Sky-high rents and astronomical sale prices promise to imposed a collective misery on low- and
middle-income New Yorkers for years to come. While the pandemic softened values to
appreciable lows for several months last year, the market is now undergoing an about-face as
plummeting inventory and escalating prices have taken hold. Moreso, a look at the near-empty
pipeline of new construction filings shows there will be little to relieve the deeper housing
crunch to come.
One of the few rental buildings to open in lower Manhattan in recent years is 111 Varick
Street — a tall, dark, and handsome mid-rise whose two-tiered design is articulated by a
sculptural skin of pre-cast concrete and large gridded windows. The corner building, located at
the nexus of Hudson Square, SoHo, and Tribeca was designed by S9 Architecture, best known
for interventions that pay homage to New York’s industrial past. Their past work includes the
adaptive reuse of DUMBO’s Empire Stores, Dock 72, and the new Wegman’s market in the
Brooklyn Navy Yard.
