Handel Architects’ Luxurious ‘Amalfi’ Condo Tower Will Now Be Swanky Senior Living Pads

Here’s a closer look at Handel Architects’ design of a would-have-been condominium tower at 305 East 93rd Street, named The Amalfi. The five-parcel site located at the northeast corner of Second Avenue and East 93rd Street in Yorkville was slated to be developed by Merchants Hospitality until they recently bowed out to a senior living developer, Maplewood.

Handel Architects’ energetic design of staggering double-height windows, deeply set within a concrete frame was planned to rise a sheer 29-stories above Second Avenue. A lower four-story wing along 93rd Street would have been topped by an outdoor swimming pool. The tower’s structural dynamism recalls the firm’s recently finished rental tower, 170 Amsterdam on the Upper West Side, that flaunts a diagrid concrete exoskeleton. While the firm will remain the building’s designers, it is unclear how much of the shown condominium design will be retained. Considering the project will now be re-tinkered for senior living, we’re expecting a little less Amalfi and a bit more Fort Myers.

We can’t tell which Amalfi is on Second Avenue either

Last month, Merchants Hospitality spun off its contracts for the site to Connecticut-based Maplewood Senior Living on behalf of real estate investment trust Omega Healthcare Investors. The $112 million, all-cash transaction involved five sellers. Rather than condos, the team plans on building a roughly 20-story tower of 214 units that they claim will be “the most luxurious senior living facility on the East Coast.”

The proposed $134 million development will replace a string of tenement buildings which, in case you haven’t noticed, are a threatened species in Manhattan. The buildings are relatively easy targets for development once their units are decontrolled/destabilized. And because they are within the mostly height-restricted Upper East Side, developers work to amass ever larger parcels to grow their projects larger horizontally. Demolition of the shabby structures will commence in the middle of 2016 and the development is expected to be completed in early 2018.

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