New York City Development News

[desertpunk]

Via Curbed: http://dnainfo.com/20100624/manhatta...s-deputy-mayor

Deutsche Bank Site Could Remain a Hole in the Ground for a Decade, Says Deputy Mayor
June 24, 2010
Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber wants to delay building the Tower 5 site until the Downtown commercial market recovers.

Nothing will be built on the cursed Deutsche Bank site for the next decade, the city's outgoing deputy mayor said Thursday.
Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber said the city and state should leave the World Trade Center Tower 5 site vacant until lower Manhattan’s office market recovers over the next 10 years, rather than build a mixed-use development there sooner. “There will be [demand] for office space in lower Manhattan,” said Lieber, who is leaving city government later this summer. “[But] it’s going to take place a decade from now.”

But Community Board 1 Chairwoman Julie Menin said she sees no reason to wait 10 years when residential and hotel developers are interested in the Deutsche site now. Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber believes the demand for new office space downtown will return. (Gary Gershoff/Getty Images)“To have another blighted plot of land, another hole in the community, makes no sense,” Menin said at a meeting of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, of which she and Lieber are board members. ”We’re sitting on this and we don’t have a plan.”

The demolition of the Deutsche Bank building, which was heavily damaged by the collapse of the Twin Towers, has been plagued by tragedy and delays. Two firefighters died in a 2007 blaze at the building, which resulted in a criminal inquiry and the indictment of three construction supervisors and a contractor with reputed mob ties. The total cost for the state to buy, decontaminate and tear down the building has ballooned to about $300 million.

JPMorgan Chase once planned to build a 1.2-million-square-foot skyscraper at the Tower 5 site, but the bank scrapped the idea after taking over Bear Stearns’ plush Midtown headquarters in 2008. John Cicero, managing principal at commercial real estate consulting firm Miller Cicero, agreed with Lieber that it could take 10 years — or longer — for the market to support office space at Tower 5.

The World Trade Center Tower 5 site could sit empty for a decade or more once the Deutsche Bank building is demolished. (Lower Manhattan Development Corp.)“It’s going to be an extended period of time,” Cicero said. “Historically, lower Manhattan has trailed Midtown in terms of absorbing vacant office space." Menin started her exchange with Lieber Thursday morning by urging the LMDC and Port Authority to formally solicit new proposals for the Tower 5 site, which she hopes New York University and others will be interested in. Lieber replied that opening the door to alternate proposals for Tower 5 would be “a useless exercise,” and could even make it harder to lease the office space already under construction at the World Trade Center site. “The more we mess with this, the more uncertainty [we create], the more difficult it will be to get tenants to come down and occupy space,” Lieber said.

City and state agencies would have to sign off on a new use for Tower 5, and Lieber’s objection indicates that the city likely will not do so. The LMDC is in the process of demolishing the Deutsche Bank building and expects to finish by the end of the year, at which point the site could become


Read more: http://dnainfo.com/20100624/manhatta...#ixzz0rsVesfGZ

[desertpunk]

From Curbed: http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2010/0...new_domino.php

Revenge of the Megaprojects
Council and Developer Reach Compromise on New Domino



Tuesday, June 29, 2010, by Sara

As the City Council's vote on the controversial New Domino project approaches, the project's developer has faced some political pressure to compromise on size and affordable housing in the plan to convert the sugar refinery into a 2,200-unit complex. Turns out all the political wrangling worked, because the Brooklyn Paper reports developer Community Preservation Corporation Resources has agreed to chop six floors from its two planned 40-story towers but still keep all 660 units of affordable housing. Why so accommodating all of a sudden? A petition by local industrial landowners against the project means that Council now needs a supermajority, not just a majority, to pass New Domino. On the other side, Mayor Bloomberg asked Councilman Steve Levin, New Domino's enemy no. 1, to be more open to compromise. City Council approval of the project is now looking like a pretty sure thing.

[desertpunk]

From the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/ny...ref=realestate

$1.4 Billion Development at Sugar Refinery in Brooklyn Wins Key Council Support
By CHARLES V. BAGLI
Published: June 29, 2010



The $1.4 billion plan to transform the former Domino Sugar refinery into a residential development on the Brooklyn waterfront won critical support in the City Council on Tuesday, after the developer agreed to cut the size of the project’s two tallest towers and provide a shuttle bus to the nearest subway. The project at the defunct Domino Sugar refinery in Brooklyn will offer 660 of its planned 2,200 apartments to poor and working-class New Yorkers.
The New Domino project, on the East River in Williamsburg, had divided a once-working-class neighborhood in desperate need of housing for longtime residents but overwhelmed by a wave of new luxury towers during the recent real estate boom.

