Jeffrey Katz wants people to live in Times Square.

“It’s the world’s most famous commercial neighborhood, and now we’re making it the world’s most coveted residential address,” the CEO and principal owner of Sherwood Equities, a privately held real estate development company, said yesterday.

Mr. Katz is building a 26-story, glasssheathed residential tower at 1600 Broadway and West 48th Street. Scheduled to open in a few months, it will feature 136 luxury condominium apartments, ranging from studios to two-bedroom units.

So who’s buying?

Mr. Katz was understandably reticent about giving out the names.

“Who wants to live in Times Square? The world wants to live in Times Square,” Mr. Katz said. “Times Square is probably held in higher regard around the world than in New York. But I was surprised how quickly interest rose in the apartments.

“Let’s just say some of these people work in the Times Square area and live in the suburbs, but want a pied a terre,” he said. “Or they are wealthy individuals from around America and elsewhere – from Dubai, among other places.”

The apartments are being sold for between $800,000 and $3 million, and Mr. Katz says only a few are still available.

And how did Mr. Katz hit on the idea of raising a residential complex amidst electronic billboards, hotels, stores, and office buildings?

Well, he already owned or managed quite a few of these properties.

For example, Mr. Katz owns 2 Times Square, site of Marriott’s Renaissance Hotel. He is a managing partner of 1 Times Square, where the lighted ball descends every New Year’s Eve (Jamestown 18, LP, owns the 25-story building).

Lighted signs for Budweiser, Coca-Cola, HSBC, Pontiac, Prudential Insurance, Samsung, TDK, and Yahoo, among others, are displayed by Mr. Katz all around Times Square.

“There wasn’t any epiphany – any ‘Aha!’ moment,” Mr. Katz said. “I’d been toying for some time with the idea of doing something residential. I was always confident that a five-star luxury residence in the area would fly. I started to connect the dots between a very hot residential market and the possibility of building a luxury complex in Times Square. Then the opportunity to create such a building came along.”

To implement his plan at the site of the 10-story Studebaker Brothers building, constructed in 1902, Mr. Katz needed $100 million. He went to Heleba Bank, which had been founded in Germany in 1832 and had been involved in real estate development in America earlier.

With his own development record dating back more than three decades, Mr. Katz had few problems getting credit.

His involvement with Times Square has encompassed at least two of those decades.Mr.Katz was among the earliest developers who, starting in 1985, invested in the neighborhood. He worked with several partners to reinvigorate Duffy Square. He supported the Times Square Alliance in an effort to attract more conventional and high-profile businesses.

Mr. Katz learned about the value of such civic engagement from the most influential figure in his life, his father, Ira Katz.

The elder Katz founded Sherwood Equities when his Bronx-born son was still quite young. Jeffrey was encouraged by his father to lend a hand during holidays, while he earned an economics degree at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. After he’d obtained an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in real estate finance, Mr. Katz worked at a construction company in Manhattan, and then formally joined his father’s business.

“There was no question that I would go into real estate,” he said. “After all, I had apprenticed with someone better than Donald Trump – my own father,” Mr. Katz said. “And my mother, Elaine, was also a role model about dealing with people.”

His father highlighted a prerequisite for doing good business.

“My father taught me that being totally honest is an absolute prerequisite,” Mr. Katz said.”He taught me that if you aren’t straightforward, people pick up on it immediately. But being straightforward and honest in business is one of the most difficult things because there’s no formula for it.”

His internal mechanism told him to disregard those who warned that a residential project in Times Square would never succeed.

“They said, ‘You’re crazy!’ ” Mr. Katz said.”They said that a residential building would simply not fit into Times Square’s traditionally garish design.”

Mr. Katz knew it wasn’t the garishness but the energy that was a significant element in drawing tourists to the area; last year, a record 41 million tourists came to New York, and virtually all of them coursed through Times Square, long the no. 1 tourist attraction of the city.

Mr. Katz also knew that although Times Square was zoned for commercial use, there was nothing in the statutes that prevented a developer from constructing a residential complex.

“There are multiple projects in other neighborhoods,” he said. “But Times Square had never been marketed for residential purposes.”

The absence of such marketing was due primarily to Times Square’s longstanding, and deserving, reputation as a cauldron of crime, pornography, and prostitution.

With the clean-up that began in 1985, however, physical conditions had changed.

“I felt confident enough to approach an architect,” Mr. Katz said.

The architect was Jorge Szendiuch of Einhorn Yafee Prescot. Mr. Katz subsequently asked Peter Claman of Schuman Lichtenstein Claman Efron to create the building plans.

The interiors will feature 10-foot-high ceilings, and floor-to-ceiling glass.

Mr. Katz also needed to integrate signage – a zoning requirement in Times Square – into the design in such a manner that it would be invisible to residents. And he needed to block space for retail purposes.

The 290-foot-high building will have a two-story retail base with a setback tower that’s top five floors are angled outward. The building will also have a ninestory advertising sign in the middle of its southern facade; it has been taken by an international beverage company.

As he watches his project rise these days with his wife, Beth, a teacher, Mr. Katz often thinks about what he calls “my personal history with New York.”

“I feel very connected to the city because both my grandfathers were born here,” he said. “One of them had a goat farm in Harlem. The other one’s first job was in the Flatiron building.”

“There’s one more thing that my father taught me – always be on the lookout for the next idea, the next big thing as long as you feel sure-footed about it,” he said. “So my next project will be that next big thing.”

And that would be what?

Mr. Katz wasn’t about to give that away.