The Skids? Not Hardly

A century later, the speculators are back, and over the past few years the Bowery has undergone another transformation, one that in some ways recalls its heyday even as it risks erasing the markers of its past.

Where flophouses and derelict buildings once stood, luxury condominiums with prices of more than $2,000 per square foot are popping up. Empty lots, gas stations and family businesses have been swept away. Fancy hotels now charge upward of $400 a night for the privilege of crashing on the same Bowery where $4.50 bought a bed for the down and out. Luxury rental apartments — where one-bedrooms start around $4,000 a month — have replaced John McGurk’s long closed but not forgotten watering hole.

“Historically, what happens in New York City has almost always been reflected on the Bowery,” said Eric Ferrara, the director of the Lower East Side History Project and the author of “The Bowery: A History of Grit, Graft and Grandeur.” 

“So in this age of high-rise condos and hotels, gourmet cupcakes and chichi boutiques, it is not surprising that the Bowery would be vulnerable to gentrification.”

The Bowery cuts through several different neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan, from Chinatown on the south to NoHo and the East Village in the north. Until recently, zoning restrictions made residential development in the area difficult. But as the Bloomberg administration pushed to loosen zoning laws across the city, construction sprouted up. And because the Bowery is largely unprotected by landmark restrictions, the new and proposed construction has come in all shapes and sizes.

The new Bowery is defined by apartment prices approaching those in Manhattan’s most expensive neighborhoods. Just off the Bowery, at 48 Bond Street, a 5,000-square-foot penthouse with an additional 1,100 square feet of outdoor space is listed for $15.8 million. Last month, another penthouse on the strip sold for more than $13 million. There are now half a dozen condos on the Bowery on the market for over $3 million.

New Yorkers tend to mark the demise of neighborhoods by their own personal calendars, choosing to define the feel and texture of a place by how it fit into a formative period of their lives. For some, the old Bowery died the day the music stopped at CBGB, the punk haven at 315 Bowery that was replaced by a John Varvatos boutique selling $200 T-shirts. For others, it was when the Bowery got its own scent, Nouveau Bowery, $150 for less than two ounces at the perfumery Bond No. 9, just off the avenue.

For many developers, the turning point came with the success of Avalon Bowery Place, a nine-story luxury rental building at the northeast corner of Bowery and Houston. Studios there start at $2,850 a month.  The Avalon opened in 2008, on the heels of Whole Foods, on the south side of Houston.

Even before these large-scale projects were built, developers were pushing into the area. 

Kenneth S. Horn, the president of Alchemy properties, said that when he decided to build luxury condos on the Bowery at 57 Bond Street in 2003, CBGB still had lines outside on Friday nights, and fancy restaurants like Keith McNally’s upscale pizza joint Pulino’s and Daniel Boulud’s DBGB were not even in the planning stages. 

“When we did the building,” he said, “we knew it was new territory.”  

The calculation for developers pushing into a fringe area, with few properties to help guide pricing and gauge risk, is not exact.

Mr. Horn said he believed that the Bowery was on the cusp of change because it was a natural place for people to migrate as they were priced out of neighborhoods like the West Village and SoHo. “For us, when we were looking at the site,” he said, “we believed that as long as we were north of Bleecker, we were going to be O.K.”

His team had looked at other sites on the Bowery, including the Salvation Army building just a few blocks away, but thought it too far south. When he finished the condo 57 Bond Street, on the southwest corner of the Bowery, in 2003, the starting price for a unit was $1.3 million.

“One young lady who bought in our building, her father grew up on the Lower East Side,” he said. “I remember him saying to me: ‘I spent my whole life trying to get off the Bowery. And now all she wants to do is get on it.’ ”

Because of the untested nature of the neighborhood back then, Mr. Horn set his prices about 20 percent lower than new condos farther west on Bond Street, asking about $1,000 per square foot.

The 12 apartments sold out quickly, and in recent years, resales in the building have gone for 60 to 70 percent more than the original buyers paid.