About Michael Stern, Founder of JDS

Contents

1. A New York company in 2002
2. Buildings in New York
3. Projects in Miami
4. Designers and approach
5. Public conversations

Michael Stern is the founder and chief executive officer of JDS Development Group, which he started in 2002 and which builds in New York City and Miami. His company acquires land, develops it and builds on it, and its New York work rests on four towers that each began on awkward ground: a landmarked courtyard on West 57th Street, a Downtown Brooklyn banking hall under a dome, a utility parcel beside the East River and a Chelsea telephone building from 1929. What follows sticks to what the firm has put on file. A fuller account of his background sits on the companion biography site linked above, and each building named here has an entry of its own on this site.

A New York company in 2002

JDS opened at a time when large parts of Manhattan were about to be rezoned for housing. In June 2005 the City Council approved the West Chelsea plan, which moved most blocks between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues out of manufacturing use, organized new construction around turning the High Line into a park and let owners of lots under the old rail line sell their unused floor area to sites nearby.¹ Within a decade tall residential towers had become national construction news. Engineering News Record’s review of 2014 reported that 432 Park Avenue had topped out and that work had begun on another Manhattan supertall, while Hudson Yards pressed ahead on the far West Side.²

The firm was set up to carry a project from purchase to completion without handing it between separate companies. It acquires, develops and builds, which means the organization that chooses a site is also the one that builds on it. JDS Development Group’s website describes that arrangement and carries its current work.³

Buildings in New York

111 West 57th Street. Designed by SHoP Architects, the tower is the tallest and most slender residential building in the Western Hemisphere. It was built in the courtyard of the landmarked Steinway Hall, whose original architects were Warren and Wetmore, the office that Whitney Warren formed with Charles Wetmore in 1898 and that later designed Grand Central.⁴ The tower incorporates the historic hall and rises to 1,428 feet, wrapped in a facade that pairs terra cotta with glass and bronze; Studio Sofield designed its interiors. The CTBUH awards named it Best Tall Residential Building and Best Tall Building Over 400 Meters.

The Brooklyn Tower. The Brooklyn Tower is Brooklyn’s first supertall, rising from the landmark Dime Savings Bank. According to the Historic Districts Council, the bank’s home office went up between 1906 and 1908 in the shape of a temple designed by Mowbray and Uffinger, was enlarged in 1931 and 1932 by the bank specialists Halsey, McCormack and Helmer, and was designated inside and out in 1994.⁵ It received the overall award in the CTBUH 2024 Best Tall Building, 300 meters and above category.

The American Copper Buildings. The American Copper Buildings are twin towers joined 300 feet up by a three story skybridge, the first skybridge in New York City in 80 years. Clad in copper and rising 41 and 48 stories, they stand on the East River on ground that Con Edison once held and that JDS bought in 2013. Their waterfront design is resilient, shaped in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Occupancy began in the final quarter of 2016, and the builders finished their work in 2017. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat named them Best Tall Building Americas. The shore they face has a long civic history: the city took the East River Esplanade in 1939 while building the East River Drive, and a 1993 greenway plan set out to join its scattered segments into one path.⁶

Walker Tower. Walker Tower is a Ralph Walker Art Deco telephone building conversion that unlocked roughly 50,000 additional square feet. Completed in Chelsea in 1929, the building had housed telecom offices along with a still operating data center; the conversion enlarged it, relocated its cores, widened its window openings and replaced its outer skin. Walker himself, as ArchDaily’s survey of his towers recounts, won the 1957 AIA Centennial Gold Medal and turned the setbacks demanded by the city’s early zoning rules into a massing style that others copied.⁷ Stella Tower also appears on the firm’s list of buildings.

Figure

Dated facts, 2002 to 2017

1. 01
   2002JDS Development Group is founded.
2. 02
   2013The Con Edison site beside the East River is acquired.
3. 03
   2016Occupancy begins at the copper clad towers late in the year.
4. 04
   2017Construction of the two towers is completed.

Projects in Miami

In Miami the firm is behind 888 Brickell Dolce&Gabbana, Mercedes-Benz Places Miami and Monad Terrace, designed by Jean Nouvel. At 888 Brickell, JDS is the developer of a 90 story tower of 1,049 feet whose architecture comes from Studio Sofield and whose rooms were styled by Dolce&Gabbana; ivory travertine covers the exterior, set off by black facade surfaces with a high gloss, and the views take in the Atlantic Ocean, Biscayne Bay, Downtown and Miami Beach. Mercedes-Benz Places Miami was designed by SHoP Architects in collaboration with ODP, with interiors by Woods Bagot working with the carmaker and landscape by Field Operations, and its plans call for windows as tall as 10 feet and terraces with a depth of 5 feet. The district name goes back to William Brickell, who bought more than 600 acres in 1870 and settled with Mary Brickell at the mouth of the Miami River, where the couple kept a store for trade with other settlers and with the Seminoles.⁸

Designers and approach

Over the years the company has worked with Jean Nouvel, SHoP Architects, Roman and Williams, Gachot Studios, Studio Sofield, Woods Bagot and Field Operations. The firm is drawn to complex urban sites and to adaptive reuse in which old fabric and new construction are set against each other instead of new work imitating history. Three New York towers show that pattern plainly, each standing with something older: a landmarked hall, a landmark bank and a 1929 telephone building.

Public conversations

Michael Stern takes part in public discussion of design, construction, housing, branded residences and the future of New York and Miami. His published essays are catalogued in the bibliography, and every place he publishes is listed on the profiles page. There is also his biography on the subject encyclopedia, which sits beside its entries on air rights, zoning, landmark conversion and supertall engineering. The company itself, its designers and its way of working are covered in the JDS Development Group entry.