husband, Michael Wittich, 40, of Axiom Amenities. They oversee the amenities program at 50 West, a 186-unit tower in Manhattan’s Financial District.

“We’re doing one for a resident who is graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, in her school colors,” she said of the decorated doors.

Before the pandemic, Ms. Wittich, a 33-year-old former personal trainer, hosted three to five free events a month for 50 West residents, who pay between $6,200 and $65,000 a month for rental units (the building is roughly split between rentals and condos).

The building has a full-floor fitness center and an entertainment floor with its own theater, both of which are now closed. But its team of three full-time amenity staffers have remained on site throughout the pandemic.

ILLUSTRATION: KERRY HYNDMAN
MOSCOW MULE
From Mackenzie Gleason, head bartender at The Wayland, for a mixology class at 525 West 52nd Street:

1½ tablespoons lime juice
½ tablespoon fresh ginger juice (add more for a nice kick)
2 oz. vodka
½ oz. club soda
Combine all ingredients in a shaker, except for the club soda. Give a quick shake with a few ice cubes.

Strain the cocktail into an iced glass and add club soda.

Garnish with a lime wedge and candied ginger.

For more fizz, add another half-ounce of club soda, and ½ oz. less vodka.

“There is this vision that you lay off your amenity people in a pandemic, but they have responded to this in a very strong way,” said Seth Coston, director of residential operations for Time Equities, the developer of 50 West.

Along with setting up a Zoom schedule of boot camp and yoga classes, the couple put together home-fitness kits with yoga mats, rollers and bands, and then delivered them, free of charge, to any resident who wanted one.

They also started a weekly program for children, dropping off craft kits and snack packs outside residents’ doors. “We do educational packets with STEM activities. They can build things with Popsicle sticks. We try to make it time-consuming,” Ms. Wittich said, adding that a recent papier-mâché craft didn’t get many takers: “No one was up for that mess in their house.”

She also puts out a daily newsletter with recipes and brain-teasers.

“Whoever answered the most questions correctly won a salmon meal kit and we won. My husband and I are kind of geeky, so we’re looking forward to the next one,” said Stephanie Sun, 36, an e-commerce manager for Walmart who lives with her husband and 3-year-old daughter in a two-bedroom apartment they bought in 2017, for a price she didn’t disclose. Comparable rental apartments at 50 West cost about $13,000 a month.

Thea and Michael Wittich themselves live in a building with no amenities three blocks from a city hospital.

“We are very fortunate. A lot of people are very sick,” Ms. Wittich said. “It has been wonderful for us to take [our] creativity and fine-tune it so people don’t feel alone.”

TIPS FOR THE PROGRAM DIRECTOR
What does it take to be the lifestyle director for a high-price luxury building in New York City?

“You need a unicorn for this job,” said Michael Fazio, co-founder and chief creative officer of LIVunLtd. “You’re a host, you’re a curator, you’re a customer service manager, you’re a counselor.”

Mr. Fazio, once a concierge at Manhattan’s Intercontinental Barclay Hotel, said that though a hospitality background is a plus, he rarely recruits people from the hotel industry. Instead, his team scouts out potential lifestyle directors from the Actors’ Equity Association, design schools such as Parsons and Fashion Institute of Technology, and even while shopping or dining out. “When I go to a nice store or a restaurant and there’s someone who just has the DNA, I tell them about what we do,” Mr. Fazio said.

A two-week basic training follows, in which the raw recruit learns everything from how to deal with a broken treadmill and a no-show caterer to how to greet residents at the monthly mixer. “We don’t ask, ‘Are you unmarried?’ ” said Mr. Fazio.. He shared a few of his golden rules for lifestyle directors:

• Be friendly, but not a best friend. “We have to be very careful,” he said. “People have invited my staff to dinner parties and to their weekend homes in the Hamptons. We can’t do that.” When fielding a tricky invitation, he advises lifestyle directors to say, “I would love to, but it’s company policy that I can only be here working.”

• Beware the man bun. “Even though it’s very fashionable for men to have facial hair, there are certain resident populations where it might not depict the mood,” Mr. Fazio said. “But if it’s a trendy Brooklyn building with a lot of creatives, there’s no problem if you have an armful of tattoos and a big beard and a ponytail.”

• Be a team player. “Never commiserate with residents about problems in the building. It could be the absolute worst, nearly negligent property manager, but you never say, ‘Yeah, I know, he’s such a moron.’ Instead, it’s ‘I’m so sorry you feel that way, let me report that.’ ”

• No drinking on the job. “We’re not the guests, we’re the party-starter. Even if we’re raising a glass with the residents, we need to stay focused and remember all the golden rules, which could slip our mind.”

With state and city government support, developers are building laboratories for medical research and incubator spaces for biotech start-ups amid the race for a coronavirus vaccine.

The coronavirus pandemic, which has focused greater attention on health care and spurred a heated race for a Covid-19 vaccine, has also ratcheted up interest in life science real estate in New York.

The city had already been trying to play catch-up with other life science powerhouses such as Boston, San Diego and San Francisco. Real estate companies, with government support, had been building commercial laboratories for medical researchers, incubator spaces for biotech start-ups and offices for pharmaceutical companies poised to bring new drugs to market.

Now, funding from investors is flowing to such projects at a time when the city’s office market is battered by lockdowns and orders to work from home. Office availability in Manhattan jumped to 14.1 percent in the third quarter from 11.8 percent in the same period a year ago, while the average rent dropped about 1 percent, according to Newmark, a commercial real estate advisory firm.

Developers are jumping on the life science bandwagon, which has emerged as a bright spot in an uncertain picture for commercial real estate. Rent for labs in Manhattan averages around $105 a square foot, according to a report from CBRE, a real estate services company.

Experts are warning that it may be too soon to celebrate a turnaround, but developers are charging ahead.

The latest move comes from Taconic Investment Partners, which has just revealed plans to convert a former auto showroom on the West Side of Manhattan into a life science hub. The building was erected in 1929 for Chrysler, but ABC has occupied it for decades. When the Walt Disney Company, which owns the television network, departs in January for new digs downtown, Taconic, in a partnership with Nuveen Real Estate, will begin overhauling the building, said Matthew Weir, a senior vice president at Taconic.

“We think this is a game-changing point in New York,” he added.

The city has long possessed key ingredients for the life sciences to flourish. It has leading universities and academic medical centers — the places where scientific breakthroughs are often made and bioscience businesses born. And it is teeming with chemists, biomedical engineers and other life science professionals.

Funding to research institutions in the city from the National Institutes of Health, the federal government’s biomedical research agency, has risen every year since 2016 and last year hit $2.2 billion, second only to the Boston area.

But New York has lacked labs and other spaces entrepreneurs need to start their companies and bring drugs to clinical trials and, eventually, commercial production.

As a result, young biotech firms tended to go elsewhere. For instance, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, spun out of research done at Columbia University, moved 30 miles north to Tarrytown, N.Y. The company, which had revenue of more than $7.8 billion in 2019, is conducting trials for a Covid-19 antibody treatment that was recently given to President Trump.

The situation began to change in 2010 when Alexandria, a California-based developer of bioscience complexes, opened a gleaming tower known as the Alexandria Center for Life Science-New York City on the East Side of Manhattan on the hospital corridor known as Bedpan Alley. The location reflects the conviction that life science developments need to be near research institutions, forming “clusters.” In 2014, Alexandria completed the second of three planned towers on its campus.

Governmental initiatives were established to encourage such efforts, which promise high-paying jobs and tax revenue. In 2016, New York introduced a $500 million life science initiative, led by the city’s Economic Development Corporation. In 2017, New York State unveiled its own $620 million plan.

