Posted Jul 23, 2025, 12:08 AM
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New Yorker for life
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Borough of Jersey
Posts: 56,612
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NEW YORK | 100 W 57th | FT | FLOORS
Just keeping an eye on this ongoing saga which looks likely to end on way. Tough situation for the residents.
https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/carnegie...ITtGyHWBBoOO1DGnp3DJ0_dLDoddvDri7A%3D%3D
A 450% Rent Hike Hangs Over One of the Last Affordable Buildings on Billionaires’ Row
Monthly costs at Carnegie House in Midtown are set to skyrocket, thanks to the wealthy real-estate moguls who now own the land beneath the building. It’s ‘basically death,’ one resident says
Photograph by Zack DeZon for WSJ
By Katherine Clarke
July 22, 2025
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Richard Hirsch, 61, likes to joke that he lives on Thousandaires’ Row. For decades he has made his home at Carnegie House, a midcentury brick building on West 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan. From his doorstep, Hirsch can see the ghostly outlines of the gleaming Billionaires’ Row supertalls that tower above Central Park.
Hirsch and his wife, Jill Strauss, paid about $400,000 for a two-bedroom co-op unit at Carnegie House in the 1990s. They have watched in awe over the past decade as developers built skyscrapers around them, homes for the global superrich. The development boom caused property values in their neighborhood to explode, and is now threatening to drive them out of their longtime home.
Like thousands of co-op owners across New York City, the residents of Carnegie House own their apartments, but not the land beneath. This type of arrangement, known as a long-term ground lease, originated in the 1950s to make homeownership accessible to middle-class New Yorkers. Now, ground leases have turned treacherous for many residents as wealthy landowners hike the rent they charge co-ops, looking to capitalize on increasingly valuable land.
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Many residents said they suspect the landowner—a limited liability company tied to real-estate magnates Rubin Schron and David Werner—hopes to drive them out, tear down the building and build a new supertall.
James Yolles, a spokesman for the landowners, denied that they have redevelopment plans.
Residents were aware of the potential rent increase when they bought their homes, he said, and got a better deal on their apartments as a result of the ground-lease structure. “We remain open to good-faith discussions with Carnegie House residents should they wish to approach us,” Yolles said.
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Constructed as a rental building in the 1960s, Carnegie House was converted to co-ops in the late 1970s. At the time, 57th Street wasn’t a luxury thoroughfare; it was populated by thrift stores and souvenir shops. Hirsch recalled the now-defunct diner across the street, where he and his wife used to split diet cream sodas and pastrami sandwiches.
Now, thanks to the construction of the supertalls, apartments on 57th Street routinely trade for tens of millions of dollars. Two blocks north of Carnegie House, an apartment at new condo 220 Central Park South sold for $240 million in 2019, setting a U.S. record.
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....in 2014, the land was purchased for $261 million by an entity led by Werner and Schron’s companies. In marketing materials, real-estate brokerage CBRE said that the site offered “unique future potential to construct a luxury retail, hotel and condominium tower.”
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