At a glance
Firm: J.D. Carlisle Development Corporation Principals: Jules Demchick (Chairman) and Evan Stein (President); the firm also operates an in-house general contractor, MD Carlisle Construction Corp. Founded: The Carlisle construction business traces to the late 1940s (Harry Feldman); the modern J.D. Carlisle development partnership was formed in the mid-1980s, when Jules Demchick joined the Feldman group Headquarters: New York, NY Focus: Ground-up Manhattan condominium and luxury-rental development, with mixed-use (residential-over-hotel and retail) work; the firm builds much of its own product through MD Carlisle Construction Frequent design partner: Perkins Eastman (used on multiple projects), with Handel Architects and Costas Kondylis on later towers Portfolio scale: A multi-decade Manhattan book spanning condominiums and rentals; the firm cites thousands of residential units developed (figures self-reported) Signature reputation: A quiet, quality-focused family developer whose condominiums and rentals have sold, leased, and traded well — with no adverse building-defect record in the public sources reviewed Source: The Roebling Team at Compass — verified against public records, court filings, and published reporting. July 2026.
Who J.D. Carlisle is
J.D. Carlisle is a multi-generational New York family development company, not the project of a single founder. Its roots run back to the Carlisle construction business Harry Feldman built in the postwar decades; the modern development firm took shape in the mid-1980s, when investor-turned-developer Jules Demchick partnered with the Feldman group. Demchick has served as Chairman since the late 1990s, and the firm is now led on a day-to-day basis by Evan Stein, its President — Harry Feldman's grandson, and the third generation of the family in the business. Stein also runs the firm's in-house construction arm, MD Carlisle Construction Corp.
That structure matters to a buyer. J.D. Carlisle is a builder as well as a developer: it controls construction on much of its own work rather than handing the job entirely to an outside contractor. The house posture that emerges from the record is consistent — well-located Manhattan buildings, pitched at the top of their local market, built to hold value rather than to chase headlines. This is not a records-driven trophy developer; it is a durable, quality-focused operator that has quietly delivered condominiums and rentals across Midtown, NoMad, Chelsea, Yorkville, and the West Side for four decades.
What they build
J.D. Carlisle's product line runs across two main lanes: full-service condominiums and large luxury-rental buildings, several of them mixed-use with a hotel or retail component at the base. The firm's most-repeated design partner is Perkins Eastman, whose work appears on the firm's early-2000s condominiums and on its Chelsea rental tower; later projects brought in Handel Architects (the firm's marquee NoMad condominium) and Costas Kondylis (its large Hell's Kitchen tower).
The through-line is location plus finish: buildings dropped into strong Manhattan micro-markets — across from Rockefeller Center, on the Madison Avenue corridor, on the Yorkville waterfront edge — and specified at the top of their neighborhood at the time of delivery. Because the firm builds much of its own work, it retains control over quality, and its completed buildings have generally been received as well-made new construction.
Buildings by J.D. Carlisle
J.D. Carlisle projects already profiled on this site:
- The Centria (16 West 48th Street) — the 2006 Perkins Eastman glass-curtain-wall condominium directly across from Rockefeller Center, among the first ground-up residential condominiums built into that micro-market
- The Cielo (450 East 83rd Street) — the 2006 Perkins Eastman glass-and-masonry condominium in Yorkville, notable for its commissioned Richard Haas trompe-l'oeil mural and rotating lobby art program
Other notable J.D. Carlisle work (pages may follow): Madison House (15 East 30th Street / 126 Madison Avenue) — a roughly 800-foot Handel Architects condominium in NoMad, the firm's flagship recent tower, co-developed with Fosun; The Beatrice (105 West 29th Street) — a Perkins Eastman luxury-rental tower atop the Eventi Hotel, later sold to Equity Residential; Morton Square in the West Village and 160 Madison Avenue in NoMad, both large rentals developed with a capital partner; and Atelier (635 West 42nd Street), an early Hell's Kitchen tower designed by Costas Kondylis that the firm later sold.
A note on attribution: J.D. Carlisle is sometimes loosely linked to buildings it did not develop. There is no J.D. Carlisle project called "The Vanderbilt," and 235 West 48th Street (the Ritz Plaza rental) is a different building by a different owner; we exclude both from this profile.
Track record
By the measure that matters — does the product sell or lease, and hold value — J.D. Carlisle's record is solid. Its condominiums sold through and have appreciated over the long run: The Centria, marketed as the first luxury condominium in the Rockefeller Center micro-market, has traded up materially from its original sponsor pricing in the years since. Its rentals leased quickly and traded at premium valuations — The Beatrice leased up within months of launch and later sold to Equity Residential in one of the larger multifamily trades of its cycle, and Morton Square sold to the same institutional buyer. For a condominium buyer, that history points to durable demand, an established resale pool, and a sponsor whose pricing the market has repeatedly validated.
Reputation and what a buyer should know
On build quality, J.D. Carlisle's completed buildings carry no adverse record in the public sources reviewed: no construction-defect litigation, no condominium-board suit against the sponsor over a finished building, and no serious construction-safety incident attributable to the firm surfaced in trade reporting or court-record searching. That is a genuinely clean defect profile as far as public sources show — with the usual caveat that absence of coverage is not the same as a guarantee, so ordinary new-development diligence still applies.
The disputes that do appear are commercial and regulatory, not quality-related, and should be read as such:
- At 160 Madison Avenue, the prior site owner sued the firm in a contractual dispute over a promised commercial condominium unit — a business disagreement about deal terms, not a construction-defect claim. Public reporting did not confirm how it resolved, so we treat the outcome as unverified.
- At Madison House (15 East 30th Street), the project drew a DOB stop-work order tied to a zoning/technical compliance question about an outdoor space dimension connected to the tower's height-boosting design. That was a code-and-zoning matter, later resolved with the building completed — not a building-safety defect. The broader neighborhood objection to that tower's "void" height mechanism was a zoning fight, which we do not treat as a quality issue here.
For a buyer, standard new-development diligence applies with no sponsor-specific red flag: read the offering plan, confirm lien and title status, and review the warranty and punch list on the specific unit before you sign.
The Roebling Team on J.D. Carlisle buildings
We publish developer profiles because a buyer choosing a new-construction or recently-converted condominium is, in part, betting on the developer — its quality, its staying power, and its record when things go wrong. The Roebling Team at Compass tracks the sponsors behind Manhattan's luxury inventory building by building, and we bring that context to every new-development transaction: what the developer has built, how those buildings have held value, and what to verify before you sign.
If you're evaluating a J.D. Carlisle building — or weighing it against another sponsor's product — a 30-minute consultation is the right starting point.
Corey Cohen, Principal · The Roebling Team at Compass 646.939.7375 · c.cohen@compass.com
This developer profile reflects publicly available information — including NYC public records, court filings, and published reporting — and The Roebling Team's transaction experience. It is provided for research purposes and is not legal advice; nothing here alleges wrongdoing or building defects beyond what the cited public record supports. The Roebling Team at Compass does not represent J.D. Carlisle Development Corporation. © 2026 The Roebling Team at Compass.