NEW YORK | 708 First Avenue (Con Ed) 4 Towers | FT | FLOORS

[NYguy]

The good ole days...


https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/n...?adppopup=true






Compared to a "maybe". People these days really don't know how lucky they are. They wouldn't survive any other era.

[Zapatan]

Those public spaces look amazing. What are the odds this actually gets built as is?

[JDRCRASH]

I think it’d be so dope to have one of those “Trav-O-Lator” systems in the cantilevered portion like the ones they have at the airports.

[Busy Bee]

I'm probably alone on this but I still think the central historic Waterside plant building should have been saved and retrofitted into a large new development. That could have been the perfect blend of old and new. Damn PCBs.

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by Zapatan

Those public spaces look amazing. What are the odds this actually gets built as is?

Slim to none, I would say. But BIG is still on to design the complex, so there's no reason they couldn't get something to look just as nice. The towers are really simple once you eliminate that skybridge.

...it’s a package deal: no casino, no affordable housing.

“We’re not required to do it,” said Michael Hershman, the firm’s chief executive, referring to plans approved by the city several years ago that would allow the developer to build mixed-use towers on the site without affordable housing. But the addition of a casino, which requires the support of local politicians and community members, would make the lower-cost housing “economically viable,” he said.

Without a doubt, we’d have to reimagine the project as a whole” if the casino license is not granted, said Mr. Ingels, the founder of the architecture firm — because of both the casino’s location on the site and its financial benefits to the development.

[NYguy]

https://www.archpaper.com/2024/02/an...oogle_vignette

AN sits down with Bjarke Ingels to learn about his plans for the Museum of Freedom and Democracy





By Daniel Roche
February 28, 2024

AN: What does it mean to you to design a Museum of Freedom and Democracy? Can you walk me through the design?

Bjarke Ingels (BI): First of all, it’s an incredible honor and privilege. It’s a daunting task to build such a building on such a prominent place in Manhattan, right next to the United Nations.

The Museum of Freedom and Democracy will be designed like an urban agora. It will provide a journey through different cultural, political, and organizational milestones that have led to the formation, and evolution of democracy. Our goal is to allow visitors to immerse themselves in the actual artifacts that are somehow associated with the stepping stones that led to the formation of democracy as it exists today.

AN: What precedents did you use when designing the Museum of Freedom and Democracy? Where did you find inspiration?

BI: We looked at American architecture and experiential design. For the overall building, we tried to give it an almost sort of universal, symbolic form that represents coming together, or assembly. In Scandinavian countries, a lot of the first assembly spaces were where people came together to make decisions for the people and the region. This was before the formation of nation states. The architecture was this sort of circular organization made of stone where everyone would meet in a circle for gathering. We were looking at these spaces.

Then of course we looked at the Agora and amphitheaters in ancient Greece. Our design echoes ancient Greek heritage. So in that sense, the Museum of Freedom and Democracy has two main elements: It’s a circle of stone that creates a museum experience in the form of a loop within, but it also has this kind of iconic backdrop with archetypal elements that symbolize coming together and congregation.

AN: The agora is a very powerful symbol.

BI: Yeah. So for the Museum of Democracy and Freedom, we’re thinking of using Greek marble, a material synonymous with the cradle of democracy.

AN: Is it difficult designing so close to the UN?

BI: To that question, I can say maybe two things. I mean, the United Nations is a restricted place because of the safety and security requirements of the public dignitaries, officials, and politicians who go there. Even though it is a public space with public buildings, it’s very restricted. So what we could do was try to make a genuinely public space that’s an extension of the city out to the water’s edge, which invites in the local community.

Second, if there’s one thing that really characterizes New York, it’s that within the relatively limited acreage of Manhattan’s bedrock, there’s an incredible diversity of activities, functions, and programs that exist. It’s the diversity of activities and places where people live, like event spaces, and museums, plazas, and boardrooms, that makes it vibrant.

We decided to place the gambling underneath the programmatic diversity that the park and Museum of Freedom and Democracy above affords us. It’s the gambling that allows us to actually make such a big public destination on such a valuable site.

AN: So the Museum of Democracy and Freedom will be on top of the casino?

BI: Yes. The spaces for gambling are submerged, so in a very literal way, gambling becomes the site’s economic foundation and also the actual foundation for all these spaces where people will go and live.

AN: Can you talk about how the towers at Freedom Plaza will respond to the UN Headquarters? And how they’ll compliment the East River’s skyline?

BI: First and foremost, the site we’re working with spans the equivalent of three city blocks. So I think in a very similar way to how the UN’s original architects—Le Corbusier, Wallace Harrison, and Oscar Niemeyer—laid out the United Nations Headquarters, we are also creating a series of blocks to build an open space on the East River. You can think of it as a modernist pocket park.