Deerfield Management Company, a health care investment firm, is a beneficiary of the city program. It is receiving nearly $100 million in tax credits for converting a 12-story building in the Flatiron district into a vertical campus with lab space, lecture halls and offices for nonprofit groups and academic institutions.

Retrofitting a building for life sciences can be a major undertaking. While less expensive and faster than building from scratch, the cost can be four times higher than the cost to convert a building for office use, according to some estimates.

Nor is every building suitable for conversion, said Peter Schubert, a partner at Ennead Architects, which has worked on life science projects. The best candidates have large floor plates, are structurally robust to prevent vibrations that can be disastrous in lab work and have high ceilings that can accommodate the extensive ductwork necessary for enhanced ventilation. Electrical systems need to support increased power requirements. Loading docks may need to separate, say, the secure arrival of tissue samples and the removal of chemical waste. Although former manufacturing plants often fit the bill, “it’s really building by building,” Mr. Schubert said.

The challenges haven’t discouraged developers.

Taconic’s upcoming project will be part of an emerging life science cluster on Manhattan’s West Side. The developer, working with Silverstein Properties, has already rebranded a nearby former film production studio as the Hudson Research Center, leasing space to tenants including the New York Stem Cell Foundation.

Plans for the new project were drawn up by Perkins & Will, an architecture firm, and call for replacing the brick and concrete facade with glass and shiny aluminum. A helix-shaped auto ramp, a remnant from the building’s showroom days, will become the centerpiece of the reincarnated interior. The renovation is expected be completed in early 2023, Mr. Weir said.

Other projects are underway in a growing life science cluster in West Harlem, near Columbia University, where Janus Property Company is retrofitting old brick factory buildings for tenants including Harlem Biospace, an incubator offering co-working lab space. Janus is also constructing the 350,000-square-foot Taystee Lab Building on the site of a former bread bakery.

Long Island City, Queens, is another locus of activity. Alexandria is converting an old book bindery for lab and office space, and GFP Real Estate and King Street Properties are collaborating on another conversion. And several bioscience companies are at the Brooklyn Army Terminal.

A flood of private venture capital money to the companies that would occupy such projects has only buoyed interest.

“Every week, a developer is buying a building to convert to life science,” said Joshua King, an executive managing director at Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate company. He said that he and his colleagues were constantly fielding calls from landlords considering office-to-lab conversions.

But the life science “boom” is a boomlet, at best.

Of nearly 500 million square feet of office space in New York, less than two million square feet are redeveloped for labs or marketed exclusively for the life sciences, although more is in the pipeline. (For comparison, Boston has around 30 million square feet of such space.)

Life science “is by no means going to be an office savior in New York,” said William Hartman, an executive managing director at Cushman & Wakefield. “It’s not going to solve the big office vacancy problem.”

“Maybe we’re experiencing a premature exuberance,” he added.

The availability for buildings marketed for labs is 30.5 percent, according to the CBRE report, although the availability for prebuilt space is just 2.3 percent.

“The reality is, the demand is limited,” said John H. Cunningham, an executive vice president at Alexandria. “There are a handful of companies out there in the market kicking tires.”

But Lindsay Greene, chief strategy officer at the Economic Development Corporation, predicted that demand would catch up with supply as seed-stage companies secure funding and graduate from incubators to their own spaces. “There’s a catch-up effect,” she said. “We have to allow time for it to play out.”

Some existing life science space has served pandemic-related endeavors. The city located its Pandemic Response Lab, which processes coronavirus tests, in the Alexandria Center.

Still, the future of the sector will depend on tenants that will outlast the pandemic. It takes about 25 years for a life science sector to reach maturity.

“Our goal is not to overtake some other city,” Ms. Greene said, “but to be in a peer group with them.”

With amenity spaces off limits, lifestyle directors and amenity-service companies are planning virtual classes, workshops and online meet-and-greets to fill the void amid coronavirus

A Date Night dinner demo was in full swing one recent Friday at 525 West 52nd Street, a luxury rental building in Manhattan.

Peter Sheehan, resident experience manager for the 392-unit complex, where rents range from $3,500 to $9,000, greeted residents as they arrived. Then he introduced the head chef from a boutique cooking school who would be teaching them how to prepare handmade ravioli with brown butter and sage.

“We’re just trying to get people engaged and connected, and hopefully doing some good cooking,” said Mr. Sheehan, a 36-year-old former hotelier. “I’ve got my dough wrapped up and my wine is flowing.”

But unlike the many events Mr. Sheehan hosted in the building in the pre-Covid-19 past—whiskey tastings, poker nights, concerts by subway musicians—this Date Night was virtual. The chef, 35 residents and Mr. Sheehan were each in their own kitchens connecting via Zoom, the videoconferencing service.

• 

• 

• 

With the novel coronavirus and strict social-distancing mandates confining New York City residents to their apartments, Mr. Sheehan’s job—keeping his residents connected through a steady diet of events, activities and treats—has gotten a lot more challenging. When they are not planning virtual events, social directors like Mr. Sheehan have become a lifeline for stir-crazy renters, offering tips on which local stores have fresh fruit and short lines, and hooking up online activities for children.

“It helps them navigate trickier times, understanding that there are people here supporting them,” Mr. Sheehan said of the renters.

That Friday morning, he had set out white bags of neatly packaged ingredients in the lobby, tagged with the apartment numbers of residents who nabbed, free of charge, the 35 spots in the limited workshop. Before the lesson began, he checked in with Ken Connors, head chef of City Cooking West End, to make sure the chef’s webcams had good angles on his butcher block and stove.

Even before the pandemic, New York City’s luxury rental buildings had been going beyond fitness centers and plush lounges to offer ambitious lifestyle programs: monthly mixers, book clubs, baby boogie classes, and jaunts to museums and galleries.

• 

For a developer with a high-price building to lease out, it was no longer enough to have a rooftop terrace, you had to have a stargazing party on that terrace with a guest astronomer and catered s’mores.

Although many developers work with amenity-service companies, others have installed in-house lifestyle directors like Mr. Sheehan—a hip reboot of Julie the cruise director from “The Love Boat,” with a bro beard.   

“Peter has been the friendly face of the building, checking in just to say, ‘Hi’ or ‘Here’s something for the kids,’ or a [virtual] exercise class, or ‘If you’re feeling alone, here is counseling they’re offering [through a Zoom workshop],’ ” said Dean Loxton, 45, a filmmaker. He lives at 525 West 52nd Street with his husband and 18-month-old daughter, Maya, in a two-bedroom apartment they rent for $8,200 a month.

Although he has his own office in the building, Mr. Sheehan is employed by LIVunLtd, an “amenity space-management and activation” company that provides a range of services to about 200 residential buildings in New York City and New Jersey—64 of which have dedicated on-site coordinators.

Since the pandemic hit, LIVunLtd has developed a roster of a la carte virtual events: live-streamed yoga and Pilates classes, workshops on perfume-blending and truffle-making, and online meet-and-greets with actors from shuttered Broadway shows such as “Wicked” and “Hamilton.”

Before the pandemic, 525 West 52nd Street’s developer, Taconic Partners, was spending $50,000 to $100,000 a year on amenities programming, according to Vice President Andrew Schwartz.

Residents of the building, which opened in 2017, get access to its club programs for a monthly fee of $85, since suspended. The building’s library, fitness center, golf simulator lounge and other amenity spaces have all closed, but Mr. Sheehan is still coming in several days a week.

