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#1 · (Edited)
I just saw this while reading the morning news: JPMorgan Plans New Manhattan Headquarters for 15,000 Workers. Source: Bloomberg.

The new building could be as much as 500 feet taller than the current building 270 Park Ave, which is 707 feet (215m). That would yield a 1200 footer!

Excerpt: JPMorgan Chase & Co. plans to build a headquarters in midtown Manhattan that would combine other offices into a new, taller building for 15,000 employees on Park Avenue.

The 2.5 million-square-foot (232,000-square-meter) building would be the first major project under New York City’s Midtown East rezoning plan, which encourages new office construction in the area, the bank and Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement Wednesday. JPMorgan’s current headquarters at the same site, 270 Park Ave., is an “outdated facility” that was designed in the late 1950s for about 3,500 employees, the company said.

The headquarters could be between 70 and 75 stories, depending on how wide its footprint is, said a person with knowledge of the company’s plans. The current structure is 52 stories. The new building, which has yet to be designed, could be as much as 500 feet (150 meters) taller than the current headquarters, said the person, who asked not to be identified because details of the plans haven’t been publicly disclosed.
 
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#4 ·
All good, thanks for getting a thread on this up and running (I was going to open one up myself when the news dropped). I shot a message to the admins to update the title to fit the standard format, but FYI, you can always edit the title in your first post if you created the thread.

More coverage from Curbed NY this morning:

The first major project to be developed under the new Midtown East rezoning plan is here: Mayor Bill de Blasio and JPMorgan Chase head Jamie Dimon announced today that the company will demolish its old headquarters at 270 Park Avenue, and construct a new, 2.5 million-square-foot building in its place.

“This is our plan for East Midtown in action,” De Blasio said in a statement. “Good jobs, modern buildings and concrete investments that will make East Midtown stronger for the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who work here.”

Currently, Chase occupies the former Union Carbide Building on Park Avenue between 47th and 48th streets. The 52-story skyscraper was built by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in 1961. But Chase’s new HQ will be quite a bit bigger: According to The New York Times, the new tower will rise 70 stories, and could be as much as 500 feet taller than the existing building—which itself is just over 700 feet tall.

Chase had previously been eyeing the Hudson Yards area for a new global headquarters, which would have been spread across two skyscrapers, but the plan ultimately fell through.

As part of the Midtown East rezoning plan, developers are permitted to buy unused air rights from neighboring landmarked buildings in order to go taller, an avenue that Chase intends to pursue for this new building. According to the Times, this could lead to as much as $40 million for infrastructure improvements to nearby streets and sidewalks.

“This is a true win-win-win,” deputy mayor Alicia Glen said in a statement. “The City of New York retains a major company and its employment base, the surrounding community sees improvements in its public spaces, and JPMorgan Chase will have a new headquarters that helps the firm compete for decades to come.”

A design team for the new building has not yet been announced, but the city anticipates that construction will begin in 2019, with the whole thing expected to take five years to complete.
I was a little surprised to see that JPMC wasn't going to move into one of the new westside towers or the WTC, but when you're one of the biggest, wealthiest companies in the world, you can afford to own a building built to your own specifications.

While I'm excited to see a supertall rise here so soon after the re-zoning, I am a little disappointed that a classic International Style building will have to come down to make way.



Here's some insight into the building from the Skidmore Owings & Merrill site:

Built for the Union Carbide Corporation, this sleek tower, built over railroad tracks leading out of Grand Central Terminal, was unlike its neighbors on Park Avenue when it opened. Not only was it set back in a plaza, but it also stood out for its innovative structural engineering design, which responded to the constraints of the site.

Because of its location, the 52-story tower could have no basement under most of its bulk, and its column-footings had to be poured between active rail tracks. To counteract train vibrations — more than 500 trains passed by each day — all columns were set on vibration pads. Moreover, SOM designed the building so an underground pedestrian passage to Grand Central could be installed.

The tower's outer skin consisted of approximately 11 acres of glass, stainless steel mullions, and black sandwich panels. Inside, the ceiling system integrated lighting, air-conditioning, and connections for movable partitions — a cutting-edge feature at the time. Adjoining the tower was an annex that contained an employee cafeteria and exhibition hall.

In 1983, SOM renovated the building for a new tenant: the Manufacturers Hanover Corporation. The project presented the unique challenge of retrofitting a classic, modern skyscraper to accommodate new program requirements, energy conservation, and contemporary technology. SOM's involvement with the building continued into the 1990s, when the firm provided design services for the merger of Chemical Bank with Manufacturers Hanover Trust.
I think the construction of this tower will be a fascinating watch, considering it's over the top of the GCT tracks.
 
