An Upper West Side Jewel Goes Condo

The magisterial Belnord was built in 1908, a handsome limestone pile that covers the entire block between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue and 86th and 87th Streets. This “mammoth apartment house,” as the New York Times described it, is on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

Now the building’s 218 rental apartments, many of which face an elegant inner courtyard, are being converted into condominiums by HFZ Capital, which has filed plans with the New York attorney general’s office, the Real Deal reports. With a total sellout price of $1.3 billion – or a little over $6 million per apartment – the Belnord will become the Upper West Side’s second most expensive condo, after Zeckendorf Development’s 15 Central Park West. HFZ paid $575 million for the building last year.

“There are those people who only want to live in a glass tower,” says HFZ’s Ziel Feldman. “Others only want to live in pre-war buildings.”

And then there is the Belnord’s future clientele: people who want to live in a pre-World War I building.