In mid-March, Waterline Square, a three-tower complex on Manhattan’s Upper West Side with 916 rental apartments priced from $5,230 to $35,000, was days away from opening its Waterline Club: a 100,000-square-foot amenity space with an indoor tennis court, 30-foot rock-climbing wall, bowling alley and recording studio.

“We had a robust calendar of activities, with more than 25 events planned,” said Kelly Sullivan, lifestyle director for Waterline Square, which opened last September.

When the pandemic shut that down, Ms. Sullivan shifted gears. “We want to give people that sense of community they’re not getting,” she said.

She asked Waterline Club fitness instructors to begin streaming their classes live on the complex’s Instagram feed, clad in club-branded baseball caps and T-shirts. (She has since provided microphones and tripods to improve sound quality.)

Weekly online events targeted different ages. Children were invited to a Zoom puppet show; adults got a Cinco de Mayo mixology class and a virtual comedy night with local talent.

Brian Feinstein, 47, a composer who was in the midst of adapting the “The Bad News Bears” for Broadway when the pandemic hit, lives in a one-bedroom apartment at Waterline Square. He participated in the comedy night and a Zoom workshop on stress-reduction led by a psychology professor.

“He spoke about meditation and how those of us who are carb-loading can be more mindful with food,” said Mr. Feinstein, who got his one-bedroom, ordinarily listed for about $8,250, at a reduced rate through the city’s affordable-housing lottery. “To have these events and be able to see them on the calendar is great. It gives a sense of structure.”

Other lifestyle directors are going beyond virtual events to provide some hands-on support for their residents.

“If we know they have a birthday coming up, we’ve been decorating residents’ doors with streamers and balloons,” said Thea Wittich, co-founder with her husband, Michael Wittich, 40, of Axiom Amenities. They oversee the amenities program at 50 West, a 186-unit tower in Manhattan’s Financial District.

“We’re doing one for a resident who is graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, in her school colors,” she said of the decorated doors.

Before the pandemic, Ms. Wittich, a 33-year-old former personal trainer, hosted three to five free events a month for 50 West residents, who pay between $6,200 and $65,000 a month for rental units (the building is roughly split between rentals and condos).

The building has a full-floor fitness center and an entertainment floor with its own theater, both of which are now closed. But its team of three full-time amenity staffers have remained on site throughout the pandemic.

ILLUSTRATION: KERRY HYNDMAN
MOSCOW MULE
From Mackenzie Gleason, head bartender at The Wayland, for a mixology class at 525 West 52nd Street:

1½ tablespoons lime juice
½ tablespoon fresh ginger juice (add more for a nice kick)
2 oz. vodka
½ oz. club soda
Combine all ingredients in a shaker, except for the club soda. Give a quick shake with a few ice cubes.

Strain the cocktail into an iced glass and add club soda.

Garnish with a lime wedge and candied ginger.

For more fizz, add another half-ounce of club soda, and ½ oz. less vodka.

“There is this vision that you lay off your amenity people in a pandemic, but they have responded to this in a very strong way,” said Seth Coston, director of residential operations for Time Equities, the developer of 50 West.

Along with setting up a Zoom schedule of boot camp and yoga classes, the couple put together home-fitness kits with yoga mats, rollers and bands, and then delivered them, free of charge, to any resident who wanted one.

They also started a weekly program for children, dropping off craft kits and snack packs outside residents’ doors. “We do educational packets with STEM activities. They can build things with Popsicle sticks. We try to make it time-consuming,” Ms. Wittich said, adding that a recent papier-mâché craft didn’t get many takers: “No one was up for that mess in their house.”

She also puts out a daily newsletter with recipes and brain-teasers.

“Whoever answered the most questions correctly won a salmon meal kit and we won. My husband and I are kind of geeky, so we’re looking forward to the next one,” said Stephanie Sun, 36, an e-commerce manager for Walmart who lives with her husband and 3-year-old daughter in a two-bedroom apartment they bought in 2017, for a price she didn’t disclose. Comparable rental apartments at 50 West cost about $13,000 a month.

Thea and Michael Wittich themselves live in a building with no amenities three blocks from a city hospital.

“We are very fortunate. A lot of people are very sick,” Ms. Wittich said. “It has been wonderful for us to take [our] creativity and fine-tune it so people don’t feel alone.”

TIPS FOR THE PROGRAM DIRECTOR
What does it take to be the lifestyle director for a high-price luxury building in New York City?

“You need a unicorn for this job,” said Michael Fazio, co-founder and chief creative officer of LIVunLtd. “You’re a host, you’re a curator, you’re a customer service manager, you’re a counselor.”

Mr. Fazio, once a concierge at Manhattan’s Intercontinental Barclay Hotel, said that though a hospitality background is a plus, he rarely recruits people from the hotel industry. Instead, his team scouts out potential lifestyle directors from the Actors’ Equity Association, design schools such as Parsons and Fashion Institute of Technology, and even while shopping or dining out. “When I go to a nice store or a restaurant and there’s someone who just has the DNA, I tell them about what we do,” Mr. Fazio said.

A two-week basic training follows, in which the raw recruit learns everything from how to deal with a broken treadmill and a no-show caterer to how to greet residents at the monthly mixer. “We don’t ask, ‘Are you unmarried?’ ” said Mr. Fazio.. He shared a few of his golden rules for lifestyle directors:

• Be friendly, but not a best friend. “We have to be very careful,” he said. “People have invited my staff to dinner parties and to their weekend homes in the Hamptons. We can’t do that.” When fielding a tricky invitation, he advises lifestyle directors to say, “I would love to, but it’s company policy that I can only be here working.”

• Beware the man bun. “Even though it’s very fashionable for men to have facial hair, there are certain resident populations where it might not depict the mood,” Mr. Fazio said. “But if it’s a trendy Brooklyn building with a lot of creatives, there’s no problem if you have an armful of tattoos and a big beard and a ponytail.”

• Be a team player. “Never commiserate with residents about problems in the building. It could be the absolute worst, nearly negligent property manager, but you never say, ‘Yeah, I know, he’s such a moron.’ Instead, it’s ‘I’m so sorry you feel that way, let me report that.’ ”

• No drinking on the job. “We’re not the guests, we’re the party-starter. Even if we’re raising a glass with the residents, we need to stay focused and remember all the golden rules, which could slip our mind.”

Numerous studies link spending time outdoors and in nature with improved mental and physical health. Yet, with more than 80% of Americans living in urban areas, finding a place to connect with the sky, the sun and greenery can be challenging. Landscaped rooftops, living walls, tranquil gardens and atriums are increasingly popular ways for developers to create room for nature in urban buildings. Those spaces became even more highly prized when stay-at-home guidelines were implemented and city residents were less able to escape to parks, beaches and vacation destinations.

“A connection to nature is vital to everyone’s health and wellbeing,” said Randy Shortridge, cofounder of [au]workshop and architect ofThe Residences at Mandarin Oriental in Honolulu. “People need sunlight and value the long view, the ability to see the horizon. Landscaping stimulates all the senses, too.”

At the Residences at Mandarin Oriental in Honolulu, the 21-floor residential lobby will mostly be open air, although it can be closed during a storm, Mr. Shortridge said. The residences, which are anticipated to be ready for residents by mid-2023, are priced from $2 million to $35 million. Each condo has private outdoor space in addition to the shared rooftop.

“The rooftop garden has been designed so that the boundary between indoor and outdoor space dissolves,” he said. “The sky garden cantilevers out from the tower towards the setting sun and the reflecting pool faces the sunset.”

Green space and natural light are vital, especially in urban areas like New York City, said Andrew Schwartz, vice president of Taconic Partners, developer of luxury apartments at 525 W. 52 St. and 311 W. 42 St in Manhattan.

