Avalon Morningside Park

All Avalons are overpriced.

But its most appaling in frickin HARLEM. Not just because they are charging UWS rents for above 110th, but because Harlem has so many just as nice brand new condos so near for rent for so much less.

So anyone go by here, ever? This is the only Avalon bldg in NYC that never ever posts prices on the website. All the rest do, whether they go up or down. I wonder how much they are going for thanks.

It's not in Harlem.

Quibble. Its on the north side of 110th. They ADVERTISE "Upper Westside Living", and its clearly not the UWS on the north side of 110th. While its JUST in Morningside, it looks feels and smells more like Harlem than do large swaths of FDB or Hamilton Heights. And they do more often than not lump MH in with Harlem in real estate reports, websites, etc. So its a bit like saying something on the west side of third at 94th is technically Carnegie Hill, not Yorkville. In either event its not 5th Avenue.

Back to my question. Anyone seen the place.

I have seen the apartments and they are very nice. However, they are over-priced and need to go down in price. Give it a few more months and there should be some more price cuts.

I checked it out too before deciding on the Kalahari, which, as was said, is a lot cheaper. Many of the apts are tiny, but some are really sweet. I left thinking, if only they were condos. It's a much nicer neighborhood than Kalahari. There are trees! And there's the Cathedral, which leases the land to Avalon--and their school gets good marks. I'm on the mailing list still and recently got some email saying they had cut prices. I don't remember how much, but they weren't anything to write home about. Instead of big cuts, they seem to be offering 1 or 2 months free, and free use of fitness center, rec room, etc.

anyone living here now?

I live in Harlem near Morningside Park. I don't see why the Avalon location should be considered Harlem. It is above Morningside Park, not below. It is around the corner from Columbia University. It is next to Manhattan Valley, a heavily Dominican area. Maybe not UWS, but not Harlem either.

I have not been in Avalon Morningside- but I have been in several Avalon's in the suburbs- all very nice, and all extremely overpriced.

This property is most certainly Harlem- argue it all you want-but Harlem on the West Side starts at 110th Street. It's also part of Community Board 9 (which includes Morningside Heights, West Harlem, Manhattanville and Hamilton Heights), 26th Police Precinct, in 10025 zip code- all pointing that this is certainly Harlem.

Thats not harlem its morningside heights. Unless you're lumping all the diferent sections of harlem together which doesn't work well for a real estate discussion. There's a huge diference between columbia and central harlem.

I'm in the middle on this one - I don't consider Morningside Heights or Manhattanvie Harlem, although there is no arguing that technically it is a neighborhood within Harlem. But there is also no arguing that Manhattanville and Mornginside Heights are priced significantly above Central Harlem, so I agree with mmarquez that it doesn't work from a real estate perpsective.

This feels to me more like Manhattanville or Harlem than Morningside Heights and is not as nice as the blocks around Columbia, even though it's on the Columbia side of the park At any rate, it's overpriced.

I'm not sure I understand how the Kalahari, a mid-rise 12-story building with some amenities, is comparable to Avalon Morningside, a higher-rise 20-story building with more amenities (which renters admittedly get charged for).

Seems like two different experiences to me.

BTW, I have placed a client in Avalon Morningside, and the park views from the higher floors are incredible.

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

sorry - was tired this a.m. I meant to say "Manhattan Valley" not "Manhattanville."

Of course you need to separate out the neighborhood sections of Harlem for a real estate discussion. East Harlem is clearly different pricing than Morningside Heights. That doesn't mean that Morningside Heights is not a section of Harlem. It may feel more like an extension of the Upper West Side than Harlem...but it is indeed Harlem.
It doesn't matter whether someone considers a section Harlem- the address does it for you . If your Police precinct, community board, and zip code all point that your in Harlem, then you are indeed part of Harlem (If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it's a duck).

Look, Hudson Heights is still part of Washington Heights...clearly there is a difference in pricing, look and feel between the different sections of the area- but they are still both Washington Heights.

Morningside Heights is not part of Harlem, and it has nothing to do with ethnicity.

Much of it is 10025, an UWS zip. Virtually none of its police precinct is in Harlem. Until the past ten years or so, I never heard anyone even suggest that it's Harlem. That noise came mostly from that obnoxious community agitator, whose name escapes me right now, but she was married to an even more obnoxious community agitator.

If you go back hundreds of years, there was a settlement at the lower end of Manhattan, and any non-native people living anywhere near there were lumped in with it (New Amsterdam) ... and there was a settlement on the East River around 125th St., and anyone living anywhere even remotely near there were lumped in with it (New Haarlem, I believe it was called). I think I once read that it's grazing fields were as far away as present-day West 86th.

Do you consider West 86th to be part of Harlem?

