One of the pleasures of living in Chelsea is that there’s a building boom going on and a lot of cool buildings are going up.  As the High Line gets turned into a park, the Meatpacking District is completing its conversion to adult Disneyland replete with expensive condos, hotels bars and stores.  However, there’s not much to see yet; most of the action is just down the road.

The building above, on the West Side Highway at about 18th, is the new headquarters of IAC.  It’s designed by Frank Gehry, and apparently every panel in the building is unique.  Here’s another shot:

Just down the street from there is Richard Meier’s Perry West (it opened a few years ago; the IAC headquarters are still empty).  Here’s a shot of it (it’s the three towers):

Apparently, this building managed to single handedly push up prices for everything in the neighbourhood.  By the time the building closed, prices were at $2,000 per square foot; the average was $1,480.  Incidentally, those prices were for raw square feet.  You then had to pay to have it finished and furnished.

Martha Stewart bought the penthouse for $6 million (it’s 3,000 square feet; she later unloaded it).  Other folks domiciling here included Bill Joy (a co-founder of Sun), Nicole Kidman and Calvin Klein.