“We live in a concrete jungle and when people are paying top dollar to live somewhere, they expect to have access to some outdoor space,” Mr. Schwartz said.

At 525, nature is evident in the lobby, where an atrium open to the sky includes a garden and water feature.

“Residents can look out at the rain or snow or sunlight on their way to the elevator,” Mr. Schwartz said. “At 525 we also have a landscaped outdoor deck in the middle of the building with seating and outdoor games. We’ll have something similar at 42 St. but it will be more like a secret garden design with pathways and quiet spaces.”

Both buildings will have rooftop decks for looking at the view and sunbathing. Rents at 525 range from $3,643 for a studio to $6,386 for a two-bedroom apartment. Some apartments also have private balconies.

More: High-Tech Gadgets for Indoor and Outdoor Gardening

“Several of my international projects exemplify my core design philosophy, known as ‘Shanshui City,’ which is the idea that humans and nature should be more emotionally connected, especially in high-density cities,” said Ma Yansong, founder of MAD Architects in Beijing and Los Angeles and the architect of Gardenhouse in Beverly Hills, California. “The vision for Gardenhouse is to provide inhabitants with the conveniences of modern city living while offering them a place where they can live in harmony with nature.”

Mr. Yansong was inspired by the natural beauty of the Hollywood hills and Beverly Hills.

“We designed a ‘green hill’ wrapped in a living wall that connects with its surroundings that has become an essential part of the architectural design,” he said. “Gardenhouse features the largest living wall in the U.S. The vertical living wall wraps around ‘the hill’ and includes drought-tolerant succulents and vines that are native to the area. The windows of each dwelling open up onto the living green wall, giving residents the feeling that they are living in a hillside village rather than a metropolitan city.”

The residences in the Gardenhouse, which include one-level condos, two-story penthouses and a trio of row houses, are priced from $3.7 million. Residents are anticipated to move into the Gardenhouse in summer 2020.

From Penta: One Young World Funds Youth Projects Tackling the Pandemic

Evolving Approach to Green Space in Residential Developments

Seamless indoor-outdoor living connected with walls of glass, flush surfaces and similar materials have been popular for years, but until recently, those spaces were usually only available in single-family homes, said Mark Schwettmann, a director at Skidmore Owings & Merrill, the architect for One Steuart Lane, a waterfront condo in San Francisco that is anticipated to be complete in early 2021.

“Advances in structural design, materials, building codes and enclosure design have enabled high rises to offer spacious outdoor space that fulfills this same desire of living inside and outside at once,” Mr. Schwettmann said. “At One Steuart Lane, we have indoor-outdoor great rooms with a fully operable glass facade, creating over 2,000 square feet” of indoor-outdoor living.

At One Steuart Lane, when the glass walls are open, the great rooms in each condo will have more than 2,000 square feet of indoor-outdoor living space.

The building’s 40-foot wraparound terraces will be divided by freestanding living walls that create privacy and vertical gardens, Mr. Schwettmann said. The building itself has a minimalist design to serve as a frame for the expansive views of the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.

More: Taking a Swing at the Golf Lifestyle

“The residences at One Steuart Lane draw from a singular inspiration: the bay’s waterfront,” said John Pallante, managing director of Polaris Pacific, the sales and marketing team for One Steuart Lane. “Each residence was meticulously and thoughtfully designed to optimize its unrivaled location and deliver a premier indoor/outdoor high-rise living experience. The living walls are a natural connection between the city and nature.”

The 120 condos at One Steuart Lane are priced from $1.6 million. A communal terrace on the second level of the 20-story tower will provide additional greenery as well as unobstructed views of the bay and the bridge.

In Beverly Hills, the Gardenhouse design provides green space for residents and serves as a new landmark of greenery along Wilshire Boulelvard.

“The interior courtyard is a hidden gem of lush garden that also weaves itself between the residences,” Mr. Yansong said. “Recycled water will be used to keep the living wall plants and greenery lush, while also acting as a cooling system that maintains comfortable interior temperatures.”

More: How Luxury Buildings Are Adjusting for a Future of Social Distancing

The Gardenhouse includes a ground-level water feature.

“Providing a visual and auditory experience for inhabitants, the water feature can be accessed by residents,” Mr. Yansong said. “It transports them away from the city and into a green, calm and tranquil atmosphere.”

Even just a few years ago landscape design was more sterile and meant to cover things up or to look at from a distance, Mr. Shortridge said.

“Today, we view outdoor space as an opportunity to relax, to sit in the shade and enjoy dappled light,” he said. “At the Mandarin Oriental, every condo has glass walls that open onto a lanai, so every resident has private space as well as shared green space on the roof.”

More: In the Newest Crop of Golf Communities, Wellness and a Beautiful Setting Are Top Priorities

Challenges of Designing Outdoor Space in Urban Environments

At each of these developments, extensive outdoor space constrains the number of residences and carries added cost.

“It’s not out of the question for developers to spend up to $1 million on landscaping installation at new properties and over $100,000 on landscaping design fees,” Mr. Schwartz said. “Ongoing maintenance can range anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 annually depending on the landscaping type and quantity.”

On the other hand, those green amenities mean that renters and buyers are willing to pay higher prices.

“The challenge of incorporating green space in urban development is always the long-term care required to ensure the landscape is healthy and thrives in a dense vertical high rise,” Mr. Pallante said.

In Hawaii, plants grow vigorously and don’t have a resting period as they do in other climates, so it is even more important to choose plants that can be pruned yet look natural, said Mr. Shortridge.

Such careful planning for green amenities results in a more tranquil home environment for residents, even in a city environment.

The business community shares the outrage of our fellow New Yorkers over continued racial injustice in America, reflected in the needless killing of George Floyd and, more broadly, the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on communities of color. As employers and business leaders, we commit to help address conditions that have led to these tragic outcomes.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a further reminder of significant shortcomings in our health, education and economic systems. These shortcomings have hit communities of color in our city disproportionately hard. This experience has shown once again the vital role these communities play in every aspect of our city, including as healthcare providers and other essential workers.

Within our companies and publicly, we are reasserting our commitments to diversity and inclusion among our boards, executive leadership and our entire workforce. As members of the Partnership for New York City, we are supporting programs to ensure that the city’s public school students gain the skills and career opportunities required to achieve economic equality and helping racially diverse entrepreneurs and small businesses survive and rehire workers as quickly as possible.

Throughout the crisis, we have extended philanthropic support to hospitals, food pantries, cash relief programs, social service organizations and many other charities. But no amount of philanthropy can make up for the divisions in American society that the pandemic has exposed and deepened.

By speaking out, we intend to send a message of hope to young New Yorkers who are acting out their frustration, fears and anger on the city streets. Let’s work together to achieve racial equality and a safe, law-abiding society.

New York has prided itself on being the world’s most open and inclusive city, attracting top talent from everywhere to build lives, careers and businesses here. But these opportunities have not been equally accessible to young people of color who have grown up and attended school in our poorest neighborhoods. In our post-pandemic city, that must change, and we are committed to help make that happen.

Sincerely,

Mercedes Abramo, President & CEO, North America, Cartier

Lee S. Ainslie, III, Managing Partner, Maverick Capital

Ellen Alemany, Chairman & CEO, CIT Group Inc.

Leo Argiris, Chief Operating Officer, Americas Region, Arup

Jeffrey Aronson and Mark T. Gallogly, Managing Principals, Centerbridge Partners

Robert M. Bakish, President & CEO, ViacomCBS Inc.

