One block in particular, 39th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, is taking on a decidedly high-end gloss. In the last few years, several hotels have opened, including the Element New York Times Square West. The well-reviewed Italian trattoria Mercato also opened, followed by an upscale Irish pub and the boutique chocolatier Kee’s Chocolates.  Now a 199-unit luxury rental building called Crystal Green has begun leasing, with monthly rents starting at $3,000 for a studio apartment, $3,525 for a one-bedroom, and $4,625 for a two-bedroom.  “Four years ago there was really nothing here,” said Nancy Albertson, the director of leasing for Crystal Green. “There was an adult entertainment store on the corner — one of those open 24 hours a day with the blinking lights — which is thankfully gone now.” She said a similar establishment on the corner of 37th Street and Eighth Avenue had been reborn as a Cohen’s Fashion Optical.  Julie Oh, who rented a one-bedroom apartment in Midtown West almost two years ago, says she has owned her own fashion business and worked in the area for three decades. She describes the neighborhood, which is also part of the garment district, as having been completely transformed in recent years. “I wasn’t comfortable walking through the streets in the evening,” Ms. Oh said, “because I felt it was dangerous with the drug dealers and prostitution. There were a lot of Dumpsters, and it smelled really bad. But now, it’s like night and day.”  While hotel guests were obviously a catalyst for the transformation, retailers moving to the area now are hoping to tap into its burgeoning residential market, said Scott Galin, a principal of Handler Real Estate Organization, which owns 315 West 39th Street, where the new Irish pub Tir Na Nog and Kee’s Chocolates have opened.  “They’re really looking across the street and west to the high-end residential customers,” Mr. Galin said.  Bill Harnett, an owner of Tir Na Nog, said he became familiar with the area while operating a pub nearby. Four years ago, he would not have considered it as a site for a pub. “I probably wouldn’t have gone near the place,” said Mr. Harnett. His pub, with its architectural pieces and ornate furniture from Irish churches and castles, along with stained-glass windows, rich textiles and carved dark wood, has a markedly haute ambience. “But now with all the new construction, I said, ‘You know what, I’m going to take a chance on this, and I think it’s going to pay off.’ ”  Developers and residents appear willing to take the same chance. In 2009 the Glenwood Management Corporation, the real estate development and management company that owns Crystal Green, also developed Emerald Green, one block south at 320 West 38th Street. Its 568 apartments were rented in less than a year.  “That building was the fastest building to lease of our last seven buildings,” Ms. Albertson said. “The response was pretty amazing.”  Other rental buildings in the neighborhood include the pioneering Hudson Crossing, a 15-story red-brick building with 259 units at 400 West 37th, which opened in 2003, and the 30-story Townsend, with 207 apartments at 350 West 37th, which opened in 2010. Hudson Crossing is owned by Equity Residential, one of the country’s largest publicly traded apartment owners.  Equity Residential also recently bought Mantena, a high-end building at 431 West 37th Street with 97 apartments on 12 floors, which has one-bedrooms renting just under $4,000 a month, said Clifford Finn, the president for new development marketing of the brokerage Citi Habitats. In coming months Brooklyn Fare, the upmarket grocer with a Michelin three-star restaurant in its Downtown Brooklyn location, will be adding another branch in Mantena, which opened in the spring and has fewer than a dozen apartments remaining, he said.  Many of the residents moving into the area come from Chelsea seeking lower rents for new apartments, Mr. Finn said. On average, a studio in a doorman building in the area would rent for about $2,413 a month, a one-bedroom for about $3,397, and a two-bedroom for about $4,625, according to data from the Corcoran Group.  “A lot of people like to think of it as North Chelsea, or NoChe,” Mr. Finn said. “Certain more established neighborhoods, like Chelsea, have gotten very expensive for people who want new-development-type products, so they’ve migrated up to this area of the West 30s, which was basically the last frontier of new development in Manhattan, where you had all these potential building sites concentrated in one area.”  Work has begun again on a 12-story condo-hotel project formerly called Galerie at 515 Ninth Avenue, at 39th Street, which stalled in the global financial crisis of 2008; it will be completed in November 2013, according to the Web site of its construction manager, New Line Structures. In most emerging neighborhoods, property developers test the waters with rental projects, and the fact that developers are now putting in condos is significant, Mr. Finn said.  “Prior to Galerie,” he said, “the only real larger-scale condo development was up on 42nd Street, or you had to go south to the high 20s. Once you approached Chelsea, there were a few that popped up, but they were very small and nondescript.”  Besides the new rental apartments, the mixed-use loft buildings favored by the garment makers are also attracting buyers, said Paul Gavriani, a senior vice president of Corcoran. “There are all these great loft spaces that in some cases mirror or are better than lofts you’d find in TriBeCa or SoHo, but they’re closer to a part of the city that has tremendous vitality,” he said. “So here’s this downtown loft district that’s sort of wedged into Midtown, where you have fantastic transportation options.”  Mr. Gavriani said that some apartment-hunters start their search in Hell’s Kitchen, as the area north of 42nd Street is called, but end up renting a block or two south of 42nd Street, where prices are lower.  “A few years ago,” he said, “there was very little in the neighborhood, so it was a hard sell to say you could live there and have a life like every other New Yorker. But now, I’d say 42nd and Ninth Avenue has become a hub for that neighborhood, and you can say it’s really not that far from everything.”
A primarily industrial area north of 34th Street and west of Eighth Avenue is turning into a comfortable residential neighborhood with a slightly downtown feel.