Two new planned condominium towers suggest developers seem to be warming to Second Avenue on the Upper East Side — long viewed as a distant cousin to nearby Park and Fifth avenues, if even related at all — as a spot for luxury residential apartments.

The developers of the two buildings, both glass towers rising 18 and 30 stories, are trying to capture some of the Westchester crowd — families with pockets that are deep but not bottomless, and want addresses less expensive than those closer to Central Park. The 30-story tower, to be built by the World-Wide Group by late 2008 on the corner of Second Avenue and 74th Street, is planning prices between $2.5 million and $7 million for units of up to five bedrooms. The building’s 87 units tend toward the spacious — three-bedrooms are just shy of 2,000 square feet, while the five-bedroom units are planned to be 3,400 square feet in size.

“We believe this will be a value buy for New York families,” an executive vice president at World-Wide, David Lowenfeld, said.

Families are the target audience, Mr. Lowenfeld said, as he believes there is a pent-up demand for this price range on the Upper East Side. In addition to the generous square footage of the apartments, the building would contain amenities such as a “cruising wall,” a miniature climbing wall located inside of a 2,400 square foot space aimed at children of various ages. The 18-story building, currently a skeleton of concrete pillars on the southeast corner of Second Ave and 79th Street, is planning 40 units to be priced between $1.4 million and $4.5 million. Few details have been released about that building, being built by developer Meyer Chetrit, will also cater to the family crowd, a senior associate with the Corcoran Group, the marketer for the building, Beth Benalloul, said.

“There’s definitely a need for these high end buildings on the Upper East Side — I can tell you that,” Ms. Benalloul said.

Second Avenue has hardly been a stranger to high-rises over the years – numerous residential towers more than 30 stories line the street near the two planned buildings – though the move to the higher-end residential comes as in part as a result of rising land prices and a lack of developable sites further towards Central Park.

Development on the Upper East Side is being squeezed to the east for reasons of availability, the developer of the 30-story tower, Mr. Lowenfeld said. Property on Park Avenue rarely comes up for sale, he said, let alone the multiple adjacent lots that developers traditionally need in order to piece together space for a new high-rise. In addition, Second Avenue, unlike much of the East Side closer to Central Park, is not part of a historic district, so new construction there does not have to win the approval of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The recent interest in Second Avenue follows two recent projects by Mr. Lowenfeld further south on the avenue. On 57th Street, World-Wide is planning to build a 59-story tower on top of a school, and on Second Avenue and 55th Street, the company built a 32-story condo tower.

While a spike in interest along Second Avenue coincides with an increase in action from the MTA related to building a Second Avenue subway line, analysts say there has been no noticeable hike in values in anticipation of the line. “We’ll believe it when we see it,” a real estate appraiser, Ronald Gold, said. “We’ve been talking about it for 30 years.”

Subway or no subway, Second Avenue in the Upper East Side has become far more desirable in recent years, Mr. Gold said.

“Before 1998, it was certainly a second-class neighborhood,” he said. “There was a huge dividing line on the west side (of Second Avenue), primarily because of access to the Lexington avenue subway line.

“Where is it now, because of this feeding frenzy over the last six years, everything’s up for grabs.” The neighborhood is already known as one of the city’s most desirable for families, with a concentration of private and public schools and family-oriented retail such as children’s clothing stores. Manhattan’s Community District 8 had one of the greatest increases in the population of families with children between 1990 and 2000 in the borough, increasing 5.5%, according to Census data. The district, which runs from 59th Street to 96th Street, is also the second most affluent in the city, with an average median household income of more than $74,000 in 1999. Much of that wealth is concentrated closer to the park, between Fifth and Lexington Avenues, although there are few bargains east of Lexington, where new condo developments are crowding out former walk-up rental apartment buildings.

“It’s getting unaffordable for the average person,” a resident of the Upper East Side for six years who runs a Pilates exercise studio, Shara Arntosky, said. “These luxury buildings are going up and these cute little four-stories are coming down.”