Ajay Banga, Chief Executive Officer, Mastercard

Neil Barr, Managing Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP

Candace K. Beinecke, Senior Partner, Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP

Charles R. Bendit, Co-Chief Executive Officer, Taconic Investment Partners LLC

Stephen Berger, Chairman, Odyssey Investment Partners, LLC

William H. Berkman, Co-Chairman & CEO, Digital Landscape Group, Inc.

Torry Berntsen, Chief Executive Officer, Americas & Head of Corporate and Institutional Banking, Standard Chartered Bank

David J. Beveridge, Senior Partner, Shearman & Sterling LLP

Frank J. Bisignano, President & Chief Operating Officer, Fiserv

Leon Black, Chairman & CEO, Apollo Global Management, Inc.

Michael W. Blair, Presiding Partner, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP

Jeff T. Blau, Chief Executive Officer, The Related Companies, L.P.

Kathy Bloomgarden, Chief Executive Officer, Ruder Finn, Inc.

Adam M. Blumenthal, Managing Partner, Blue Wolf Capital Partners

Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa, Co-Founders & Co-CEOs, Warby Parker

Michael C. Bodson, President & CEO, The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation

John Borthwick, Founder & CEO, Betaworks

Albert Bourla, Chairman & CEO, Pfizer Inc.

Gregory B. Braca, President & CEO, TD Bank, N.A.

John Bruckner, President, NY, National Grid

Tory Burch, Chairman, CEO & Designer, Tory Burch LLC

Martin S. Burger, Chief Executive Officer and Larry Silverstein, Chairman, Silverstein Properties, Inc.

Gregory C. Case, Chief Executive Officer, Aon plc

Ric Clark, Chairman, Brookfield Property Group

Rodgin Cohen, Senior Chairman and Joe Shenker, Chairman, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP

Marc Cooper, Chief Executive Officer, PJ Solomon, L.P.

Michael L. Corbat, Chief Executive Officer, Citigroup

David Craig, Chief Executive Officer, Refinitiv

Joseph C. Davis, North America Chairman, The Boston Consulting Group, Inc.

Todd C. DeGarmo, Chief Executive Officer, STUDIOS Architecture

Jim Dinkins, President, Coca-Cola North America

Toby Dodd, President, New York Tri-State, Cushman & Wakefield, Inc.

William R. Dougherty, Chairman, Executive Committee, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP

Lynne Doughtie, U.S. Chairman & CEO and Paul Knopp, CEO-Elect and Chair-Elect, KPMG LLP

Brian Duperreault, Chief Executive Officer, American International Group, Inc.

Douglas Durst, Chairman, Durst Organization Inc.

Richard Edelman, President & CEO, Edelman

Scott A. Edelman, Chairman, Milbank LLP

Blair W. Effron, Co-Founder, Centerview Partners LLC

Joel S. Ehrenkranz, Partner and Co-Founder, Ehrenkranz Partners L.P.

Douglas F. Eisenberg, Founder & CEO, A&E Real Estate, LLC

Steven Ellis, Chairman of the Firm, Proskauer

Cathy Engelbert, Commissioner, WNBA

Eric Eve, Chief Executive Officer, Ichor Strategies LLC

Alexander Farman-Farmaian, Vice Chairman, Portfolio Manager, Edgewood Management LLC

Ziel Feldman, Chairman & Founder, HFZ Capital Group

Joseph R. Ficalora, President & CEO, New York Community Bancorp, Inc.

Laurence D. Fink, Chairman & CEO, BlackRock, Inc.

Peter Finn, Founding Partner, Finn Partners

Winston C. Fisher, Partner, Fisher Brothers

Alan H. Fishman, Chairman, Ladder Capital Finance LLC

John Foley, Founder & CEO, Peloton

William E. Ford, Chief Executive Officer, General Atlantic LLC

Bethlam Forsa, Chief Executive Officer, Savvas Learning Company

Paul Fribourg, Chairman & CEO, Continental Grain Company

Adena Friedman, President & CEO, Nasdaq

Eric J. Friedman, Executive Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP

Jeff Gennette, Chairman & CEO, Macy’s, Inc.

Daniel Glaser, President & CEO, Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc.

Timothy Gokey, Chief Executive Officer, Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc.

Perry Golkin, Chief Executive Officer, PPC Enterprises LLC

Alex Gorsky, Chairman & CEO, Johnson & Johnson

Barry M. Gosin, Chief Executive Officer, Newmark Knight Frank

Peter T. Grauer, Chairman, Bloomberg LP

Jonathan N. Grayer, Chairman & CEO, Weld North LLC

David J. Greenwald, Chairman, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP

Kelly Grier, U.S. Chairman & Americas Managing Partner, Ernst & Young LLP

Stewart K. Gross, Managing Director, Lightyear Capital

Robin Hayes, Chief Executive Officer, JetBlue Airways Corporation

Risa Heller, President, Risa Heller Communications

Dale Hemmerdinger, Chairman, Atco Properties & Management, Inc.

Jonathan S. Henes, Partner, Kirkland & Ellis LLP

James H. Herbert, II, Founder, Chairman and CEO and Hafize Gaye Erkan, President and Board Member, First Republic Bank

Leslie Wohlman Himmel, Managing Partner, Himmel & Meringoff Properties, Inc.

Barbara Humpton, President & CEO, Siemens USA

Donna Imperato, Chief Executive Officer, BCW

Frederick J. Iseman, Chairman & CEO, CI Capital Partners LLC

Jeremy Jacobs, Chairman, Delaware North Companies Inc. and Owner, Boston Bruins

Kenneth M. Jacobs, Chairman & CEO, Lazard Ltd

John Josephson, Chairman & CEO, Sesac

Brad S. Karp, Chair, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP

Charles R. Kaye, Chief Executive Officer, Warburg Pincus LLC

Anthony S. Kendall, Chairman & CEO, Mitchell & Titus, LLP

Henry R. Kravis, Co-Chairman & Co-CEO, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.

Philip Krim, Founder & CEO, Casper

Jeremy M. Kroll, Co-Founder & CEO, K2 Intelligence

William P. Lauder, Executive Chairman, The Estée Lauder Companies, Inc.

Rochelle B. Lazarus, Chairman Emeritus, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide

Kewsong Lee, Co-Chief Executive Officer, The Carlyle Group

Richard S. LeFrak, Chairman & CEO, The LeFrak Organization

Joey Levin, Chief Executive Officer, IAC

Allan Levine, Chairman & CEO, Global Atlantic Financial Company

Jeffrey E. Levine, Chairman, Douglaston Development

Robert A. Levine, Chief Executive Officer, RAL Companies & Affiliates, LLC

Martin Lipton, Senior Partner, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz

Alex Liu, Managing Partner and Chairman, Kearney

Robert P. LoCascio, Founder & CEO, LivePerson, Inc.

Howard W. Lutnick, Chairman & CEO, Cantor Fitzgerald L.P.

Roger Lynch, Chief Executive Officer, Condé Nast

Shawn Lytle, Head of Americas, Macquarie Group

Mehdi Mahmud, CEO & President, First Eagle Investment Management, LLC

Vikram Malhotra, Senior Partner & Chairman of the Americas, McKinsey & Company, Inc.

Anthony Malkin, Chairman & CEO, Empire State Realty Trust

Anthony E. Mann, President & CEO, E-J Electric Installation Co.

Theodore Mathas, Chairman & CEO, New York Life Insurance Company

Sandeep Mathrani, Chief Executive Officer, WeWork

Peter W. May, President & Founding Partner, Trian Partners

John McAvoy, Chairman, President & CEO, Con Edison, Inc.

