Institutions Returning To Roosevelt Island For Housing - Hospital Personnel and NYU Faculty for Riverwalk, Student Dormitories For Manhattan Park

Riverwalk Southtown Image from Roosevelt Island 360

Before Roosevelt Island was named for the former President (FDR), it was known as Welfare Island and before that Blackwell's Island. It was then the home to institutions such as prisons, lunatic asylums and smallpox patients.

Institutions are now returning to Roosevelt Island not in the form of prisons and asylums but as housing for Universities and Hospitals. Following the announcement of Columbia University's $69 million purchase of a 127 unit condo in Riverdale, Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) has purchased 96 units at Roosevelt Island's Riverwalk Landing from the Hudson/Related Companies joint venture. According to the NY Post's Between The Bricks column, MSK exercised an option to purchase these units at a total price of $49,510,997. (I can't find the correct link to the article but it is in the September 3 issue page 59. Link now works here). As to what MSK will do with the units, David Kramer of the Hudson Companies writes:

My understanding is that they’ll be holding the units and leasing to their colleagues.

MSK joins NYU as another institutional condo owner at Riverwalk Landing which is also known as Southtown Building #4. Previously NYU purchased 58 condo units in the same building for a purchase price of $43 million that NYU is attempting to re-sell to their faculty members. NYU is hoping that some Greenwich Village living faculty members will leave their current homes for life on Roosevelt Island. The remaining units in the building will remain as rentals.

MSK has increased their holdings on Roosevelt Island since they together with Cornell Medical already own building 1 & 2 and units in Building 3 of the Southtown Riverwalk complex.

Building 1 was sold to Sloan-Kettering, building 2 to Cornell-Weill, and 88 units in building 3 also to Cornell-Weill.

The remaining 142 condos in Building 3 are market rate condos as are all of the units in Building 5 which is still under construction. According to the NY Observer, 35% of the units in building 5 are sold though I think they mean that sales contracts have been signed not that they have actually closed. Also under construction is Building 6 which is planned to be a rental building - no word yet if any more Institutional hospital or university interest in it. There are also plans for three more buildings in the Riverwalk complex but it is not know when or if, construction will begin on them.

Manhattan Park has also become a location for institutional university housing for Marymount College, Rockefeller University and others leading to some unhappiness from non-student tenants. For instance this reader has had enough and writes:

Manhattan Park renters paying full market price should form a tenant's association. The infusion of college kids will be a disaster. Management of course has the right to rent to whomever they wish, but they should have made known that they were turning the buldings into dorms at the time regular tenants were renewing leases.

Here's a Manhattan Park apartment tour including a Sex and the City Shrine.

You Tube video of Manhattan Park Apartment Tour