LuxuryBlurb
Posts Tagged ‘Hudson Yards’
Tuesday, November 13th, 2012
 Posted by Leonard Steinberg on november 13th, 2012
With a vast swath of new buildings under construction or about to begin construction in New York, only a select few of us will enjoy them from the inside, but all of us will be able to enjoy them from the outside……that’s of course the one’s that are attractive. Looking north from Chelsea, the entire ‘city’ being constructed known as Hudson Yards is certain to add an entirely new dimension to the skyline…….above is a rendering of what we can expect.
Tuesday, May 29th, 2012
 Posted by Leonard Steinberg on May 29th, 2012
More exciting news from the West Side…..Another new building is being planned by Gary Barnett, developer of One 57, at the Hudson Yards, the mega development north of West Chelsea experiencing a revolution mostly because it will be connected to Times Square by the # 7 subway extension and to West Chelsea and the Meatpacking District via the Highline Park. (More evidence that a major infrastructure investment can fuel mega-development.)
Extell has hired Jones Lang LaSalle to find tenants for the 56-story, 1.7 million square office tower to rise on the east blockfront of 11th Avenue between W. 33rd and 34th streets, just across the Street from the Javits Center…..of course this will not be built unless they can secure a topnotch major tenant…..we shall see….
Saturday, March 17th, 2012
 Posted by Leonard Steinberg on March 17th, 2012
At Monday night’s Community Board meeting, Friends of the High Linee released the initial design plans for the third and final section of the High Line Park at the Hudson Rail Yards. This third section will connect the West Village/Meatpacking District to West Chelsea and ultimately take you all the way to the Javits Center on Eleventh Avenue where the new subway station is being constructed. The renderings from architects James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro are available on the High Line’s website and they show the final section of the elevated park incorporating familiar elements, as well as several brand new features. The design will be closely integrated to the massive Hudson Yards development, as the park will wrap around the new buildings of the Hudson Yards, and construction is expected to be complete by the end of 2013!
The third section’s total cost will be about $90 million (which comes from donors, not the city’s pockets), and it will be open to the public by spring 2014. The impact of this section will be huge for New York real estate, acting as a connector to neighboring areas in the form of an elevated promenade that will link an entire ‘new city’ to the more established parts of the west side of Manhattan. Watch real estate values soar around this new section: while it is definitely new turf, its proximity to the #7 subway extension will be critical. Now lets hope that what they build around there doesn’t look like the generic vulgarity that is Dubai….
Saturday, February 25th, 2012
 Posted by Leonard Steinberg on February 24th, 2012
Location, location, location, the first three most important rules for the best real estate and yes, this rule even applies in politics! Mitt Romney learned this painful lesson yesterday while delivering a speech in Detroit to a group of 1,000….in Ford Field, an arena that can hold 65,000 people. 64,000 empty seats never looks good for an event. Wrong location!
Yet again, the right location is everything. I hear this same message from other groups too:
RETAILERS: They always prefer being on the East side of a North-West flowing street….why? Shoppers tend to come out later in the day as the sun is overhead and heading west. That leaves the east side of the street sunny and cheerful….and more attractive to shoppers, especially for smaller retailers.
RESTAURANTS: Most restaurants rely surprisngly heavily on walk-in traffic: No walk in traffic, and the chances of paying sky-high rents and making a profit are tough.
ART GALLERIES: While there are a few that like to exist on their own, separated, the majority like to be clustered. This makes life for art buyers, critics and viewers more convenient, and it also maximizes exposure, especially if you are aq newer gallery with less of a following.
FOOD STORES: If you want to know where neighborhoods are gentrifying with almost certainty, look out for a Whole Foods. They spend big bucks analyzing trends, building permits, transportation, street traffic, pedestrian traffic, etc to locate their stores in the most prominent up-and-coming neighborhoods……anaylisis you don’t have to pay for! Remember Houston and the Bowery before Whole Foods came along? Or how south of Chambers Street in Tribeca was poo-pooed….till that Whole Foods opened at 101 Warren Street….and all of a sudden that location became prime! So will a Whole Foods go into the West Chelsea 28th Street and Eleventh Avenue site? It certainly makes sense with the Highline Park, Hudson Yards, The Americano Hotel, a new subway stop at 34th Street and 11th Avenue, not to mention the thousands of new homeowners and renters that have moved there recently…. I used to live at 225 Fifth Avenue and every morning and evening I would see hundreds of tourists at Madison Square Park wondering around staring at the Flatiron and Empire State buildings…..the owners of EATALY must have seen what I saw!
Super-cool boutique hotels and restaurants can have the same effect….think the ACE HOTEL. Around the corner a new Starbucks just opened….
Leonard Steinberg says: Good location has everything to do with simple, common sense and nature: Have you ever tried planting sun-loving flowers in a shady spot?
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
 Posted by Leonard Steinberg on February 14th, 2012
A perfect Valentine’s gift came to-day in the way of proof that the West Side of Midtown will no longer be isolated from the rest of Manhattan: the tunnel connecting 11th Avenue and 34th Street and Times Square is completed and now the finishing process has begun to deliver the # 7 subway extension by the end of 2013. This is great for New York real estate as easily accessible public transportation defines neighborhoods and boosts their value tremendously.
This transportation addition will revolutionize the West Side forever, and area that had been traditionally too far removed from central New York City to be considered convenient. Once the Hudson Yards are built, not to mention the dozens of other buildings sprouting in the area, this neighborhood will become a thriving area, connected to both the hudson River and Central Manhattan.
Seeing is believing!
