I find myself entranced by 565 Broome, the two-towered Renzo Piano–designed condo under construction on Varick, across from the Holland Tunnel on-ramps. It has gorgeous lines, thanks mainly to those rounded corner windows. So when developer Bizzi & Partners offered me a hard hat tour, I happily agreed.

The main entrance is on Broome: Cars drive into a courtyard separated from the lobby by glass walls. There are 40 parking spots—all with electric chargers—in the garage, which is on the fifth and sixth floors. It’s one of those robotic garages that parks cars automatically, and from the outside there’s going to be a “cool lighting effect” visible from the street, said Alessandro Pallaoro, executive vice president of business development, who gave me the tour. The garage, along with other amenities such as the gym and pool, are on the lower floors of the south tower, on the Watts Street side, because that’s where the tunnel traffic poses the biggest problem.

The ground floor is as far as I got on the initial visit: I was wearing sneakers, which is considered unsafe at a construction site. We retreated to the sales office on W. Broadway, where I consoled myself with the model.

The ground floor is retail on all three sides, with double-high ceilings and a mezzanine balcony. Pallaoro said they had been hoping for something along the lines of a food court. “Or a Tesla showroom,” I said, and he agreed that it had crossed their minds, too.

Also on the ground floor, on the Watts side, is a small building that will hold mechanicals, with a communal terrace on top. (Compare it to the distressing one at 111 Murray….) Rather than leave its garbage on the sidewalk, the building will store it in the mechanical annex. What’s more, to make sure the Broome Street approach remains clear and pleasant, Bizzi & Partners arranged for the annex to hold the adjacent school’s garbage, too.

Bizzi is calling the third-floor space between the towers the conservatory. It’s meant to be a quiet space, and there will be trees planted inside. (The third floor and the lobby are the only two places residents can cross from one tower to the other.) The canopy at the top is something no one wanted—those towers should stand apart—but the building code requires it.

I personally didn’t love that the bulkheads and the east side of the building abandon the curves, but who am I to second guess Renzo Piano?

And then I got to take a virtual reality tour of the property, which was extremely cool. I don’t visit sales offices often, so I don’t know whether all new developments have such a thing, but they should.

A week or so later, I returned for the hard hat tour. We started at the top of the south tower and worked our way down. The third shot is of this penthouse’s pool.

The corner windows look nearly as good from the inside as they do from the street. Occasionally, we’d come across one still in its crate, which reminded me of the cylinders (once?) used in pneumatic tubes at banks. I neglected to take that photo, alas.

This is where a staircase will go inside a duplex unit along the main setback. The building has 115 units, with an average price of $5.5 million. There are a maximum of three units on the lower floors of each tower; when you go higher, units have private elevator access.

Here’s the communal swimming pool, in a room with double-high ceilings. The doors in the rear lead to the terrace mentioned earlier.

We couldn’t walk through the conservatory because the workers were installing glass up above. I did manage to snap two photos. There will be garden walls on both sides.

And that’s it! Thanks again to Bizzi & Partners for the peek.