On the East River, the UN created this kind of island of modernism, as an almost international home for the global community on the isle of Manhattan. I think, in some ways, because we actually have three blocks, and because of the elevation change, and of course the presence of FDR Drive below, we actually have a chance to unite those three blocks and create a Freedom Plaza of five acres of public open space with grass and trees. This will connect the city to the water’s edge and create a new public face for the city.

The hotels, condos, and affordable housing are set at two corners: The homes are to the south and the hotels will face the plaza for the community that supports daily life in the neighborhood. The two hotels are designed to create almost like a gateway that face the United Nations. They become an entrance on top of the landscape which leads to Freedom Plaza. Everything will be stone, and landscaping elements will grow out of the bedrock. And then you have the major buildings, the residential and hotel towers, on the corners. We’re thinking of the towers as siblings to the UN that compliment the headquarters in their linear articulation that bends. We plan to use different shades of metal: a cooler one for the residences and a warmer tone for the hotels. They’re similar in nature but have variations.


AN: What challenges have you faced on this project?

BI: In the spirit of the United Nations, both the challenge and joys of this project have been how it will be home to so many different programs and activities. The collaboration we’ve had with Soloviev and Mohegan has been amazing.

As architects and planners, we have been the custodians of this process. I think everyone has really understood the synergistic benefits of allowing each activity to have its ideal placements. In that sense, we’ve been able to create almost five acres of public, open, green space because everybody understood that it’s important for this site to have a public character and generosity that brings the life of the city to the water’s edge.

Everyone at the table has had an understanding and desire to think about the whole and what works best for the city and its communities. Sometimes this means giving up a piece of the pie in order to create a greater whole.

[NYguy]

Large images from the article...

[Busy Bee]

Little known fact... In FDR's Four Freedoms speech, one of the freedoms was the ability to lose all your money and/or saddle yourself with debt from gambling.

[UrbanImpact]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

I'm probably alone on this but I still think the central historic Waterside plant building should have been saved and retrofitted into a large new development. That could have been the perfect blend of old and new. Damn PCBs.

Perhaps that can happen with the huge Ravenwood Station across the East River in Queens in the future, like the Battersea in London.

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Little known fact... In FDR's Four Freedoms speech, one of the freedoms was the ability to lose all your money and/or saddle yourself with debt from gambling.

I believe it was George Washington, at his inauguration on Wall Street, who declared that one day this city, this nation, indeed that very street, would one day be crowned by the world’s finest casinos, and all manner of vice. So that free man could prosper in the luxury of liberties.

[Busy Bee]

^I think you're right. I saw it on the internet.

[BanBrokenChatBots]

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-d...augural-speech

There exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained; and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

No mention of the crown which they just defeated or casinos in the Newly formed Republic by President Washington but he did mention not go tear down the OG Federal Hall... or build sky bridges & Ferris Wheels next to the UN building

[mrnyc]

^ staten island has entered the chat.

don’t do that one.

trust us.

[NYguy]

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/arti...t-runners.html

Eleven rivals. Countless billions. One prize: the right to build a casino in the heart of New York.


By Noah Shachtman

Jay-Z is pushing to get it. Nas wants a piece. The owner of the Mets is spending a fortune to win. A subsidiary of the Yankees is trying, too. Manhattan’s biggest commercial landlord is all-in. The Hudson Yards crew wants it, and so does the man behind Coney Island. A former police commissioner is wrapped up in this. And a former governor. And Eric Adams’s closest confidant. And the guy who owns Donald Trump’s old golf course. And the head of a private intelligence firm.

What they’re all after is a downstate New York casino license — “a license to print money, literally,” as one insider close to several of the bidders puts it.

New Yorkers may be used to grandiosity, to shrugging at a new skyscraper like it’s another foothill in a mountain chain. The casino deal is different. The opportunity is so gargantuan that the bidders are promising, almost as add-ons, to spend billions to solve some of the city’s most challenging engineering feats and to build concert halls, apartment towers, science centers, public schools, parks, even a museum of democracy. These are projects that would ordinarily merit headlines all on their own. In this contest, they’re mere loss leaders. A license to operate a casino in or directly outside New York City is worth almost any investment. “Even one of these bids would be one of the biggest land-use battles in the history of New York, and we’ve got five right here in Manhattan,” says Mark Levine, the borough president.

Then there’s the plan in Midtown East. It first got attention with a rendering that showed a gigantic Ferris wheel next door to (and nearly the size of) the United Nations, the centerpiece of a resort with a 1,200-room hotel, two towers of apartment buildings, and four acres of park. Big fortunes will attract over-the-top ideas, sometimes even a bit of magical thinking, but this seemed like something out of a Bond movie or maybe Austin Powers. The entrepreneur behind it is certainly colorful enough.