I'll put this in SAT language.

Morngside Heights: Harlem as Tomato: Fruit.

Yes, it's "technically" a fruit, but who really considers it a fruit. If you ordered a fruit salad at a restaurant and got a bunch of tomatoes and cucumbers, you'd be annoyed.

Morningside Heights is "technically" Harlem but in the practical sense it is not. A property on the Columbia side of Morningside Park can cost 1.5-2x what a place on the other side costs. Mind you, I think this gap is shrinking and I do think, without speculating as to what those prices should be, that in 10 years the pricing will be more or less the same (Morngside Heights has Columbia but South Harlem has better access to both UES and UWS, Central Park, subways, and neither has great public schools).

But back to Jason's point - while this area is "technically" Morningside Heights, it feels more like Manhattan Valley or Harlem than say, 114th & Broadway. So I can see calling it Harlem. Jason knows Harlem well and I don't disagree.

kspeak, good analogy, and I say that even though I'm disappointed that you haven't presented yourself for an SE meetup yet.

But "Morningside Heights is "technically" Harlem" ... Bzzzzz ... wrong. Not Harlem, not technically, not actually, no.

Just as Harlem's eastside boundary cuts a zigzaggy path on the east side, so does it on the west side.

Hmmm ....I've seen lots of NYC historians, architects, etc. categorize Morngside Heights as Harlem. Wikipedia does not.

It feels to me more like an extension of the Upper West Side, for sure.

I'll admit I have only attended a handful of community board meetings- but those for Community Board 9- which includes the 4 neighborhoods of Western Harlem...Morningside was included in the meetings that I attended.

Several years back, I met the father of a friend for the first time. He told me he graduated from Columbia Law when I told him I bought in Harlem. He said to me "The section of Harlem where Columbia is located sure has changed...oh, excuse me, I think they now prefer to separate it out to call it Morningside Heights now". So there was an example of someone that called the Columbia area Harlem- and his reference goes back about 30-35 years now. Even if you consider my example unusual- it's not as if no one was referring to Morningside as part of Harlem prior to 10 years ago. While the area Columbia is buying in Manhattanville is not largely residential- you will find many of those residents think of the area as West Harlem- not Manhattanville. Manhattanville has a long history that for the most part is only being widely recognized again in recent years. My point is perceptions may or may not reflect reality. This building reports into a police precinct located on 126th street and a community board that only includes Harlem neighborhoods.

The East Side has East Harlem, the West Side (Manhattan Valley) has the Frederick Douglass public housing project, which may be a massive project, but it is self contained, uniform and reasonably attractive. It also doesn't encompass the entire width of the West Side, but rather a super block between Manhattan Ave and Amsterdam Ave. Structurally, the West Side is superior for mixed income gentrified cohabitation. Columbia University's stewardship of Morningside Heights caused people long ago to not refer to the region as Harlem. The University has the sam plans for Manhattanville. In a generation you will go up the West Side: Lincoln Square, UWS, Bloomindale, Morningside Heights, Manhattanville, Hudson Heights, Washington Heights, Inwood without using the reference Harlem.

And the East Side can keep its Harlem, since it seems to value segregation of economic classes

Don't get me started again on why I don't think Columbia's expansion into Manhattanville is not the game-changer people think. In my opinion, the stretch of South Harlem between madison/5th and morningside park is, as you would say "superior for mixed income gentrified cohabitation" to Manhattanville.

To rehash, though, first, plenty of elite unversities have been in rough neighborhoods. Second, the stretch of Manhattanville Columbia is going to occupy is bordered by a large housing project on one side to the East, and the West Side Highway on the other, not to mention the train tracks that bifurcate Broadway along this stretch, making the area feel visually not very integrated and a little ugly. Third, it's only served by a local train (which is annoying when you're this far up). This means the only place to "go" in terms of retail and free-market housing is North or South - my guess is "South" will happen to a greater extent: because it's already there to some extent (the western borders of morngside park already feel very much like the UWS), because there are more subways, because it's closer to the historic columbia campus (which they aren't ditching), and because it's the first phase of it.

Don't get me wrong - I think over time all of Northern manhattan will continue to improve. I just don't see Columbia U expansion as a game changer.

I never wanted to move to Morningside Heights, but the fact that Columbia University was a major landlord in the area gave me the confidence 21 years ago to buy a new condo in an Economic Development Zone north of W 86th St. (How can you go wrong between Lincoln Center and Columbia University?) The Lincoln Center area has continued to improve. Now, of course there is Time Warner Center and 15 CPW! to the south. Columbia's revitalization of Manhattanville may not make it a neighborhood you want to live in, but it will build confidence in West Side investments further north. Housing projects are not a big deal. Look up and down the West Side. If 15 CPW can be built within the same zip code as Amsterdam Houses then there is hope.