The developer, the Community Preservation Corporation, has promised that 600 of the 2,200 apartments at the 11-acre Domino site will be for poor and working-class New Yorkers. The corporation is also preserving Domino’s refinery building and its 40-foot tall sign, while providing a public esplanade, shops and office and community space. “This is a way of turning a dead industrial site into a vibrant, mixed-use and mixed-income community that can be a model for redevelopment,” said Michael Lappin, president of the Community Preservation Corporation, which owns the site.

During last-minute negotiations, the developer agreed to reduce two planned 40-story towers to 36 floors. The lost space from those floors will be added to other buildings on the site. The corporation also agreed that construction, building service and eventual supermarket workers at the New Domino would be paid prevailing wages. As a result, the Council’s land use committee and a subcommittee on zoning voted unanimously to approve the project. The vote is regarded as the last political hurdle for New Domino project, although the project must still go back to the City Planning Commission and the full Council for final approval next month.

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, labored behind the scenes to work out a compromise with the developer and the project’s chief critics, who include Councilman Stephen Levin of Brooklyn and his mentor, Vito J. Lopez, the Brooklyn assemblyman who often plays a pivotal role in city and state housing developments. Mr. Lopez had demanded that the developer reduce both the height of the buildings and the total number of apartments, while increasing the number of subsidized units. But Diana Reyna, a Brooklyn councilwoman who worked with the Community Preservation Corporation and is a political adversary of Mr. Lopez, feared that reducing the number of units would undermine the financial health of the project, in a neighborhood where 51 residential buildings under construction are already at a standstill because of the recession. Already, she said, the corporation had promised that 30 percent of the units would be affordable when most other rental housing developers were including only 20 percent.

In the end, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg urged Mr. Lopez to come around.

Mr. Levin issued his own press release on Tuesday taking credit for the deal. He said he was pleased with the outcome and looked forward to working with the developer “to ensure that all the community’s needs are addressed as the project is built and inhabited.” Separately, Ms. Reyna said the New Domino was “a true reflection of a collaborative process with the community.” Rob Solano, executive director of Churches United for Fair Housing, added: “The true winners of this campaign are the families who will be receiving affordable housing.”

[Teslatron]

During last-minute negotiations, the developer agreed to reduce two planned 40-story towers to 36 floors.

Typical fucking bullshit. I mean seriously???
"oh boy I can't live near a 40 story building, but a 36 story is ok."

[desertpunk]

Originally Posted by Teslatron

Typical fucking bullshit. I mean seriously???
"oh boy I can't live near a 40 story building, but a 36 story is ok."

All part of the game. Developers always overscale their proposals in anticipation of taking their little haircut in the approval process. What gets the approval rolling here are all those affordable hosing units. So it's more like "I can't live near a 40 story building, but I can't wait to live IN a 36 story building".

[Teslatron]

Barclays Center in Brooklyn finally started actual construction.

[desertpunk]

Hello 1936: http://therealdeal.com/newyork/artic...rce=feedburner

NYC office construction "at a virtual standstill": report
July 01, 2010
Richard Anderson

New construction starts for New York City office buildings declined significantly in the first four months of the year, according to the New York Building Congress. The value of office building construction starts during the first four months of 2010 totaled $163 million, which puts it on track to reach $489 million by the end of the year -- a figure that pales in comparison to 2009's $2.6 billion and 2008's $1.3 billion. Renovations and construction on existing office buildings comprised the majority of office building activity, according to the report, with little ground-up construction momentum so far this year. Richard Anderson, president of the building trade group, said that few projects have come down the pipeline. "As office tower projects, such as Goldman Sachs and 11 Times Square, were completed, the projects we hoped would replace them, such as the Gem Tower and 250 West 55th Street, are on hold," Anderson said. "With the exception of the World Trade Center Towers 1 and 4, and the Gotham Center project in Long Island City, new office construction is at a virtual standstill."

[HK999]

that's true, WTC is the exception. here on SSC most of the construction threads are dominated by condo / hotel towers.

[desertpunk]

From Curbed: http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2010/0...enue_tower.php

Zombie Buildings

Foreclosure and a Redesign Coming to Planned Sixth Avenue Tower
Wednesday, July 7, 2010,



Gargantuan new towers have been popping up along Sixth Avenue, testing the northern boundaries of Chelsea. Glassy giants like the Eventi hotel and Tower 111. The Costas Kondylis-designed 855 Sixth Avenue was supposed to join them, but the site slipped into the dark wormhole of foreclosure when co-developers Yitzak Tessler and the Chetrits defaulted on over $100 million in loans. That situation will soon be resolved, the Post's Lois Weiss reports, but don't count on seeing that 355,000-square-foot Kondylis design coming to life anytime soon. Or ever.

Durst Fetner Associates, a partnership of developers Hal Fetner and the Durst Organization, has purchased the note on the development site, putting it in position to take ownership at a foreclosure auction to be held within the next 90 days. Weiss reports "new architects are being interviewed to develop a 'green' building to fit within their portfolio," but wouldn't the most eco-friendly solution be recycling Kondylis's design instead of tossing it in the trash?