#3 ·
#836 ·
#5 ·
I'm hoping that the tower portion will remain and will be incorporated into the new HQ while the much shorter portion of the building fronting Madison Avenue, which has a large footprint itself, will be demolished for the new tower. 270 Park is a midcentury gem and I would think it would make more financial sense to renovate its interior rather than raze the 200m+ skyscraper piece by piece.
 
#7 ·
I have very mixed feelings about this new JP HQ. On one hand I was constantly adressing to replace some of those "ugly boxes" but now that this might come true, I feel like a portion of NYs identity might get lost, since these kind of towers are virtually a part of the NY vibe. I wouldnt mind to loose 666 5th e.g. but some of these black Seagram like boxes surely have their aesthatics, IMO. So I guess a nalance between preserving and redevelopjng is important.

Hopefully this midtown east rezoning will lead to a lot of LPC protection for the older buildings there, and force and put pressure for developers to go insanely tall. Imagine Park Avenue redeveloped into a huge vibrant stretch of up to 15 supertalls, with the infrastructure renovated, new businesses and retail added.
 
#9 ·
The articles all say they're looking at something in the ballpark of 500 ft. above the roof of the current tower, so around 1200 ft.

I'm hoping that the tower portion will remain and will be incorporated into the new HQ while the much shorter portion of the building fronting Madison Avenue, which has a large footprint itself, will be demolished for the new tower. 270 Park is a midcentury gem and I would think it would make more financial sense to renovate its interior rather than raze the 200m+ skyscraper piece by piece.
I love that idea. Basically you'd make an adjacent, 1200 ft. second tower, attached to the tower on Park (maybe in the same style or a 21st update of International), and the original would basically be a 700 ft. setback. Something more or less like this:


JPMC Addition Visualization by Marshall Knight, on Flickr

The issue is though, I'm pretty sure the 2.5M square feet must include the original building. I think, even with the new zoning (and even though JPMC has already sunk quite a bit of money into a LEED Platinum refurbishment) the only way to get the new top of the line office space built would be to demolish the whole thing. Hope I'm wrong though!
 
#13 ·
That would be 145 E. 60th, the site of the former Subway Inn on the upper east side. The most recent render is a design by Archillier...



...but there were a couple others in consideration and it's unclear whether that's the design the developers have chosen (or whether this project is still alive, since there was some turnover in the development partnership).
 
#25 ·
Somebody in the comments section of an article I read suggested that Chase offer the owners of 277 Park Avenue a trade. I doubt that they would go for it, as 277 is still owned by the family which built it in the first place, and I suspect they're quite proud of it.

However, the swap idea itself has merit, if applied to a different building. Perhaps one of those early post war wedding cake buildings, which are far more outdated than the recently retrofitted 270 Park. Maybe Chase could offer the owners of one of those (somebody mentioned 300 Park Avenue as a candidate) a trade. The owners of the older, smaller building get the keys to 270 Park, which underwent a massive renovation and refit in 2012, Chase gets another building (shorter and would cost less to take down) whose site they could use to put their new HQ, and we all get a new supertall to gush over. Everybody wins.
 
#27 ·
^Apparently the church right in that neighborhood (apologies, I can't remember its name offhand) is planning to sell its air rights, so they could do a swap for one of those wedding cake buildings right close by, and offer to take those pesky air rights off the church's hands, perhaps.
 
#34 ·
Per the Tishman Speyer website, the total site area of MetLife is 150,700 square feet. With the Midtown East rezoning's maximum FAR of 24 (including the District Improvement Bonus), that would yield a 3.6 million square foot tower, about 800k more than the current building's 2.84 million.

Compared to NYC's largest 21st century office buildings -- 1 World Trade Center: 2.6 million; 30 Hudson Yards: 2.6 million; One Vanderbilt: 1.75 million -- that would be far larger.

It's hard to imagine MetLife getting razed, but doing so would yield the largest building in the city (given modern floor heights, I have to think it would be a megatall). The rezoning is designed to replace aging office stock, with the greatest emphasis directly adjacent to Grand Central; MetLife fits the bill, maybe more so than any other building... so maybe we shouldn't be too shocked if it goes in the next decade or two.
 
#30 ·
it is very huge, but also old. So does it 8ffer office space that provides what modern office space needs. A fun fact about the Panam tower is, when they still used punch cards for computers, iirc, 5 floors of the tower were used just for storage of the punch cards.
 
#36 ·
A drop in the proverbial bucket. And further proof that no matter how pedigreed, a box is still a box.
 
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