Would You Give Up Peace & Quiet for a Better Commute?

Aug. 6, 2015 — Take a walk in Midtown along Madison Avenue and what do you see? The sidewalk is very likely thick with people, including slow-moving, photo-snapping tourists, and commuters dashing in and out tall office buildings. And construction. Lots of it. Anywhere you turn there are construction crews and buildings rising that seem to jockey for position. Which brings us to the next question: what do you hear? Traffic. Lots of it: buses roaring up and down streets, cars and cabs honking horns, sirens screaming until your ears can't take it anymore. It's probably the last place you might imagine for a condo tower, but that's what's rising on Madison and 33rd Street. According to Tessler Developments, the 30-story luxury condo is in design development and once completed, in the second quarter of 2016, it will consist of 69 units. "Aware that residents of lower floors might have objected to passersby being able to peer into their homes," reported The New York Times late last week, "the developer made the building’s base tall, so that the first residential floor doesn’t start until about 40 feet in the air, versus 15 feet in comparable buildings." You may ask yourself who in the world would want to live in such a congested part of the city, and — like The Times — you may think the notion of location is no longer important to those snapping up luxury units like candy, but what wouldn't some of us give to be able to roll out of bed and enjoy an easy, short-ish commute to the office every morning?