| NYguy |
Jun 7, 2013 6:02 PM |
One57 is nearing the endgame, Barnett expects the success to flow directly into this one.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/re...ewanted=1&_r=0
Looking Down on the Empire State
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By JULIE SATOW
June 7, 2013
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Not since builders stuck a dirigible mooring mast to the top of the Empire State Building, eclipsing the Chrysler Building as the world’s tallest tower, have developers been engaged in the type of skyscraper war that New York City is now witnessing.
But unlike the rivalries of the early 20th century, when buildings pierced the clouds to house corporate headquarters, this one involves no fewer than three alpine condominiums with penthouses on the 90th floor and higher, which are being built to woo big-spending American hedge funders, Chinese magnates and Russian oligarchs. Two of them will rise above the 1,250-foot-high Empire State Building, by 300 feet and 146 feet, respectively (although the Empire State Building officially tops off at 1,454 feet when its lighting rod is included).
There is the often arduous and lengthy process of buying up air rights — or unused development rights — from adjacent properties; borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars in financing; and engineering architecturally unique structures that can rise 90 stories or more. The construction, meanwhile, includes costly techniques to prevent the towers from swaying in the wind, and thicker support walls and columns that can scuttle some layout plans. Then there is the pure physicality of hoisting materials and laborers 1,000 feet into the air, sometimes creating safety hazards and delays.
Considering these complexities, and the fact that the real estate market is just now recovering from one of its biggest crashes in decades, the pace of this skyscraper competition is breathtaking. Trump World Tower, opening in 2001 at 861 feet high — its black edifice looming above the East River on First Avenue — held the title of city’s tallest residential building until 2011, with the opening of 8 Spruce Street, the 870-foot undulating rental building at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. Since then, developers have begun six separate projects that will shatter 8 Spruce’s record. And even those that don’t quite break that record are marketing their height as a selling point. At 56 Leonard Street, for example, the Herzog & De Meuron-designed condominium is just 821 feet in height, but it has made much of the fact it will be the tallest residential building in TriBeCa, charging as much as $50 million for a penthouse. The competition is even spreading beyond Manhattan, with the tallest tower in Queens, a 50-story condominium in Long Island City, now under way.
It is not surprising that in a city known for its outsized personalities, many of these projects involve New York’s most conspicuous developers. Harry B. Macklowe, for example, is developing 432 Park Avenue, the 96-story condominium in Midtown that, at 1,396 feet, will be the tallest residential tower in the Western Hemisphere when it is completed in 2015. Best known for his buccaneering style, Mr. Macklowe is a poster child for the last real estate boom and bust, mostly because at the cycle’s pinnacle in 2007, he spent an astounding $7 billion to acquire seven Midtown towers, only to lose them in the crash. Mr. Macklowe began envisioning 432 Park in 2006, when he bought the former Drake Hotel. But he loaded the property with debt and was soon facing foreclosure. CIM Group, a private equity firm, eventually stepped in to save him, although he remains a co-developer. More than one-third of the units are now in contract for nearly $1 billion in potential sales, including a $95 million penthouse that could set a price record if it closes. The sales office, on the 21st floor of the GM Building on Fifth Avenue, sits 100 feet shy of the lowest floors of 432 Park’s condominium residences, giving potential buyers just a hint of the views to come.
Where Mr. Macklowe is brash — he performed in the Off Broadway show “Old Jews Telling Jokes” and sometimes reverts to a period accent while telling stories — Gary Barnett, the developer of the tower that may eventually eclipse 432 Park for the Western Hemisphere record, is understated. Mr. Barnett is by some measures the city’s most active developer. Indeed One57, the 90-story, 1,004-foot-tall tower he is building at 157 West 57th Street, was to have taken the hemisphere record until it was supplanted by 432 Park. But he may yet reclaim the title with his planned 227 West 57th. Just west of One57, the tower has enough air rights to rise 1,550 feet; a feature will be the city’s first Nordstrom department store.
The process can take years, and requires slow and deliberate strategizing. For One57, for example, Mr. Barnett began buying the air rights some 16 years ago. “Building tall is not about bragging rights,” he said recently, during a conversation in the nondescript conference room of his offices on Third Avenue; he was wearing slacks and a mock turtleneck. “What drives the building is design, the views, the economics.” He built One57 to its full height “because we couldn’t get in all the air rights any other way — once you have it, the ability to build it, I didn’t want to just throw it away.”
Still, deciding a building’s height is a judgment call, and “there have been times that I had air rights but I didn’t end up using them,” he said. Extreme height adds time and uncertainty to a project, as well as construction costs. One57, for instance, was waylaid when Hurricane Sandy snapped off a crane boom and left it dangling far above the street. Mr. Barnett is weighing these considerations for his Nordstrom property, he said, and said he may choose to forego the full 1,550 feet.
Zoning in Midtown also helps, since it can allow for extremely tall buildings. In the case of 432 Park, for example, the floor plate was 8,500 square feet and Mr. Macklowe had some 500,000 square feet to utilize. “So the height was just a matter of arithmetic,” he said.
“We didn’t start out by saying we wanted to build the tallest residential building in Manhattan,” he added, “but as we got there, and saw it was within the zoning, we went for it. It was only later that we recognized the significance of using this as a tag line.”
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