Hudson Yards

Almost every time I’ve called Assemblyman Richard Brodsky about a story in the past few months, he interrupts me in my first question.

“You wanna know the story you should be doing?” he states, then goes into a diatribe on how the billions in initiatives on the far West Side are an unstable set of dominoes, all liable to topple.

My response—while the projects seem on shaky ground, there’s not enough hard figures or examples to show that things indeed are going to hell—may soon become invalid.

Now Mr. Brodsky, the chairman of the Assembly committee that oversees state authorities and corporations, is taking legislative action to provide more transparency with these projects.  read more »

Letting local development corporations issue lots of debt for major projects like Hudson Yards could end up sticking the city with a hefty bill, a former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority warned City Council members today.

Dick Ravitch, who brought in billions in capital financing for the MTA in the 1980's, cautioned that if the residential and commercial developments don't bring in as much money as projected, the city might be stuck with the debt.  read more »

The New York Times' Charles Bagli reported over the weekend that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has asked the five bidders for the West Side rail yards to submit a new round of bids. Apparently, the MTA would like to now lease for 99 years the 26 acres of rail yard rather than sell it. The MTA, the yards' landlord, would also like an "equity-type interest" in any project built on the site on the far West Side of Manhattan.

The new bids are due by Feb. 19.  read more »

Above is the former exhibit space for the five Hudson Yards development bids. The space, at Vanderbilt Avenue and 43rd Street near Grand Central Station, has been empty since December, and looked particularly cold today.

The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Yards' owner, is supposed to start considering next month which of the five bids wins the development rights to the 26-acre site.

More from The Observer's February interview at City Hall with outgoing deputy mayor for economic development Daniel Doctoroff.

Location: What about Hudson Yards? The city and the M.T.A. are preparing bids for the eastern and western yards at the same time. What sort of thing will be built there?  read more »

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The Tishman Speyer plan looks, in comparison to Extell’s eclecticism or Brookfield’s urbanism, downright conservative (or, if you prefer, stately). It is not enormously high (about 1,000 feet), and is almost perfectly symmetrical along an east-west axis. The towers grow progressively smaller as they move to the west.

Its edge comes from the money behind it: the Speyers joined up with Morgan Stanley in a 50-50 partnership, and the investment bank will own its own 3-million-square-foot building. That’s the one in the right rear in the above picture. The fountain area is called “The Forum”; in the foreground stands what Tishman-Speyer/Morgan Stanley is calling “The New York Steps.”

Having a bank as a main tenant is nothing like having an international, multimedia company around, nor even a sexy magazine publisher, but maybe that’s what people are talking about when they compare the greater Hudson Yards neighborhood to Canary Wharf in London. With just 3,000 apartments (300 of which are affordable) and 10 million square feet of office, Tishman Speyer’s proposal leans more heavily commercial than any of the others. Despite the fact that financial firms work around the clock, somehow this bid does not seem like it will do much for the nightlife along the Hudson.

The designer, Helmut Jahn, has done sweeping statements for Jerry Speyer before--consider the Sony Center in Berlin--and maybe he will here again, after the bid gets through committee.

“We think that by having our tenant and partner pretty much guarantees the success of the project,” Mr. Speyer said. “We have a tenant. We have the capital. We’re ready to buy the land and to do what needs to be done.”

Extell Development’s architect, Steven Holl, came up with the idea of building a very low suspension bridge over the West Side Rail Yards instead of a deck that would be supported by piers scattered among the tracks. That way, workers would only have to tinker along the north and south edges of the site, leaving the rail yards to function normally underneath them.

“I think we are the only project that is really minimally invasive with the Long Island Rail Road, with the MTA operations, and I think we will have a much lower cost of construction as a result,” said Extell’s founder Gary Barnett. “You know you don’t have to put a billion dollars or more into a platform up front.”  read more »

Brookfield Properties, a giant landlord that keeps a lower profile than some of the city’s single-engine developers, did not come into the West Side Rail Yards competition with an anchor tenant. It did, however, come in with a whole bevy of design firms—seven in all—that proceeded to break just about every rule or convention that was set out for them.

The result is a plan that—forgive the hypothetical—Jane Jacobs would like (online here). It reinstitutes part of the street grid on the two massive superblocks between 30th and 33rd streets. Hotels create a street wall along 11th Avenue where other plans prescribe a park. The intent, according to Brookfield, is to link the new neighborhood with the rest of the city—including with a parcel Brookfield is developing on the eastern side of 10th Avenue.  read more »

The joint proposal for the West Side Rail Yards by the Durst Organization and Vornado Realty Trust is obsessed with getting people to the far West Side. The developers propose a subterranean “people mover” below 33rd Street that would carry up to 20,000 riders an hour from Penn Station to 11th Avenue (although it was not clear just who would pay for it); a pedestrian skyway that floats over the entire site and Hudson River Park; and a new headquarters for Condé Nast.

