This Harlem site on 125th Street between Park and Madison avenues is being developed by Durst.Steve Cuozzo
Most of West 125th Street is booming, but the MTA has thrown a curveball into the historic Harlem corridor’s less advanced eastern end — the planned Second Avenue subway extension that will turn west from the avenue and run to a new station between Park and Lexington avenues.
The Durst Organization and Extell spent hundreds of millions to buy three huge development sites on the south side of East 125th Street between Third and Madison avenues. Neither company has announced plans for them. Ongoing talks with the MTA over subway construction can only complicate — and likely delay — them further.
The three sites stand astride the proposed subway right-of-way. The MTA has been meeting with representatives for Douglas Durst and Extell chief Gary Barnett to discuss various scenarios involving their properties should the transit project proceed.
Durst and Barnett are developers who have always adopted the long view, sometimes taking decades to get projects off the ground — but 125th Street may test even their patience.
Durst bought 1800 Park Ave. (on 125th Street between Park and Madison avenues) in 2016 for $91 million and a much smaller site at 1815 Park Ave. (on 125th Street between Lexington and Park Avenues) in 2017 for $20 million. Sources said the latter assemblage is not yet complete. The sites, now vacant lots, are immediately west and east respectively of the elevated Metro-North railway station.
Barnett paid $70 million for the whole south blockfront, including an old Pathmark supermarket, between Third and Lexington avenues in 2014.
Plans to extend the Q line north of East 96th Street — officially the Second Avenue Subway’s Phase II — seemed to be going nowhere. But the MTA took it off the back burner when the Federal Transit Administration late last year signed off on an environmental impact assessment and found “no significant impact.”
The line’s completed first section runs from Lexington Avenue and East 63rd Street to Second Avenue and East 96th Street. Phase II will extend it north with stops at East 106th and 116th streets on the avenue and a last stop on 125th between Lexington and Park avenues.
The developers say they’ve long been aware of the subway issues. Both Durst and Extell characterized discussions with the MTA as collegial and constructive.
Even so, their plans can only be made more challenging by the MTA’s needs — as anyone who remembers the havoc that construction of the Q line’s first phase beneath Second Avenue can confirm.
The 125th Street station will be especially complex because the MTA plans to link it to the Lexington Avenue line’s 125th Street station where the 4, 5 and 6 trains stop.
The MTA’s Final Environmental Impact Statement for the subway project, released in July 2018, seems to go beyond city zoning requirements for developers’ cooperation with the agency, which is a main reason for the ongoing talks, sources told The Post.
Zoning for the “special transit land use district” states that a “transit easement shall be provided” at the new stations to accommodate and facilitate construction. It says the MTA will consult with property owners and the City Planning Commission to agree on the scope of the easements, which allow the MTA to perform underground work on designated portions of the privately owned sites for a specified time period.
But the MTA’s environmental statement additionally lists “potential property acquisitions” beyond the easement locations at Park and Lexington avenue corners.
Among them: block 1749, lot 33, which sits in the middle of Durst’s 1800 Park Ave. site, and block 1773, lot 20, which comprises about half of Extell’s entire site.
“Nobody knows how complicated or big the subway construction will be,” said a Harlem real estate source. “It isn’t just the station — it’s also ventilation units and staging facilities. Remember those things that looked like ships in the middle of Second Avenue for three years?”
While 125th Street business and real estate sources said the MTA wouldn’t try to seize parts of the properties through eminent domain, the subway proposal’s many uncertainties make it unlikely the developers will be able to kickstart their projects soon.
For one thing, the subway job still requires federal funds. The MTA has $1.25 billion in its capital budget; the total project will cost $5 billion to $6 billion.
Durst spokesman Jordan Barowitz said the company had a “routine meeting” with the MTA “in the last few weeks regarding an easement for our site.” He said the first step was for the MTA to decide whether it needed the easement and if it does, to negotiate that easement.
Barowitz said of “potential property acquisitions” in the MTA document, “That’s nothing new” and the MTV had “sent us that letter in May of 2018.”
An Extell spokesperson said, “The firm is working with the MTA on mutually satisfactory plans for the site that provide for new buildings and the Second Avenue subway extension.”
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