One of Manhattan’s remarkable, media-blind transformations is happening — make that raging — on uptown Second Avenue.
The opening of the Q subway line and rezoning a decade ago propelled a residential development frenzy that includes at least seven major projects between East 71st and East 86th streets — plus several more north and south of those boundaries.
Some of the new buildings are rentals and some luxury condos. The latter include Miki Naftali’s 255 E. 77th St. at the Second Avenue corner, which recently snared a buyer for a $28 million penthouse.
Unlike in some residential corridors where new towers replace tenements, the Second Avenue developers did their homework on their retail spaces — which elsewhere often sit vacant for months or years.
Most of the new buildings were smartly designed with extensive sidewalk exposure for retail, rather than spaces too narrow and deep for visibility. They’re drawing one popular food-and-beverage tenant after another, many with sidewalk and/or street-shed seating. The result is one of the city’s liveliest dining-and-socializing scenes.
High-end ice cream spot Salt & Straw is opening soon at 255 E. 75th; Miami-born Pura Vida is drawing crowds at 1598 Second Ave.; bakery-cafe Tatte is coming soon to 250 E. 83d St.; and La Pecora Bianca was an immediate hit at 1562 Second Ave. when it opened two years ago.
The latest eatery lease, though, isn’t at a newly constructed tower but at a five-story tenement that was vacant for years — a ninth location for Upside Pizza at 1501 Second Ave.
Unlike in the Neil Simon play, today’s Second Avenue takes no prisoners — but it feeds a lot of mouths.