The concrete superstructure of a 38-story rental tower has climbed past the halfway mark on East 125th Street in East Harlem, rising on a block that sat empty for years after its longtime supermarket closed. The 711-unit building at 180 East 125th Street is being developed by JCS Realty on the southwest corner of Third Avenue and East 125th Street, and its construction board lists an anticipated completion target of fall 2026, though the project may not wrap until sometime in the second half of 2027.
According to New York YIMBY, the reinforced concrete structure is now covered in scaffolding and netting as it climbs toward its planned height of 410 feet. The building, designed by S9 Architecture, is expected to feature gridded rectilinear massing with a regular punched-window rhythm, and department of buildings filings indicate an amenity package that includes a golf simulator, a listening room, a sauna, and bike parking, per the same report. The project will also include 116 parking spaces and ground-floor retail anchored by a supermarket — a detail that carries outsized weight on this particular block.
A Supermarket Returns to a Long-Dormant Block
The site previously housed a 24-hour Pathmark supermarket that opened in 1999 as Harlem's first full-service grocery store in three decades, serving as many as 30,000 customers weekly before it closed in 2015, according to Patch. City officials had touted the original Pathmark as an economic revitalization anchor for East Harlem, and the building sat vacant until it was demolished in 2021. Whether the new ground-floor supermarket effectively replaces that lost grocery hub remains to be seen once the tower opens.
Developer Jacob Schwimmer acquired the site for $70 million from Extell Development in November 2024 through an entity called 180 E125 Propco LLC, securing a $155 million construction loan from Kennedy Wilson to finance the acquisition and build-out, as reported by PincusCo. The sale worked out to $273 per buildable square foot across 256,090 square feet of buildable rights. Extell had originally assembled the parcel back in September 2014 for $39 million with plans for a nine-story commercial office building nicknamed “Harlem Headquarters,” before pivoting to residential housing amid the post-pandemic commercial real estate downturn, according to The Real Deal.
Environmental Cleanup Cleared the Way
Before construction could rise, the site had to work through a state-supervised environmental review. The property is enrolled in the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation's Brownfield Cleanup Program under Site No. C231160, and state officials approved a formal Decision Document in August 2025 detailing required soil excavation and soil vapor remediation, per the agency's own filing. The cleanup was supervised jointly by state environmental and health regulators.
A Second Tower — and a Subway Extension — Next Door
The block's transformation doesn't stop at 180 East 125th Street. The MTA purchased the adjacent parcel at 160 East 125th Street from Extell for $82 million in April 2023 to build infrastructure, ventilation shafts, and station entrances for Phase 2 of the Second Avenue Subway, above the agency's own internal appraisal of $45.4 million after direct negotiations with Extell. In May 2025, the MTA submitted land-use applications under the city's City of Yes initiative to rezone that lot for a 15-story building with up to 684 residential units, a quarter of which would be designated affordable under mandatory inclusionary housing rules, according to Commercial Observer.
Combined, JCS Realty's 711-unit tower and the MTA's proposed 684-unit complex next door will add nearly 1,500 apartments to a single East Harlem block that sat vacant for roughly a decade after the Pathmark's demolition, with the twin towers expected to stand among the tallest structures in the neighborhood, per Patch. The Second Avenue Subway Phase 2 extension — a $7.7 billion project that would bring Q train service north to 125th Street with new stations at 106th, 116th, and 125th streets — is targeted for full operational status sometime between 2030 and 2039, funded partly through federal transit grants and Manhattan congestion pricing revenue, Commercial Observer reports. The 180 East 125th Street tower itself is expected to be near the 4, 5, and 6 trains at the 125th Street station on Lexington Avenue, one block to the west, as well as the Harlem–125th Street Metro-North station within a block of the site. A planned Second Avenue Subway station entrance at the Lexington Avenue end of the block is also part of the MTA's long-term buildout.
Part of a Broader East Harlem Building Wave
The 180 East 125th Street project fits into a wider pattern of residential development reshaping the 125th Street corridor. Developers elsewhere nearby have split projects into smaller towers to stay under the 100-unit threshold that triggers higher construction wage floors under the state's 485-x tax abatement rules, as seen at Clipper Equity's nearby 1800 Park Avenue site, which was carved into seven separate 99-unit buildings in 2026. Meanwhile, the New York City Economic Development Corporation presented plans in April to redevelop three city-owned parking lots between East 125th and East 127th streets into mixed-use residential buildings, starting with a 140-unit project at 2453 Second Avenue. Together, the projects signal a sustained push to add housing supply across underused East Harlem parcels even as the neighborhood's biggest promised transit upgrade remains years away.