Stefan Soloviev, who inherited his father Sheldon Solow’s multibillion-dollar real-estate portfolio, is nearly 50 years old but dresses like a 16-year-old skater. He has at least 20 children. (“The number isn’t important,” he once told Business Insider.)

He is the 26th-biggest landowner in the United States, and his holdings include the Colorado Pacific Railroad, a 5,000-head cattle ranch in New Mexico, and a rhodium mine in Nevada. For 17 years, his family has been sitting on the largest plot of undeveloped land in Manhattan — six and a half acres along the East River. He’s wanted to build something there; the casino opportunity has him thinking mega.

Soloviev has delegated oversight of the casino to Michael Hershman, a longtime family adviser. He keeps an office at 9 West 57th Street, the sloping skyscraper that is the headquarters of Soloviev’s empire, with an appointment-only gallery of Giacomettis and Calders in the lobby.

Hershman, 78, greets me on the 30th floor, before a king-of-the-world view of Central Park, and emphasizes that his bid has changed to be more subtle. Five hundred affordable-housing units are in, the Ferris wheel is out, and the casino itself is underground.“You’re not even gonna know it’s there,” he says. Other elements include a 35,000-square-foot wellness center and a Museum of Freedom and Democracy complete with pieces of the Berlin Wall.

Hershman says he’s met with the U.N. and assured them that a casino would not pose a security concern. “My background is intelligence,” he says. He adds that he and a consultancy he runs have “been involved in investigations that have brought down, I think, five world leaders,” including Ferdinand Marcos, Rajiv Gandhi, and Richard Nixon.

The real-estate trade publication The Real Deal once Photoshopped him in a trench coat and holding a magnifying glass for a profile, noting that he “took a bullet infiltrating the Palestine Liberation Organization.” He’s a co-founder of the anticorruption outfit Transparency International; in a few days, he’s scheduled to give an award to Russian dissident Alexei Navalny’s daughter.

Other developers think Soloviev and Hershman have zero shot, in large part because they are not signing up the political hired guns that every other bidder views as essential. Both Cohen and Resorts World have enlisted the lobbying shop Moonshot Strategies, which raised $7 million for Adams’s 2021 campaign.

“Dude, I’m strange,” Hershman says, leaning forward. “We don’t make political contributions. I’m going to win this fucker on merit, and if I don’t win it on merit, I’ll be able to sleep well at night. Now, am I being naïve? Being a New Yorker, I know how New York works. But I’m not going to play the game. Not going to do it.”

Besides, Hershman has a backup plan. While he — like all of the big bidders — insists that the casino has to be the “economic engine” that powers their wildly ambitious developments, it’s only true up to a point. Hershman and Soloviev already have approval to build three residential towers, an office building, and a slightly smaller park on the site. Hershman says that if they don’t win the casino, he’d need tax breaks to build the affordable units. But the towers would still go up.

[NYguy]

https://www.amny.com/news/nyc-casino...ide-manhattan/

NYC casino bidder discusses plans that address crime, traffic concerns




By Barbara Russo-Lennon
July 6, 2024

One of several Manhattan developers in the battle royal for a coveted state gaming license wants to quell New Yorkers’ top concerns surrounding the opening of a possible full-scale NYC casino on the East Side.

Michael Hershman, CEO of Soloviev, told amNewYork Metro that his team has plans in place to mitigate crime in the area and make for easy travel to and from the proposed entertainment destination. Crime and traffic have been among the prominent quality-of-life concerns which local residents have voiced regarding casino plans for Manhattan.

For starters, while the development project will likely include lots of entertainment options, the Soloviev team decided to make a smaller, intimate performance space with a capacity of only 3,000 seats to avoid increasing pedestrian and vehicular traffic in the area.

“We didn’t want to compete with Madison Square Garden,” Hershman said. “We don’t want to create an event center in the neighborhood that’s going to overwhelm the area in terms of traffic and safety.”

Hershman said he understands that traffic congestion is a legitimate concern for East Side residents and business owners, which is why the company assembled a plan that aims to make entering and leaving the property a breeze, thus mitigating traffic overflow.

“There will be no vehicular entrances to the property on First Avenue in order to avoid the build-up of traffic on that street,” Hershman said, adding that the busy uptown thoroughfare will only offer pedestrian thruways.

The site will have three vehicle entrances in total, Hershman said: The casino entrance, which would be an entrance off the FDR service road toward the back of the property; the hotel vehicular entrance on 41 Street; and the residential entrance on 38 Street.

“I have been clear for many years,” Krueger said at a town hall meeting in February. “I oppose casinos and gambling in general. I find it to be a tax on desperation, with no society benefits and real prices to be paid.”

Across town, the No Times Square Casino Coalition released a poll in May that showed 71% of registered voters who live in and around the bustling tourist epicenter of Manhattan said they oppose opening a casino in the area.