Mercedes owners will soon have a reason to love leaving their cars for service—that is if they own a unit upstairs. There’s a Chrysler Building, a General Motors Building, and now the Mercedes House, a soon-to-be apartment complex at 53rd Street and 11th Avenue in Clinton, across the street from De Witt Clinton Park.
Two Trees Management is developing a 30-story building to house a Mercedes showroom and service center on the bottom floors, police horse stables, and 850 units to be leased and purchased. According The New York Times, David C. Walentas, the founder Two Trees, explained why he chucked the original name, Clinton Park by saying, “People are going to call it Mercedes House no matter what we call it, so why not just call it that?”
The $550 million rental and condominium project will be constructed in two separate phases. The first is slated to be completed in May when auto sales should begin. Two hundred and fifty rental units, ranging from 460-square-foot studios to 1,000-square-foot two-bedrooms, boasting oak floors, 10-foot ceilings, washers and dryers, and some with terraces will also become available at that time.
The goal, Mr. Walentas said, was to afford westward views for as many units as possible, since views to the east would be stunted by a looming Verizon switching tower. West-facing windows will overlook Clinton Park, with views of the Hudson River.
Rents will range from about $2,800 a month, for studios, to $5,900 a month for two-bedrooms. Two Trees is offering a free month’s rent as an incentive to compensate for the fact that the building is still under construction. According to Mr. Walentas by mid-April, after only a week of promotion, 18 units had leased. The second phase, which will begin this summer, will add an additional 600 units to the site. Of those, 40 will be rentals and 200 condos.
The impressive outdoor amenities will offer plenty of green space, an amphitheater, community garden, a large circular pool, surrounded by wooden decks and landscaping, and an whimsical stair-step effect owing to the large number of setbacks, so pronounced that much of the roof line of the building, which has been designed by TEN Arquitectos, resembles an ethereal staircase.
As per the deal hashed out with the city, Mercedes House design will embrace a different kind of horse power with on-site stables for 22 police mounts, since their previous home at Pier 76 is being turned into an extension for Hudson River Park.
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