The Langston Brings Accessible Luxury to Harlem

Donaldine Temple is moving back to Harlem, into an apartment just a few blocks away from her childhood home. But while the neighborhood may be familiar, her new trappings are not. The 33-year-old corporate lawyer is about to close on a three-bedroom luxury condominium in a new 10-story building, the Langston.“I feel like I’m coming home,” Ms. Temple said. “I get my hair done here. My favorite restaurants are here.”But amidst the hot spots of Ms. Temple’s old stomping ground is a new symbol of accessible luxury. Her future home is one of a mix of two- and three-bedroom apartments — plus 16 penthouses — on the corner of 145th street and Bradhurst Avenue, next to Jackie Robinson Park. 120 of the building’s 180 units have prices restricted to middle-income buyers, and all owners benefit from city-sponsored tax reductions. The in-house gym and the parking garage are open to all.“It’s definitely the top end for this area,” the Langston’s lead sales agent, Sid Welan of Halstead Properties, said.And while the building ‘s inhouse gym and parking garage didn’t hurt its appeal, Ms. Temple was drawn to another attribute.“A lot of the buildings I looked at were promoting themselves as a community in themselves,” she said. ” What I like about the Langston is that it’s part of the larger community.”The building’s developer, David Pickett, said the land and tax discounts he received from the city in exchange for agreeing to reserve some of the units for middle-income buyers helped keep the building’s prices low. Three-bedrooms like Ms. Temple’s have sold for around $800,000. The Langston’s cheapest three-bedroom is listed for $720,000, a figure well below Manhattan’s three-bedroom average price of $4.5 million. All the penthouses are currently listed for less than $1million.But price per square foot in the building, however, hovers around the average Manhattan rate. The Langston’s three-bedrooms range from around 1,080 square feet of indoor space to around 1,200. Some of the units have sold for around $650 per square foot, while others are on the market for $675 or even $700.“Two to three years ago in Harlem things were trading around $450 per square foot,” an associate at Massey Knakal Realty Services, Mike Tortorici, said. “There’s been a jump.”Mr. Tortorici said buildings with elevators now start at around $550 per square foot and can sell for as much as $675 per square foot in Harlem.The Langston, named after Langston Hughes, the Harlem Renaissance-era poet, is on the edge of a development boom that has been anchored around 125th Street, and it may soon have company.Mr. Welan counted five new apartment buildings he noticed rising in the area since he first arrived in the neighborhood four years ago, when the rezoning of Frederick Douglass Boulevard doubled the amount of square feet developers could build relative to the size of a building’s footprint. In all, zoning changes have primed 44 blocks in the neighborhood for more development.“It’s definitely an emerging market,” Mr. Tortorici said, “but the way prices have been holding elsewhere, I don’t see why it wouldn’t do nearly as well as the others.”To Ms. Temple, though, the Langston isn’t on the edge of anything. It’s right in the middle of a life she’s led since childhood.

The Langston Brings Accessible Luxury to Harlem

The Langston Brings Accessible Luxury to Harlem

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