“We felt that we wanted to maintain the kind of porosity that we get in the best parts of the city,” said architect Rafael Pelli, who designed the plan along with FxFowle. “We are really trying to relate it to Union Square, Bryant Park or even a Times Square. We are thinking about how this is going to be a diverse and useful area and attract people from a greater catchment area rather than an enclave.”

The plan, one of five submitted to purchase the yards from the MTA, envisions four office or mixed-use towers, the tallest of which will be 1,205 feet tall. (It's online here.) The new Condé Nast headquarters would go at the southeast corner of 33rd Street and 11th Avenue. Overall, the plan is heavier on residential space than the other four proposals, with about 7,000 apartments, an unspecified number of which would be affordable.

A broad low-lying kunsthalle on the southeastern flank would house a cultural institution; its 120,000-square-foot floor plates, Mr. Pelli said, would be ideal for flower and antique shows (and, one might add, provide competition for the troubled Javits Convention Center expansion plan on the other side of 34th street).

The project, in keeping with Douglas Durst’s environmentally progressive reputation, includes a number of green features, among them a co-generation plant to capture the heat thrown off by generating electricity; a treatment plant that would allow the complex to reuse wastewater for plumbing purposes; and bris soleil, a type of awning that would shade out the summer light while letting in winter light.

Vornado, with its $18 billion in assets, is lending some financial heft to the bid.

“A lot will rely on the capital strength of the bidder,” Vornado Chairman and Chief Executive Steve Roth said. “I think it is obvious that this is an enormously complex project so the success of the project may ride and fall on the financial strength of the winning bidder; that will be a very important differentiating tactic.”

Probably never had so many of New York’s real estate elite crammed themselves into such a small space as happened Sunday afternoon at the press preview of proposals to develop the Western Rail Yards: Steve Roth, Stephen Ross, Jerry Speyer and his son Rob, Ric Clark, Gary Barnett, Steven Holl, Helmut Jahn and Rafael Pelli. S.I. Newhouse even dropped by, very casually dressed, as proof that if Mr. Roth’s bid won, he’d move Condé Nast west to 10th Avenue.

They all crammed themselves into a vacant storefront on West 43rd Street to show of their versions of New York’s future: towering buildings that will pack some 30,000 residents and workers into a six-square block area along the Hudson River, between 30th and 33rd streets. The architectural models themselves costs tens of thousands of dollars; the bids, submitted last month, ate up a few million, according to a number of developers.

Not surprisingly, the five teams talked a lot about how their particular plan creates a vibrant new neighborhood-- this, after all, is the retail version of the plans. No financials were disclosed, and the point is to try to curry favor with the public to create a popular favorite. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority--which, with the Bloomberg administration’s input, will choose the winner in the next few months--has got to pay more attention to how much money each team is offering, when they’d be able to pay it, and how likely they’d get it done.

“There are two or three of these that are done by teams that are really competent,” said Mr. Roth, “and in the end I think it's going to be the financial part of the deal that is going to differentiate them.”

Each of the plans profess to save the northern section of the High Line and promise to provide at least some affordable housing. The tallest buildings would stretch 1,000, 1,100, even 1,300 feet into the air. (The Empire State Building now clocks in at 1,250 feet.) The cost, according to a number of the developers, will likely come in between $10 billion to $20 billion, with completion anticipated in the early 2020’s

There were also plenty of wild and creative ideas, like, from Brookfield Properties, Diller Scofidio & Renfro's towers (pictured above) that are joined by a quarter-mile running track; mechanisms to reuse sullage for irrigation; patent-pending technology to create a better platform over the rail yards; a movie screen on which 20th Century Fox could premiere new films; and so on.

The exhibit of the five proposals, which includes architectural models, displays and videos, will be open to the public every day for the next two weeks, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., starting today (with the exception of Thanksgiving). The address is 335 Madison Avenue, although the storefront is really located at the northwest corner of 43rd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue. Comment cards will be available for visitors to give input.

The Real Estate will post synopses of the five designs throughout the day.