Sunday, November 6th, 2011
 Posted on November 6, 2011
Mega Cities as a trend will continue to grow through 2050, positioning New York very well for the future: High-density cities are creative, thrilling and less environmentally destructive than sprawling car-based suburbs typical of America. Cities are passports from poverty. They attract poor people, rather than creating them. They are where humans are at their most artistically and technologically creative. It is no longer possible to keep the bulk of humanity down on the farm. By 2050, three-quarters of the world’s population will be urban. That means more cities – and more megacities. These megacities are a big part of humanity’s future and the prospect should be both exhilarating and terrifying. The examples of Tokyo, Seoul and Shanghai show that megacities don’t have to be monstrosities. For many of us, the megacity is our fate. The goal of humanity should be to manage that fate, not succumb to it. Solid urban planning will be essential, providing the necessary infrastructure to support this growth.
Right now we can witness the creation of an entire mini-city within Manhattan at the Hudson Yards and further south in West Chelsea where the volume of construction is pretty astounding. Wisely the City is extending the # 7 subway line to Eleventh Avenue to connect this part of the City to the center. Throw in the Hudson River Park and the Highline Park and the area is well prepared for this next spurt of growth.
Sunday, October 10th, 2010
 Yes, this door, a simple door located in THE CALEDONIA fronting onto The High Line Park, could very well be the most expensive door in the world….. Reliable sources have told us that negotiations between the building and the Parks department have broken down after the building was asked to pay an annual fee of $ 800,000.00 to the Parks department to operate this access point to the High Line Park.
Located in West Chelsea, steps from the Meat-Packing District, THE CALEDONIA is a condominium and rental building with a large Equinox Gym developed by RELATED, the company best known for its development of the Time Warner building at Columbus Circle and the Superior Ink building in Greenwich Village. The building that fronts the High Line Park has a door to access the old elevated railway turned hotspot park that runs from the Meatpacking District all the way north to the Hudson Yards in the 30′s.
“This is another example of a ridiculous City tax that simply won’t work,” says Matt Amico, a broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman and member of the LUXURYLOFT team. Matt, who lives in the Caledonia and is a resident broker expert in the building added: “The building always knew it would have to pay a fee to the Park’s Department for this access point: the building built and provided a bathroom and elevator that the City has an easement to access. But asking for $ 800,000.00 a year for the use of a door is excessive and out of touch with reality. It is this form of New York-style government abuse that causes people and companies to head out of state.”
Friday, July 16th, 2010
 West Chelsea and the hudson Yards on Eleventh Avenue will be connected to midtown by the # 7 subway expansion: In what City Council Speaker Christine Quinn on Thursday called “a great day for the West Side and the future of New York City,” the year-long tunneling project on the Number 7 subway line expansion was completed. City officials held a ceremony marking the completion of the first phase of a $2.1-billion project to bring the subway line to what will eventually be the Hudson Yards redevelopment.
“For decades, people have talked about the Hudson Yards on Manhattan’s Far West Side as a potential opportunity to provide new office space, housing, parks and jobs adjacent to the world’s premier business district, but nothing ever happened,” says Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a statement. “We’re acting to make sure that it does.”
Up next will be work on station entrances and finishes and support facilities such as ventilation and traction power substations. The new service is expected to open in December 2013, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Whether that new service includes a stop at Tenth Avenue and 41st Street, a block east and seven blocks north of its current terminus at Eleventh Avenue and 34th Street, remains to be seen. The Tenth Avenue stop was originally planned but was scrapped in 2008 when the Hudson Yards Development Corp. said the funding wasn’t there to build two stations. However, following a lobbying campaign led by the Real Estate Board of New York, the Bloomberg administration earlier this month said it was applying for $3 million in federal TIGER II grants for a feasibility study on reinstating the Tenth Avenue station, which would cost about $550 million to build—money neither the MTA nor the city says it can spare.
As reported in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, the administration’s proposed redesign of the Tenth Avenue stop would entail building a station with two entrances and two separate platforms, one for eastbound trains and one for those continuing west to the line’s new terminus at Eleventh Avenue. This would allow the station to be built after the rest of the extension is completed, assuming that funds become available.
Completion of the tunneling portion of the 7 line extension, which involved a pair of 1,000-ton tunnel boring machines, occurs a few weeks after another milestone in the redevelopment of Manhattan’s Far West Side. In late May, Related Cos.—originally chosen in 2008 to develop the Hudson Yards project—announced that it had signed a binding contract on a 99-year lease with the MTA for the 26-acre site. It came to the agreement with a new general partner, Oxford Properties Group, the real estate investment and development arm of Canadian pension fund OMERS, the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System.
The new agreement, approved by the MTA’s board this past spring, delays closing on the project until certain triggers are reached in the city’s real estate market. Related will not be obligated to close on the deal, and start paying its 99-year lease, until Midtown’s office availability rate declines to 11%, apartment sale prices reach an average $1,200 per square foot and the AIA Architectural Billings Index hits 50.
Currently, the availability rate in Midtown is 13.7%, according to CB Richard Ellis, while Prudential Douglas Elliman puts the average apartment price at $1,051 per square foot. Work on the Hudson Yards project, which will also include construction of elevated platforms over the Eastern and Western Rail Yards that are in daily use by the MTA’s Long Island Rail Road, is expected to begin after the 7 extension is done.
Soon Midtowners will easily be able to access the recently opened CHELSEA COVE PARK at 25th Street and the West Side highway. Eleventh Avenue continues its ascent…..
|
The true meaning of growth and development…urban sprawl!