Charles R. McCall, Chief Executive Officer, Astoria Energy II LLC & Astoria Energy LLC

Raymond W. McDaniel, Jr., President & CEO, Moody’s Corporation

Bill McDermott, President & CEO, ServiceNow

Anish Melwani, Chairman & CEO, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc.

Avner Mendelson, President & CEO, Bank Leumi USA

Heidi Messer, Co-Founder & Chairman, Collective[i]

Jayne Millard, Chairman and Co-CEO and Kathleen Shanahan, Co-CEO, Turtle & Hughes, Inc.

Edward J. Minskoff, Chairman & CEO, Edward J. Minskoff Equities, Inc.

Ken Moelis, Chairman and CEO, Moelis & Company

Greg Mondre, Co-Chief Executive Officer, Silver Lake

Thomas K. Montag, COO, Bank of America

Daniel Moore, President & CEO, Rockefeller Group International, Inc.

Tyler Morse, Chief Executive Officer & Managing Partner, MCR Development LLC

Deanna M. Mulligan, Chief Executive Officer, The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America

Oscar Munoz, Executive Chairman, United Airlines, Inc.

Alan J. Murray, President and CEO, Empire BlueCross BlueShield

Masaki Nakajima, President & CEO, Sumitomo Corporation of Americas

Tom Naratil, President Americas and Co-President Global Wealth Management, UBS Group AG

Daniel Nardello, Chief Executive Officer, Nardello & Co. LLC

Liz Neumark, Founder & CEO, Great Performances

Jon Oringer, Executive Chairman, Shutterstock, Inc.

Mark Pearson, President & CEO, Equitable

Debbie Perelman, President & CEO, Revlon, Inc.

Douglas L. Peterson, President & CEO, S&P Global

Michael A. Peterson, Chairman & CEO, Peter G. Peterson Foundation

Charles E. Phillips, Jr., Chairman, Infor

Michael Phillips, President, Jamestown Properties LLC

Deirdre Quinn, Co-Founder & CEO, Lafayette 148 New York

Daniel Ramot, Co-Founder & CEO, Via

Steven L. Rattner, Chairman & CEO, Willett Advisors LLC

Scott H. Rechler, Chairman & CEO, RXR Realty LLC

Christiana Riley, Member of the Management Board, Deutsche Bank AG, CEO, Deutsche Bank USA Corp.

James D. Robinson, III, Co-Founder & General Partner, RRE Ventures

John Romeo, Managing Partner, Oliver Wyman

James A. Rosenthal, Chief Executive Officer, BlueVoyant

Evan Roth, Co-CEO, BBR Partners, LLC

Michael I. Roth, Chairman & CEO, Interpublic Group

Steven Roth, Chairman & CEO, Vornado Realty Trust

Steven Rubenstein, President, Rubenstein Communications, Inc.

Mitchell E. Rudin, President, Savills Inc.

William C. Rudin, Co-Chairman & CEO, Rudin Management Company, Inc.

Kevin P. Ryan, Founder & CEO, AlleyCorp

Tim Ryan, U.S. Chair and Senior Partner, PwC

Faiza Saeed, Presiding Partner, Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP

Scott Salmirs, President & CEO, ABM Industries Inc.

Kathleen Savio, Chief Executive Officer, Zurich North America

Charles W. Scharf, President & CEO, Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.

Michael Schmidtberger, Partner & Chair of the Executive Committee, Sidley Austin LLP

Alan D. Schnitzer, Chairman & CEO, The Travelers Companies, Inc.

Alan D. Schwartz, Executive Chairman, Guggenheim Partners, LLC

Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO & Co-Founder, Blackstone

Suzanne Shank, President & CEO and Christopher J. Williams, Chairman, Siebert Williams Shank & Co., LLC

Tarek Sherif, Chairman & CEO, Medidata Solutions, Inc.

Jonathan Silvan, Chief Executive Officer, Global Strategy Group, LLC

Adam Silver, Commissioner, National Basketball Association

Joshua Silverman, Chief Executive Officer, Etsy, Inc.

Michael Slocum, President, Commercial Banking, Capital One

Rob Speyer, President & CEO, Tishman Speyer

Stephen Squeri, Chairman & CEO, American Express Company

Robert K. Steel, Partner, Perella Weinberg Partners LP

Douglas C. Steiner, Chairman, Steiner Studios

Steven R. Swartz, President & CEO, Hearst

Julie Sweet, Chief Executive Officer, Accenture and Jimmy Etheredge, Chief Executive Officer, Accenture North America

Paul J. Taubman, Chairman & CEO, PJT Partners Inc.

Teiji Teramoto, Chairman & CEO, Mizuho Americas

Owen D. Thomas, Chief Executive Officer, Boston Properties

Mary Ann Tighe, Chief Executive Officer, NY Tri-State Region, CBRE, Inc.

James S. Tisch, President & CEO, Loews Corporation

Paul Todd, Chief Executive Officer, GLG

William B. Tyree, Managing Partner, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.

Joseph Ucuzoglu, Chief Executive Officer, Deloitte

Sayu Ueno, President & CEO, Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.), Inc.

Robert Vecchio, Chief Executive Officer, LPI, Inc.

Ellis Verdi, President, DeVito/Verdi

James R. Wacht, President, Lee & Associates NYC

George H. Walker, Chairman & CEO, Neuberger Berman Group LLC

Pamela S. Wasserstein, President, Vox Media

Charles Weinstein, Chief Executive Officer, EisnerAmper LLP

David Winter, Co-Chief Executive Officer, Standard Industries Inc.

Robert Wolf, Chief Executive Officer, 32 Advisors LLC

Laila J. Worrell, Chief Executive Officer, Altran Americas

Kathryn S. Wylde, President & CEO, Partnership for New York City

Tim Zagat, Co-Founder, Zagat

David M. Zaslav, President & CEO, Discovery, Inc.

Jide Zeitlin, Chairman & CEO, Tapestry, Inc.

Strauss Zelnick, Partner, ZMC

John Zimmer, Co-Founder & President and Logan Green, Co-Founder & CEO, Lyft

Please save the date of Thursday, April 23, 2020 and join us at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine where we will celebrate our 30th Lucy G. Moses Awards presentation. The Moses Awards are the Conservancy’s highest honors for outstanding preservation work. Named in honor of dedicated New Yorker Lucy G. Moses, the annual Awards have recognized hundreds of leaders, architects, crafts people, and building owners for their extraordinary contributions in preserving our City.

WHEN: Thursday, April 23, 2020
Ceremony begins at 6:30 p.m., reception to follow

WHERE: The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine
1047 Amsterdam Avenue, Manhattan (between 110th and 113th streets) View Map

TICKETS: $75 – Click here to purchase

RSVP by April 17
Ticket questions: Alissa Catalano at 212.995.5260 or AlissaCatalano@nylandmarks.org

This year we honor…

Preservation Leadership Award
Anthony Wood
Advocate and Founder, New York Preservation Archive

Public Leadership in Preservation Award
Stephen Briganti
President and CEO, The Statue of Liberty – Ellis Island Foundation, Inc.

Moses Founders’ Award
Joseph Fishman
Henry and Lucy Moses Fund, Inc.

Susan Henshaw Jones
Former President, The New York Landmarks Conservancy

Stephen Lash
Board Member, The New York Landmarks Conservancy

Preservation Project Awards
817 Broadway
Belvedere Castle
Doering-Bohack House
Empire Stores
Fort Totten Building 207
Fotografiska New York
Harlem Fire Watchtower
Henry Street Settlement, Dale Jones Burch Neighborhood Center
Manhattan Civic Buildings
-Appellate Division Courthouse
-Surrogate’s Courthouse
-Sun Building
McGraw-Hill Building
Church of St. Anselm & St. Roch
St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University
TWA Hotel

ABOUT THE AWARDS
Preservation Awards are given to projects that demonstrate excellence in the restoration, preservation, or adaptive use of historic buildings, streetscapes, and landscapes that preserve commercial, residential, institutional, religious, and public buildings.