I think there's hope for Manhattanville. It's just the Columbia expansion is not an immediate game-changer. Until the late 1990s Morningside Heights was a terrible neighorhood. West Philly, New Haven, the list goes on ...

And I agree that projects don't kill a neighborhood (although I think a heavy concentration of them drags a neighborhood). I'm just talking about physical space. Cute little stores/restaurants/boutiques physically cannot spring up East or West of the proposed expansion site because there are projects on one side and a highway on the other. Ditto with free market rentals.

PMG brings up an interesting point- that in time the West side of upper Manhattan may not be referenced as Harlem. Time will tell- but it definitely makes you think.

Manhattanville and West Harlem are changing for not one school- but 2...don't forget about the $600 million new science center that City College has already started building. There is also a section of largely vacant warehouses that the city is attempting to rezone- since it's sitting in-between the planned Columbia research/science facilities and the City College Science center. It was my understanding that the city is attempting to create joint relationships sort of like what you see off campus of MIT between the school and private companies- often incubators.

Kspeak has got it right about the whole North/South aspect. As a resident North of the expansion zone, we are seeing the effects...but obviously it's currently not as progressive as you are seeing South of the expansion zone. I have noticed significant diversification of people in the neighborhood. 5 years ago- it was mostly Dominician...now I see Asian, Indian, Black, White, Latino and Mixed. We are seeing new restaurants coming in and better services than 5 years ago. You also have new investors in the last few years come into Hamilton Heights that would not have considered the area previously.

from the wikipedia entry on morningside heights which talks about Carlin's 1973 album:

"Comedian George Carlin grew up on 121st Street. In the comedy piece "White Harlem", which appears on his Occupation: Foole album, he said that younger residents would refer to the neighborhood as "White Harlem." "White Harlem" would likely be considered an intimidating locale by outsiders and give inhabitants thereof greater respect from outsiders, whereas conversely a young person from "Morningside Heights" would have a much greater probability of being abused simply by virtue of living in a locale called "Morningside Heights", which Carlin claims "sounded so faggy".

From shortly after George Carlin's growing-up time, or maybe even during it, Morningside Heights was quite throughly Puerto Rican except for Riverside Drive. Maybe that's white, I don't know. But it shows the shortcomings of defining a neighborhood by its ethnicity, which is such a transient thing.

There was just a NYT piece on "greater Harlem" - and indeed, Morningside Heights is and always has been UNAMBIGUOUSLY part of Harlem. See:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/nyregion/06harlem.html?sq=greater%20harlem&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=all

where the article says: "In greater Harlem, which runs river to river, and from East 96th Street and West 106th Street to West 155th Street"

Its also only rather recently that it became a bit more gentrified than the rest.

All that having been said - I was not comparing it to JUST Kahalari, I was (and am) wondering in general why you would pay 30% more to live two blocks up a hill in a neighborhood that is not any nicer.

My answer is still the same -- stunning views of Central Park.

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

jason, I don't know where you get UNAMBIGUOUSLY from that article, which is (as is so often the case with the NYT these days) flat-out wrong. And of all the various arguments I've heard about Harlem's boundaries, I have never ever heard anyone claim 106th St. on the west side, except the way-back W. 86th St. grazing story. It's completely ridiculous.

I basically concur with the following map, although it's arguable that the boundary on the east side of Morningside Park was originally (post-Revolutionary times) St. Nick's instead. St. Nick's used to be called Harlem Lane (originally an Indian path with one of those kooky Lenape-type names).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Harlem_map2.png

at any rate these are expensive. only the top floors have views.

Hardly an expert on anything north of 34th street let alone 96th, but my understanding of "Harlem" coincides with the map Alan just posted.
When I was in college in the stone age I had a job one summer at Columbia (I didn't attend Columbia--my grades didn't even get me laughed out of the admissions office). Even though I could get the Express train to 96th street and change for the local I was told DON'T DO IT. You could FALL ASLEEP and END UP IN HARLEM which was uttered in tones usually reserved for Russian plots to blow up the earth. One time someone was meeting me for dinner at Columbia, took the wrong train and made the mistake of walking through Morningside Park. Yes, he did get mugged, wallet taken an slightly roughed up. But what bothered him most and was most humiliating was that his attacker was a white guy.

I have only seen one apartment that a friend has been renting. The view from his mid-tier apartment, looking onto the cathedral and its gardens, is beautiful.

lizyank - I would say that the park has changed considerably for the better in the 6 years I've lived in the area. When we first got here it was definitely a lot sketchier, although I don't personally know anyone that was mugged.
I have a friend who went to columbia in the early 00s and I think he's shocked that we live above 125th st.