Extell Development Co.’s proposal for the Western Rail Yards, which is the first of five that the public and press can get a look at, really revs up the amount of green space on the ground by building tall. Really tall. The tripled-legged tower pictured to the right would stretch 1,238 feet into the air, rivaling the Empire State Building’s 1,250-foot height, and outdoing that icon in total square footage and the size of its observation deck.

Other buildings in the Extell proposal are quite a bit smaller, but still considerable: at around 700 feet tall, the so-called “sun slice” buildings proposed for 30th Street orient their narrow sides to the south to cut down on shadows cast over the open space behind them.

According to the plans (PDF), the footprints of all buildings will take up just 25 percent of the property, compared to 52 percent in the plans proposed by the city and the MTA, leaving an extra 7 acres or so of open space. Also, the plan would eliminate any discharge of storm water by funneling it into a reservoir that would run through the center of the park, and the plan claims to reduce energy consumption by 50 percent thanks to a geothermal cooling system and cogeneration.

The development company, led by Gary Barnett, also proposes a Long Island Rail Road station along 33rd Street between 11th and 12th avenues. After all, you never know how long it will take them to build this No. 7 line.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has joined Stephen Ross's Related Companies in its bid for the Hudson Yards project, a source familiar with the bid said.

If Stephen Ross' Related won the bid to develop on the far West Side, News Corp. would move its headquarters from its Sixth Avenue tower and into a new tower in Hudson Yards, the source said. Last week, The Observer reported that Conde Nast would leave 4 Times Square for a new, 1.5-million-square-foot tower if Douglas Durst and Vornado won a bid; and it was also reported that Morgan Stanley had teamed up with Tishman Speyer.  read more »

Five developers have bid on the Western Rail Yards. The bids came into the yards' owner, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, by 5 p.m. on Thursday, and they include the usual heavyweights of New York City building.

1. Extell Development Company
2. Brookfield Properties Developer LLC
3. The Related Companies
4. TS West Side Holding, LLC (A Joint Venture of Tishman Speyer and Morgan Stanley)
5. Hudson Center East LLC and Hudson Center West LLC (A Joint Venture of Vornado Realty Trust and The Durst Organization, Inc.)

For the MTA's statement on the selection process, which should drag on toward at least spring, click here.

For earlier Observer coverage of the architects who could get to shape the yards, click here.  

A fancy architect may not speak as loudly as cash, but it could give you an edge in the fight to lay claim to 26 acres of Manhattan real estate. Clearly, that’s the thought of a number of the developers who are working on proposals for the Western Rail Yards, which are due at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s offices by 5 p.m. today.

We’ve scurried up a few notes about who has hired whom from sources connected to each of the proposals.  read more »

Usually money talks. But when you're fighting to control a massive parcel of land right in the public eye, the right design is also key. Here are the architects the five bidders have been working with.  read more »

Conde Nast intends to move out of its home at 4 Times Square and move into an entirely new tower in Hudson Yards on the far West Side by 2015, said developer Douglas Durst.

The new tower, as sketched out by a proposal for the Hudson Yards development site by the Durst Organization and Vornado Realty Trust, would be exclusively for Conde Nast and would be built to 1.5 million square feet.

Mr. Durst told The Observer this afternoon that Conde Nast would consolidate its offices in the new tower and would move out of the roughly 700,000 square feet that it currently occupies at Mr. Durst’s 4 Times Square. The Conde Nast lease at 4 Times Square ends in 2018, but Mr. Durst said a deal would be negotiated to let them break the lease by 2015.

This is all under the condition that the Durst Organization and Vornado win the bid to develop the Hudson Yards site. Bids are due Oct. 11 to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the yards' owner, and other companies preparing proposals include The Related Companies, Brookfield Properties and Tishman Speyer.

The news that Conde Nast wants to build a new tower was reported by Women's Wear Daily this morning. (The New York Times also reported this morning that Morgan Stanley has teamed with Tishman Speyer on a proposal to build a new headquarters on the yards.)

Mr. Durst told The Observer that having Conde Nast already secured as an anchor tenant for one of its towers can only help the position of its bid with Vornado.

“We think it’s a tremendous advantage,” he said. “We are very excited about it. We hope it’ll help our bid. We think the team we put together has put us in an excellent position.”

A call to a Conde Nast spokeswoman was not immediately returned.

Baruch Singer has already made a healthy profit on one of the Hudson Yards properties he purchased last year.

On May 18, the occasionally maligned landlord sold 450 11th Avenue for $45 million, according to city records. Mr. Singer purchased the 9,875-square-foot lot in July 2006 for $29.1 million.

Calls to the buyer, 37-11 Development LLC, to see what is planned for the lot, were not immediately returned.  read more »