Linguistic invention is nearly as important a part of the Manhattan real estate scene as the new construction condominiums that make it necessary. In neighborhoods that were once frontiers of sorts -- the triangle of real estate below Canal Street that has become Tribeca, say, or the historic blocks south of Houston Street that New Yorkers know as Soho -- new names have accompanied new real estate development, creating neighborhood identities where there once there weren't even neighborhoods. That's what's happening with The Linc, a not-so-new neighborhood -- there has, after all, always been an area west of Ninth Avenue between 33rd and 42nd Streets -- with a new name and a new image. Thanks to a zoning shift that opened the neighborhood to new constrcution condominium development and to the new real estate development that followed, The Linc has emerged in recent years as one of the more promising new real estate frontiers in Manhattan. Which is not bad for a neighborhood that didn't even have a name just a few years ago.
The new construction condominium listings in The Linc -- and there are no other kind as of yet -- have led the neighborhood's emergence, in this case, instead of following it. While The Linc remains fairly low-key by Manhattan standards -- much of the retail is still of the mom-and-pop variety, with a heavy representation of Italian specialty shops and bicycle stores -- a bumper crop of new residential development is already changing the feel of the neighborhood, and the arrival of the northernmost portion of The High Line and new performance arts spaces such as the Baryshnikov Arts Center have injected a little Chelsea-style glamour into the formerly scruffy lower 30s. The arrival of a new subway stop -- the 7 train is scheduled to stop at 33rd and 10th Avenue by 2015 -- should hasten the process. The Linc already has plenty of buzz, and a catchy name -- all those still-in-process new luxury condominium developments make it easy to guess what will come next.