The Preservation Leadership Award is bestowed upon an outstanding individual in the field of historic preservation. Past honorees include Ruth Abram, Wint Aldrich, Kent Barwick, John Belle, Simon Breines, John H. Beyer, Giorgio Cavaglieri, Joan K. Davidson, Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, Franny Eberhart, Lola Finkelstein, Kenneth K. Fisher, Daniel Garodnick, Christopher Gray, James Marston Fitch, Margot Gayle, Anne Van Ingen, Judith Kaye, Helen M. Marshall, Joan Maynard, Nancy and Otis Pratt Pearsall, Ruth Pierpont, Adolf K. Placzek, Charles Platt, Jan Hird Pokorny, Henry Hope Reed, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, Vincent Scully, Barnett Shepherd, and Robert Silman.

Only projects that were substantially completed during 2019 and located within the five boroughs of New York City were considered. Books, other publications, and films are not eligible.

QUESTIONS
If you have any questions about the Moses Awards please email Andrea Goldwyn at andreagoldwyn@nylandmarks.org.

Essex Crossing is throwing open the doors today on The Market Line, a marketplace and food hall that adds to the Lower East Side development’s already-impressive roster of local restaurants, grocers and vendors.

“Our goal with The Market Line was to create a venue for the community that reflects the Lower East Side’s diverse immigrant food culture and offers a space for small businesses to flourish and expand their audience,” said Rohan Mehra, co-founder of The Prusik Group, one of Essex Crossing’s developers, in prepared remarks.

The opening marks the tip of the iceberg for the Market Line; when completed in 2021, the marketplace will house 100 vendors across 150,000 square feet of space, making it one of the largest such markets in the world. The first phase houses about 30 vendor stalls, of which 25 are up and running.

Restaurants in the current round of openings include the East Village favorite Veselka, Ippudo‘s quick service ramen joint Kuro-Obi, and Mediterranean spot Rustic Table Shuk. There will be drinks from Peoples Wine Shop and Bar and about 1,200 rotating beers at The Grand Delancey.

Rounding out the offerings are shops like local favorite The Pickle Guys and coffee shop Cafe Grumpy. For the sweet tooth, there’s Indonesian dessert stall Moon Man, artful creations at Rebecca’s Cake Pops and the Brooklyn-based Ample Hills Creamery. Shoppers can also stock up provisions at places like Southeast Asia Food Group, as well as from butchers Ends Meat and the family-run Schaller & Weber.

The market, located at 115 Delancey Street between Essex and Norfolk Streets, was master-planned by SHoP Architects while Formactiv designed the individual vendor spaces. The underground space, which is reminiscent of Downtown Brooklyn’s DeKalb Market Hall, features high-gloss ceramic black tiles, suspended LED Edison bulbs, walnut tables by Uhuru and polished concrete floors.

The market will be open seven-days-a-week, from 7 a.m. until 1 a.m. daily, though the vendors will keep individual hours.

The first phase sits at the base of The Essex, a 26-story apartment and retail tower, that nabbed a $215 million CMBS financing last month. The property’s ground floor houses the 14-screen Regal Essex Crossing and the vendor-based Essex Market, which relocated in May from its longtime, jam-packed home at 120 Essex Street. (One longtime vendor noted business was brisker in the new space, but the spaced-out stalls reduced the level of interaction among the sellers). Essex Market’s grocers and shops include Viva Fruits & Vegetables, Shopsin’s, Cafe D’Avignon and the Lower East Side Girls Club.

Once completed, the Market Line will stretch down three blocks of Broome Street and include things like art galleries and a live music venue. The final layout will function as a subterranean passageway connecting two of the complex’s mixed-use office towers, at 145 and 155 Delancey Streets, which house a combined 350,000 square feet of office space, along with The Essex.

Essex Crossing, when completed in 2024, will be comprised of nine properties totaling 1.9 million square feet. As of October, seven of its nine sites had topped out and the developers anticipate that it will be more than 90 percent complete by 2021, as Commercial Observer reported.

Earlier this month, the New York Times called Essex Crossing the “anti-Hudson Yards,” with its mix of affordable apartments, community perks and the Essex Market.

The project’s development team, known as the Delancey Street Associates, is made up of Prusik, BFC Partners, L+M Development Partners, Taconic Investment Partners, and Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group.

Update: This story has been updated since publication to correct that Market Line stays open until 1 a.m. nightly.

The new mixed-use mega-project on the Lower East Side heals a civic wound with hundreds of affordable apartments, community perks and a sleek home for Essex Market.

Even half-done, Essex Crossing, on the Lower East Side, is shaping up as one of New York’s most promising new mixed-use developments — the anti-Hudson Yards.

A $1.9 billion, six-acre, for-profit mega-project occupying several blocks around Delancey Street where traffic barrels onto and off the Williamsburg Bridge, it replaces what had been a vast no-man’s land and gaping civic wound with new subsidized apartments, a bushel of community perks, parkland, a movie multiplex, office and retail space for local businesses and a capacious new home for the city-owned Essex Market.

Launched a decade ago during the Bloomberg administration, shepherded through the de Blasio years by New York’s Economic Development Corporation and master-planned by SHoP and Beyer Blinder Belle, two big city-based architecture firms, Essex Crossing results from long years of ground-up neighborhood consultation and holistic planning. If you have been anywhere near the Lower East Side lately you could hardly have failed to notice the egregious new supertall that the opportunistic developer called Extell has imposed some blocks away along the waterfront around the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges.

Other developers are now bidding to erect more towers there. Taking advantage of anomalous zoning regulations, these projects have provoked some very loud, angry protests from residents who feel the buildings are being shoved down the throats of a largely poor, immigrant, low- and mid-rise community.

By contrast, while some Lower East Siders remain leery, a relative lack of vocal opposition to Essex Crossing since 2013 — when a consortium of developers and investors calling themselves Delancey Street Associates won the competition to do the project — seems testament to the virtue and value of arduous, upfront negotiations and plans. This may come as close as we can now get, in a political system obeisant to private enterprise, to balancing equity with gentrification.

You might ask: Is this how things should work? Democratic presidential candidates have been arguing the question in terms of health care and wealth taxes. Here, the issue is housing. During the Reagan era, federal authorities got out of the business of constructing public housing, offering private developers tax credits in return for building affordable units. The developers, properly regulated, were supposed to profit from their own efficiency while cities would benefit from the addition of more mixed-income housing.

The process depended on a responsive, vigilant government. A new report by the New York City Department of City Planning shows housing production in the metro area is falling increasingly short of job growth. The area produced 2.2 new housing units per net new job between 2001 and 2008; just 0.3 units last year.

With widening inequity and runaway rents outpacing many cities’ ability to produce more subsidized homes, there is a growing call on the left for government to do more. But government can be slow, inept and profligate just as private developers can rake in tax breaks without always delivering on promised benefits.

At Essex Crossing, the city and developers seemed to have operated on the same wavelength, so the process worked. Four of the nine buildings are now finished. Consulted about optics, local residents said they didn’t want monolithic brick towers, which might remind them of 1960s and 70s public housing. They didn’t much like Bernard Tschumi’s shapely but garish blue-glass luxury condo tower, either —- its arrival in the neighborhood a dozen years ago seemed to plant an incongruous flag for colonizing bourgeoisie — so they didn’t want tons more glass and gloss.

