SLCE Architects
One of the larger residential projects the eastern stretch of the neighborhood has seen in years is now moving toward construction — and in a market where nearly every new tower arrives as luxury condos, this one is planning to do something almost nobody else is doing right now.
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The developer behind 301 East 71st Street told Community Board 8 this week that the building will be entirely rental, a rarity on an Upper East Side that has tilted overwhelmingly toward for-sale product. The project, presented to the board’s Zoning, Development and Housing Committee on Tuesday, would rise roughly 30 stories and about 340 feet at the northeast corner of 71st Street and Second Avenue, steps from the Q train entrance at the 72nd Street station.
SLCE Architects
The site belongs to the Torkian Group, a family-run firm that bought the corner in September 2024 for $25 million, as The Real Deal reported at the time. Building permits for a 29-story tower were filed in March, Marketproof noted, and the low-rise buildings that once stood on the lot have since been demolished.
As proposed, the building would hold 70 apartments, 18 of them affordable under the Universal Affordability Preference, the inclusionary housing tool created through the city’s City of Yes zoning overhaul. That works out to just over 25 percent of the units, with the affordable apartments averaging 60 percent of area median income and spread across the building rather than clustered together. Several of them would even come with private terraces.
The affordable mix would include four studios, five one-bedrooms and nine two-bedrooms. The market-rate apartments skew notably larger than what tends to get built citywide — the full breakdown runs to four studios, 15 one-bedrooms, 23 two-bedrooms, 26 three-bedrooms, a four-bedroom and a five-bedroom. Committee members welcomed the unusual share of family-sized units, which the developer attributed to a deliberate choice to build a smaller number of bigger homes.
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Attorney Alvin Schein of Adler & Stachenfeld, representing the project, described the Torkians as a different breed of builder — one that holds its buildings long term rather than selling them off. “It’s just going to be in the family,” he told the committee, framing the all-rental plan as the firm’s operating philosophy rather than a one-off.The architecture comes from SLCE Architects, whose representative walked the board through renderings of a limestone-clad, heavily faceted tower set on a detailed two-story base, with a softly lit crown and amenity spaces and outdoor loggias on the 23rd and 24th floors. Retail would run along Second Avenue, possibly divided into two or three neighborhood-oriented storefronts, with the residential entrance pushed as far east as possible on 71st Street.
SLCE Architects
To reach its full height, the developer assembled air rights from three former tenement-style walk-ups to the north and a small amount from the Knickerbocker, the high-rise fronting 72nd Street. A transit easement at the corner ties into the Second Avenue subway entrance below.
The Torkian Group previously built a rental project a few blocks north at 250 East 83rd Street, which it also presented to the board several years ago.
The presentation was voluntary, and no board vote was required. Construction is expected to begin once the project secures its UAP regulatory agreement, with the building taking roughly two years to complete. The developer said it is targeting an all-electric building in compliance with the city’s energy rules, though at least one committee member raised pointed questions about the amount of glass on the facade and the strain that all-electric towers place on the neighborhood’s power grid.
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