T&E's Hudson Yards condo bet targets the abandoned middle

T&E Development has paid $33.5 million for a vacant lot at 538-542 West 29th Street, where it plans to build 76 condos at the price point Colliers says most New York builders have left behind. The 9,875-square-foot parcel carries 74,063 square feet of as-of-right floor area, putting the purchase at roughly $452 per buildable foot; PPHE Hotel Group sold the site, with Colliers' New York Capital Markets team arranging the deal for the seller.

The lot sits between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, just north of the West Chelsea Historic District, in what Colliers calls one of the few remaining unconstrained development sites in the submarket. Only one condo project is under construction between West 20th and West 30th Streets, so T&E is building into a market that has had little new supply to test.

Zach Redding, a Colliers managing director, said cost and rate volatility has pushed nearly every new New York project toward the trophy buyer, where sellouts north of $3,000 per foot can absorb unforeseen costs, while the $2,000-to-$2,700 range has been left unserved. That leaves a split market with capital concentrated at the top of the price curve and the middle waiting, which is where T&E's 76 units are aimed.

PWD's coverage of T&E's $33.5 million purchase of the West Chelsea lot flagged the per-foot basis; the new detail is the developer's plan to aim those 76 units at Redding's neglected band. At $452 per buildable foot, T&E has room for construction costs and a sellout in the $2,000-to-$2,700 range without needing trophy prices. The same basis would be cheap for a $3,000-plus chase, which suggests T&E is deliberately not doing that.

It is the right kind of contrarian trade, and it connects to a theme this publication has argued: the construction slowdown is giving existing owners leverage across property types. A rare unconstrained site aimed at the middle of the market is the counter-position, adding supply where the clearing price is most contested. If T&E delivers units in the $2,000-to-$2,700 range, it will have proven there is a crowd beneath the trophy market; if it does not, the $452-a-foot land basis will be the least of its problems.