[HK999]

thx for posting that - finally the last tower will be built. i wonder about the height, you got any information about that? i guess it will be a highrise ... ~ 170m.

[desertpunk]

Originally Posted by HK999

thx for posting that - finally the last tower will be built. i wonder about the height, you got any information about that? i guess it will be a highrise ... ~ 170m.

According to Curbed, the new owner is "planning a redesign" so it's up in the air as to the height of a new tower. It would be interesting if that redesign was just redoing interior layouts for rentals, not condos...

[desertpunk]

Still waiting...
435 Seventh Avenue: http://www.pavarinimcgovern.com/expe...th_avenue.html



Project Information
Owner: Vornado Realty Trust
Architect: Brennan Beer Gorman/Architects
Role: Construction Manager
Contract Value: $12 Million
Size: 42,000-SF/3-Stories
Completion Date: September 2002

"For national developer Vornado Realty Trust, Pavarini McGovern was the construction manager for a new retail building at 435 Seventh Avenue in New York City on an extremely busy corner site location adjacent to Pennsylvania Station. Approximately 50,000 people per day during rush hour pass this busy transit hub. New building construction consisted of a structural steel frame with concrete on metal deck and clad with a glass curtainwall system. The new building is adjacent to an existing subway entrance, and therefore required the construction of a new entrance to the subway within the building footprint. The design of the structure will enable our client to construct a 20-story glass and steel office tower atop the existing retail store at a future date (see tower rendering above). "

The site:
image hosted on flickr

[desertpunk]

805 Columbus Sq.

image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10342485@N05/

image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10342485@N05/

image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10342485@N05/

[desertpunk]

3 Columbus earlier this year:

image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10342485@N05/

[desertpunk]

From Curbed: http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2007/0...l_over_you.php

World Trade Center Redevelopment

Work Beginning on WTC's Tower 3, Like, Right Now!
Friday, July 9, 2010





The sun is shining. The air is warm. The trees are dancing in the breeze. Friends, it's a great day to launch a new World Trade Center tower. Fresh off the heated competition between developers to buy a stake in the artist formerly known as the Freedom Tower (See? People do want these things!), a bigwig at Silverstein Properties just said construction is kicking off today on Tower 3, the Richard Rogers-designed behemoth with bulging trading floors and slight TV tower facial features. Well, let's call it pre-pre-construction. The "mobilization stage" will put Tower 3 on the path to a December 2014 completion, one year after Larry Silverstein's Tower 4—to be occupied mostly by government agencies—and approximately 6,000 years (give or take) before Tower 2. Will T3 meet its new deadline? If not, it should still beat those 2020 predictions.

[HK999]

NYC construction status

(updated list, includes U/C, App, Prep, Pro) -- 12.07.2010 --

SUPERTALLS

U/C:

- 1WTC (417m roof, 541m spire, currently working on the 30th floor)
- 2WTC (390m roof, 414m spire, foundation work / piling)
- 3WTC (349m roof, 378m spire, foundation work / piling)
- Carnegie 57 (306m roof, formerly known as 157 W. 57th St., steel rising soon)

Approved:

- Tower Verre (320m roof - needs a redesign, will be built)
- The Gira Sole (305m roof- when they finish the subway tunnel (soon) this will be U/C, Prep)
- Tishman Speyer Towers (336m x 2, on hold, Prep)

Proposed:

- 15 Penn Plaza (371m roof, currently in the approval phase, decision if hotel penn will be razed or not)
- Midtown Towers (371m roof - aka One Manhattan West)
- Brookfield Properties Towers (370m roof, they need to build the platform first)
- New York Tower (305m roof)
- Edgar Towers Skyvoid (396m roof, newest supertall proposal)

SKYSCRAPERS

U/C:

- 4WTC (297m roof)
- 440 West 42nd street (204m roof)
- 99 Church Street (278m roof, construction started, currently on hold)
- 56 Leonard Street (253m roof, construction started, currently on hold)
- Beekman Tower (267m roof, already T/O, cladding nearly done - 5 floors to go)
- The Setai (200m+, already T/O, will be completed this fall)

Approved:

- 250 East 57th Street (218m roof, Phase I already U/C, Phase II following)
- 366 10th Avenue (236m roof)
- 50 West Street (213m roof, on hold)
- 610 Lexington Avenue (215m roof, on hold)
- 5WTC (228m roof)

Proposed:

- 1 Madison Avenue Addition (285m roof)
- PANYNJ Tower (261m roof)
- 260 12th Avenue Hotel (252m)
- Two Manhattan West (285m roof)
- 45 Broad Street (216m roof)

HIGHRISES

U/C:

