
Apartments, Hotel & Community Facility are coming to West 126th Street, between Morningside Avenue and Amsterdam. The lot, which physically sits next to a historic carriage house at 400 West 126th Street, has already been cleared, permits filed, and construction ready to begin.

Plans for two separate buildings have been filed. The Google image above shows the empty lot and auto body shop, next to a carriage house, once owned by St. Joseph’s Church. The auto body shop now demolished (image below) and cleared lot, below.

Shanghai Commercial will be lending $67M toward this Upper Manhattan Project (secured in 2019).
The site runs from 402-422 West 126th Street. Permits originally called for a 9-story hotel at 412 West 126th Street (next to the carriage house) and a 16-story residential building next door at 418 West 126th Street. However the project stalled for two years after the filed permits in 2015. No further plans that we are aware of.

Retail will fill the cellar and first floors, followed by seven units each on the second through eighth floors, five units each on the ninth and 10th floors, four a piece on floors 11 through 13, two on the 14th floor and full-floor units on the top two floors.
The project will also include subterranean parking for 48 cars in the cellar, which is more than zoning requires for the apartments. Perhaps some of the spots reserved for hotel guests next door.
The hotel next door will feature a 5,000-square-foot community facility on the ground floor, with eight stories of hotel rooms stacked on top. Between the retail in the residential building and the hotel, the two properties will have 64,769 square feet of commercial space.
When construction is complete, the mixed-use complex will span 128,700 square feet and fill just over half of a 20,000-square-foot lot.
This development (the two buildings) is spread across six tax lots.

The image above features (lower left) St. Joseph’s Church on the corner of 125th Street and Morningside Avenue, with its garden in the rear, on the corner of Morningside Avenue and 126th Street. Next to the garden on 126th Street, and visible in the above image, is the roof of the cottage. The yellow marker indicates the large area that will hold the two new structures. It appears that the cottage has been spared from demolition.

Queens-based, Chinese developer Bo Jin Zhu is listed on the permit application, as is Em Architectural Design. We were unable to find plans for this project at this time.

Also scheduled to rise on that block, The Taystee Building complex to be located at 450 West 126th Street. The building is organized into four volumes – two thin white lobby and circulation towers and two wide black commercial blocks. The lobbies are placed at the east and west ends of the building creating access from both subway lines and major avenues. Along the western face of the building is an open public pass through from 125th street to 126th street. This pass through creates an interior street and open courtyard lobby facing a public garden.

Not far from the site of this new hotel is The Aloft Hotel Harlem, located on Frederick Douglass Blvd & 124th Street, opening its doors in December, 2011 ~ And on 125th Street between Frederick Douglass Blvd and Adam Clayton Powell Jr Blvd, The Victoria Theatre renovation, which will include The Renaissance Hotel and Victoria Tower.
