CILF of the Week - 15 William St (The William Beaver House)

The Beave as a CILF? Oh, the irony...

We sure had quite a hard time deciding to name this comically undersold development in FiDi as this week's CILF. In addition to all of the press that this Andre Balazs pet project (no pun intended) gets for not being able to sell any darn units, we love reading the oh so snarky coverage of it's black and yellow exterior (we're pretty sure that you can see the Beave from space) as well as the uber sexualized marketing campaign targeted at wealthy wish they were oversexed Wall Streeters.

In reality, when we popped by the Beave today, we saw a truly empty building (yes, all of the rumors are true, as far as we can tell absolutely nobody lives here) even though the sales agent claims that they are 55% sold (whatevs). The common areas were like some kind of weird and empty ghost relics - sort of like discovering a fully intact Titanic underwater. The gym is beautiful, the pool looks good (and full), the roof deck however is not complete (will be done by end of May they tell us - we report, you decide), and the theater is just an under construction room. The outdoor basketball/handball court is huge but also not looking like it's going to be finished anytime soon. We were additionally sad to learn that Balazs has abandoned plans to give the over-the-lobby jacuzzi a glass floor, although we are happy to report that there is a jacuzzi and it does appear to be functional. Plans for the first floor library and restaurant (although depicted in the cool 3-D renderings in the sales office) appear to be on permanent vacation, but that's fine with us, as this building needs to really focus on completing the amenities that have at least been started.

So given the emptiness and the unfinished common areas, why make this a CILF you might ask? It turns out that much to our surprise, the Beaver House actually has really great units. The layouts of the 1BRs that we saw were good, we liked the hardwood floors, and even the oft-panned kitchens were perfectly fine. We like the little built-in murphy offices and thought that many of the features in the apartments made good use of space. In addition, we lust, lust, lust after the enormous tubs (yes, it's sexy to have them open into the bedrooms), a feature that we have not seen in any other development. We also love the in-unit washers and dryers (are you listening 90 William?).

Overall, we think this is a great building. The asking prices however at over $1MM for a 700 sq ft 1 BR are unreasonable bordering on insane way too high for even a nice building in this quiet area of FiDi. We love you though Beave and are curious whether you are going to go the hotel route or the full on rental extravaganza.