Posted Jan 20, 2017, 2:27 PM
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New Yorker for life
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Borough of Jersey
Posts: 52,775
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http://m.qchron.com/mobile/editions/...578d2861b.html
A tall order for LI City’s renaissance
PLANS UNVEILED FOR HIGHEST BUILDING IN NY STATE OUTSIDE OF MANHATTAN
by Michael Gannon, Editor
Quote:
Stephen Hill, a founding partner of the architectural firm Hill West, says Long Island City is, for a few reasons, a good place to build what at least for now will be the tallest building in New York State outside of Manhattan.
“That’s the idea,” Hill told the Chronicle Tuesday morning about Court Square City View, a 66-story residential tower planned by City View Tower LLC at 23-15 44 Drive.
The glass-and-steel structure, slated to have 802 residential units, will, upon completion, be 16 stories taller that the nearby Citi Tower at 1 Court Square, which currently holds the out-of-Manhattan title. Unless the latest redesign changed the height, it will rise 984 feet, far above Citi’s 658.
The design has been reworked from an initial proposal for a 79-story skyscraper.
Hill said LIC’s ongoing renaissance, in terms of growing population, its burgeoning cultural reputation and its location on the waterfront with a view of Manhattan all played their part in creating the design.
“There are firms where you can tell who designed the building,” he said. “All our buildings are designed with all things in mind — we’re designing the building for its own sake, but we’re also taking into account the client, the local site, the neighborhood and things near it. It’s a conceptual approach. We’re not trying to make ourselves famous. We’re designing a building for that specific location.”
Playing a role in the area’s transformation has a sentimental pull for Hill.
“The area used to be all industrial,” he said. “My grandfather had a printing shop in Long Island City — Peter Mallon Printing. If he could have seen what is happening here, it would be beyond his wildest fantasies.”
That location has several other advantages.
“It’s not in Manhattan; it has a view of Manhattan,” he said. It will be adjacent to the Court Square subway station that serves the No. 7 line along with the E, G and M trains, but not atop the labyrinthine station complex, which could have complicated the digging process for the foundation. Not that that would have been a problem once the architects and engineers get started, according to Hill.
“We just completed a project in Brooklyn that sits directly over several subway lines,” he said. “But where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
On the street level, Hill said, the grid has none of the narrow or oddly laid out roads that mark some older parts of the area.
Start digging and the geology of Manhattan bedrock and geographic Long Island almost meet.
“The confluence is right there, but Long Island City has Manhattan schist, right where we need it,” he said, referring to the dense metamorphic rock. “Where we’re planning the core, we have to do a lot of blasting.” But what represents a challenge for the core couldn’t be better for the rest of the foundation.
“You’re sliding it straight into rock,” Hill said.
The rock foundation also saved the client considerable expense, allowing the designer to forgo so-called dampers which are used in high-rises to keep from swaying in high winds to a minimum.
“All tall buildings move with the wind,” Hill said, adding that in residential buildings and some office settings there is a need to make that less noticeable. Dampers, either water tanks or mobile metal plates, can do the trick, but were not needed at the LIC project.
“That can save the client $1.5 to $2 million,” he said.
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