In response, Essex Crossing’s boxy, mostly bland exteriors are variously clad in brick and metal by a variety of architects. Handel Architects has devised the project’s centerpiece, the 26-story Essex, a half market rate, half subsidized rental tower, with 195 apartments. Its podium makes room for a 14-screen cineplex, the largest organic rooftop farm in Manhattan and for the Essex Market, with the first phase of a new enterprise called the Market Line in the basement.

Nearby, the Rollins is a 15-story, L-shaped, umber-colored brick residential slab by Beyer Blinder Belle, with a Target and the East Coast’s largest Trader Joe’s at its base along with a nice new pocket park designed by West 8, the Dutch firm that landscaped Governors Island, just to the north. Dattner Architects designed the 14-story, 100 percent affordable Frances Goldin Senior Apartments, around the corner, which includes a new medical center.

And SHoP conceived the twisty 14-story mixed-income condo project called 242 Broome, whose shimmery facade in anodized aluminum changes color with the shifting light, picking up on the sepias of nearby brick buildings, the blue of the sky. Architecturally the most memorable design, 242 leans over the sidewalk to the west and steps out toward the street-wall on the south, bonding on the north like a conjoined twin with a new home (opening in January, fingers crossed) for the International Center of Photography, whose entrance is a transparent glass curtain wall framed like an old Polaroid snapshot.

This stretch of the Lower East Side used to be called the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area. During the 1950s, the city’s powerful planning czar, Robert Moses, decided to bulldoze dozens of old tenements. These were buildings where, years before, Jewish and Italian immigrants settled, replaced by African-Americans and Latinos. Through the early 1970s, the demolitions displaced some 1,800 poor and working-class families, most of them Puerto Rican, turning homes into vacant lots.

The city promised to replace the lots with new low-income dwellings. But for years Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, in cahoots with William E. Rapfogel, who ran the taxpayer-financed Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, conspired to thwart redevelopment proposals floated by local housing advocates because they threatened to undo Mr. Silver’s Jewish voting base.

Mayor after mayor failed to make headway. Ultimately, Mr. Silver was convicted on corruption charges, Mr. Rapfogel went to prison for a kickback scheme and a path cleared for Essex Crossing, which finally makes good on the city’s half-century-old promise. Among its provisions: The project sets aside subsidized apartments for tenants evicted all those years ago who now want to return. Most have moved away or no longer qualify for aid or have died. But nearly 30 former residents have come back.

In all, Essex Crossing creates 1,079 new apartments, more than half permanently designated for low- and middle-income tenants, a percentage much higher than the city’s inclusionary zoning rules require. Apartments selling for millions now mix with ones for families of two earning as little as $15,000 a year, and some for those earning zero.

To mollify skeptics, developers front-loaded community benefits like a new senior center, new quarters for the Chinese-American Planning Council, which offers early childhood education programs, and for the Lower East Side’s Henry Street Settlement to do work force development. A stylish new cafe called the GrandLo opened last year, operated by the century-old Grand Street Settlement as a nonprofit job training site for local at-risk youth.

In concert with the local school district, Essex Crossing started after school classes that introduce teens to the ins and outs of the construction and development businesses. Project EATS manages the organic farm, which serves up free food and wellness instruction to seniors, families and children.

Most conspicuously, the project gives Essex Market a sprawling new home. The storied Lower East Side fixture evolved from a mess of open-air pushcarts at the turn of the 20th century selling pickles, herring and hats. In 1940, Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia moved the market indoors, to what became its famous but increasingly dingy, squalid quarters north of Delancey. Designed by SHoP on the ground floor of the Essex, the sleek new Essex Market opened this spring at more than double the size of the old market. It’s a spectacle of bespoke stalls, with subsidized rents for legacy vendors. Exploiting the sloped contour of the movie theater seating above, the market gets loads of light, pouring in through soaring windows revealed by the angled, white, sculptured ceiling, which yields space for mezzanine-level seating and a sunny, glassed-in teaching kitchen.

Come Thanksgiving, ribbons will be cut on the inaugural tranche of vendors at the Market Line, in the basement of the Essex. Three-quarters of the vendors are immigrant, minority or women-owned businesses, half from the Lower East Side. They include local favorites like the Pickle Guys, Nom Wah, Ends Meat, Veselka and Essex Pearl.

Rents for the market’s lower-margin businesses will be supported by its high-margin ones, akin to the way mixed-income housing works. When built out, the Market Line will eventually host homegrown art and clothes merchants, a music space and will stretch three blocks underground all the way from Essex to Clinton Streets.

I checked out the construction site not long ago. The décor is New York after a rain at night: all shiny black brick and polished concrete beneath an unfinished ceiling. Sunlight filters through street-level windows at the Delancey Street entrance and via the wide, open staircase that spills down from the Essex Market. The brick and concrete will disappear behind signage and the hordes of shoppers and noshers expected to come, hunting down bauernwurst from Schaller & Weber, the old-time Yorkville butcher, and alcapurrias from a Puerto Rican newcomer called Que Chevere, part of whose profits, customers are told, will benefit Autism Speaks.

The project’s developers expect to rake in plenty of cash from all the market-rate condos, apartment rentals and commercial office and retail spaces. Rising real estate values on the Lower East Side have accelerated neighborhood gentrification but also helped subsidize the project’s abundance of affordable housing and community services.

I was curious to learn that Mayor Bill de Blasio hasn’t yet showed up for any of the official openings at Essex Crossing. Its profitability makes a good argument for demanding more in the way of public benefits from other large-scale private developments.

At the same time, the project is a reminder that what can seem like kneejerk public resistance to new developments, even ones that promise affordable housing, can’t simply be chalked up to NIMBYism. If residents don’t know how, or whether, a project fits into some shared, participatory, longer-term vision for a neighborhood, then the most modest new condo tower can become a call to the barricades.

Essex Crossing earned its community buy-in by delivering on promised benefits upfront. That’s still no substitute for city planning.

But it points toward a better way.

The farm will hawk fresh produce including carrots, radishes, and arugula.

A new farm, now among the largest in the borough, launched Wednesday at the Essex Crossing megaproject in the Lower East Side.

Located on the sixth floor of The Essex at 125 Essex Street, the quarter-acre farm will be run by Project EATS—a nonprofit that operates farms across the city—and will grow organic carrots, radishes, beets, turnips, and baby greens, such as kale, mustards, and arugula.

“We’re looking forward to welcoming the LES community to the farm and providing fresh produce for the neighborhood in the Market Line,” said Debbie Kenyon, vice chair and senior partner at L+M Development Partners, in a statement.

Produce from the urban grange will be sold at the Farmacy, a stand at the megadevelopment’s upcoming Market Line, which will run below Essex Street Market. Until then, the Farmacy will temporarily sell the fresh veggies at a recently opened public park that was similarly developed by Essex Crossing’s development team, Delancey Street Associates (a collaboration between L+M Development Partners, BFC Partners, Taconic, Prusik Group, and the Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group).

That stand will be open for business on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m until the Market Line stall is up and running.

The farm will also feature programming for public schools on the importance of nutritious food and will offer free Saturday breakfast for seniors living in the neighborhood. Healthy lifestyle workshops, neighborhood forums, and community dinners are also in the works.

Opportunities for workforce development are another component of the project, as Project Eats will train and employ students from Seward Park High School to work at the farm and the Farmacy.

Just over a month ago, Essex Crossing debuted its 15,000-square-foot park, and earlier that month, the new version of Essex Street Market opened its doors to much fanfare.