(counting only 100m+ buildings)

- 8 Stone Street (123m roof, T/O)
- 11 Times Square (183m roof, T/O)
- 123 Washington Street (192m roof, T/O, will be completed this year)
- 150 Amsterdam (143m roof, T/O)
- 770 11th Avenue (also known as Clinton Park, 106m roof)
- 785 Eighth Ave (173m roof, T/O)
- 839 Sixth Avenue (also known as Eventi, 187m, T/O, soon to be completed)
- One Madison Park (189m roof, 196m spire, T/O, soon to be completed, also known as The Saya)
- Tower 111 (169m roof, T/O)
- 246 Spring Street (also known as Trump Soho, 138m roof, T/O soon to be completed)
- International Gem Tower (180m roof)
- 70 West 45th Street (157m roof, T/O)
- 510 Madison Ave (118m roof, T/O)
- 80 Dekalb (111m roof, T/O)


--- upcoming --- (there are at least 60 100m+ towers U/C, App, Prep or Pro in NYC)

[HK999]

guys, look ...! http://nyc-architecture.com/?p=687

they used my post , especially at the end of the article ... 100%.

[desertpunk]

Originally Posted by HK999

guys, look ...! http://nyc-architecture.com/?p=687

they used my post , especially at the end of the article ... 100%.

LOL Bloggers who do cut and paste "journalism"? I'm in shock!

[HK999]

Originally Posted by desertpunk

LOL Bloggers who do cut and paste "journalism"? I'm in shock!

yeah, no big deal here lol . btw feel free to help me to extend the list (100m+ highrises U/C)! i'm pretty sure there are some i missed...

[Teslatron]

http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/loca...r-20100712-apx

City's Newest Bridge Hauled Downriver
CHRIS CAROLA, Associated Press Writer

COEYMANS, N.Y. (AP) - A marine transportation crew prepared Monday to haul a prefabricated, 350-foot-long, 2,400-ton bridge from an upstate Hudson River port to New Jersey before its eventual installation over New York City's Harlem River.

The replacement span for the nearly 110-year-old Willis Avenue Bridge linking Upper Manhattan and the South Bronx was moved early Monday morning onto two barges welded side-by-side and docked at the Port of Coeymans, 10 miles south of Albany.

The new swing bridge is scheduled to depart Tuesday morning for Bayonne, N.J., where it's expected to arrive later Wednesday. It will be docked in Bayonne for a couple weeks before being hauled to its permanent site just south of the existing Willis Avenue Bridge.

Installation of the new bridge is scheduled to begin Aug. 2. Removal of the existing span is set for Sept. 20.

The new bridge was built at the three-year-old, privately owned port. The span rested atop a large, box-shaped steel frame while supported at both ends by towers of scaffolding. On Sunday morning, the bridge and the steel frame were placed onto four separate trailers, each 100 feet long. The trailers slowly transported the span about 1,000 feet to the dock. The move, which involved taking a right turn, took about 40 minutes, according to port spokeswoman Karen Moreau.

Getting 4.8 million pounds of steel the final few yards to the barges required four 50-foot-long steel ramps connecting the vessels' decks to the docks. The move was timed to the peak of high tide for this stretch of the Hudson estuary. The 4½-hour process involved precise measuring of the height of the tide and pumping ballast water through the barges to keep them level with the dock, Moreau said.

"They had to measure, pump, roll," she said.

While the bridge was being inched aboard, U.S. Coast Guard and local police patrol boats closed the river to all traffic to prevent wakes that could throw the load off kilter and risk capsizing the barges.

Other river traffic restrictions and closings will be in place as the bridge makes the 130-mile journey to Bayonne, and again in early August when the bridge is hauled the 15 miles north to the Harlem River. The last leg of the journey will be made via the East River because the load's height, 82 feet from the barges' decks to the span's top crossbeam, is too tall for the bridges over the narrow Harlem River.

All the heavy lifting was carried out by a crew from Mammoet, a Dutch company that that specializes in moving extraordinarily large objects. Its past projects include raising the Russian submarine Kursk after it was sunk by an explosion a decade ago, and transporting the 400-foot-long, 5.5-million pound new Providence River Bridge 12 miles up Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay in August 2006.

Barend Schuring, Mammoet's project manager for the bridge job, said each barge is 180 feet long and, when welded together, have a total width of 108 feet.

"They made a big square out of it," Schuring said.

A crew from Weeks Marine Inc. is handling the bridge transportation in a joint venture with the Kiewit Corp., the Omaha, Neb.-based construction company contracted by New York City for the $612 million bridge replacement project.

The new bridge will replace a span that opened in 1901 and carries more than 70,000 vehicles a day. The existing bridge will remain open to traffic as the new span is being floated into place atop foundations and piers.

The project is scheduled for completion in December 2012.