[De Minimis NY]

The landmarking of the Yale Club and its neighbor were a great outcome, as we'll end up with taller towers while preserving historical architecture at the street level. Given the economic incentives, it's possible that all of these air rights will be concentrated on the MTA site, resulting in an incredibly tall tower.

The Vanderbilt Corridor rezoning increased FAR in the area to 24 as-of-right. Landmarked buildings can take advantage of this by selling unused air rights to other buildings in the corridor (once the Midtown East rezoning passes, the resale zone will be increased to include all of Midtown East as well).

However, rather than sell the air rights to a site on a different block, the best way to maximize value would be for the Yale Club and its neighbor to merge zoning lots with the MTA property instead. That approach would allow Brookfield to absorb the as-of-right FAR from its landmarked neighbors (24 for the block) and also make additional contributions to the transportation fund on its neighbors’ behalf, which would allow it to increase the FAR for the entire block to 30.

The end result would be a tower with nearly the same square footage as One Vanderbilt, but on a site with half the footprint—in other words, a VERY tall tower.

Normally that would be uneconomical, as the floor plates will be somewhat awkward for office use and so there may not be enough demand to justify the additional costs of constructing that tall. In this case, however, this is the only site that can take full advantage of those air rights, so maybe that tips the scales towards building bigger here… at least I hope it does.