http://www.observer.com/2011/real-estate/rough-trade
Rough Trade: An Appraisal of the Diamond District Pre-Gem Tower
By Emily Geminder
February 9, 2011
Quote:
About 90 percent of all diamonds that enter the U.S. pass through New York's diamond district, though you'd never know it walking down West 47th Street, a warren of grimy aluminum and puffy-coated hawkers, the claustrophobic energy of deal-making, all of it crammed like carbon atoms into a one-block expanse.
But to Gary Barnett, diamond merchant-turned-real estate tycoon, the decidedly unglittery street is just waiting to be buffed to the high sheen of a superluxury trading center. Though his 34-story International Gem Tower has been slow in getting off the ground, Mr. Barnett is vowing that, in the coming year, its 11,000 tons of structural steel will finally go vertical.
Like many of the district's early founders who fled Europe in the 1940s, Mr. Barnett emerged on 47th Street in the 1990s by way of Antwerp's famed diamond trade. But as a developer, he's found himself at odds with many of the street's jewelers, setters, cutters, and polishers, who fear that the new tower, heavily subsidized by municipal tax breaks, will rupture their industry's crystalline equilibrium.
The International Gem Tower was recently declared a foreign trade zone by the federal government, and the state and the city have put forth $49.6 million in tax breaks tied to drawing new businesses—necessary, Mayor Bloomberg says, to make New York competitive with the global gem markets of Shanghai, Dubai and Las Vegas.
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http://www.observer.com/2011/real-es...ow/rough-trade
580 Fifth Avenue
The World Diamond Tower is home to 300 diamond-related tenants, including the Diamond Dealers Club, which renovated the building in the 1980s. Founded in 1931, the club maintains its own synagogue as well as bylaws informed by generations-old traditions. For instance: "Any oral offer is binding among dealers, when agreement is expressed by the words ‘Mazel and Broche’ or any other words of accord."
2 West 46th Street
Crime is hardly a novel occurrence in the diamond district, but residents still talk about the men who donned fake beards and Hasidic garb in 2008 to loot the 46th Street storefront’s wares. When the police played back the store’s surveillance tapes, they discovered that the two shop owners, Atul Shah and Mahaveer Kankariya, had emptied the store and hired the men themselves.
4 West 47th Street
In the last two decades, the number of diamond cutters has declined from 3,000 to about 300. Technology and Internet sales have also hastened the shift from hand-engraving to digital. In the dense arcades of 4 West 47th Street, Eugene Shulimovich, a fourth-generation Ukrainian engraver, is among the few still encoding messages, initials and designs by hand.
20 West 47th Street
As early as 1840, Maiden Lane was known as the city’s hub for diamonds and precious stones. But as financial firms, who could afford to pay more per square foot, sopped up more and more downtown real estate, the diamond dealers were forced northward. A real estate broker named Fenimore C. Goode saw an opportunity, positing his new building on 47th Street as the future home of the diamond trade. Two years later, property values on the street had doubled, and The Real Estate Record and Guide declared it "the new Maiden Lane."
29 West 47th Street
Though the aluminum bands across its façade have faded to a grimy monotone, when it was erected in 1931, the Bond Building was several shades of brilliant yellow fanning out in deco formation. "A bird of magnificent plumage," said The Real Estate Record and Guide.
44 West 47th Street
The $700 million, 748,000-square-foot International Gem Tower will come equipped with a maximum-security vault, underground parking, a private club, and a museum.
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