Good to see some coverage of this. I’ve been saying this for quite some time, people outside of the business wonder why new office space keeps getting built because we ‘don’t need more’ but the truth is much of the old international-style stock and even some of the postmodern stuff in midtown is aging out of usefulness and can no longer be reasonably occupied by large corporations. The real crisis is how to remodel/demolish so many old towers which were made for the era of ‘Mad Men’ and ‘How to Succeed in Business’ and no longer can be thinly renovated and marketed as Class A.
I wouldn’t be surprised if much of the Far East Side office towers are being dismantled like 270 Park was in the next decades. They’ll never compete with HY and most would be impossible to convert residential a la FiDI.
277 Park is just wrapping up a major repositioning…I’m very curious to see how they make out with marketing themselves in the world of shiny new office towers.
Future home/neighborhood from Barretto Point Park. The ESB will be sandwiched in between 1VB and 175 Park.
In the foreground is the Hell Gate Bridge, which opened before the Sydney Harbor Bridge. When I was in high school, I built a model out of the Sydney Harbor Bridge for a physics class out of popsicle sticks. It held the most weight. Anyway lol.
East Midtown is NYC’s most in-demand market as Grand Central proximity beckons
By Steve Cuozzo
March 13, 2022
Quote:
East Midtown is once again Manhattan’s most in-demand office market.
Deals are still being done in the Hudson Yards area, Times Square, Midtown South and at the World Trade Center, but brokers say the momentum has shifted to the East 40s and 50s, which not long ago seemed to have lost their luster.
“Companies with resources are drawn to the blocks around Grand Central Terminal,” one insider said. “They like the energy that came from One Vanderbilt and the recent East Midtown rezoning. They like that the LIRR will soon be coming into the terminal. And they like the reinvestment that’s making old towers new.”
Quote:
A major lease is said to be in the works for Macquarie Group at Brookfield’s 660 Fifth Avenue, the redesigned tower stripped of its former 666 “satanic” address. Other deals are also poised to happen at the unrecognizably transformed tower.
Meanwhile, sources said that Ken Griffin’s Citadel, which is on a Big Apple hiring spree, is in advanced talks with Olayan America’s 550 Madison Ave., the repositioned former Sony tower where Chubb Group recently signed on as anchor tenant. Citadel is already the largest tenant at L&L Holding Co.’s nearby 425 Park Ave.
Separately, an unidentified tenant is believed to be taking a high-floor space at SL Green’s One Vanderbilt for close to $300 per square foot.
I misread this and thought you said the bridge opened when you were in high school. So I looked up when the bridge was opened and determined you were about 120 years old. Now I see my error.
From this rendering, it seems the back terrace (The “Graybar Terrace”) will be on a higher level than the other 2 terraces. Additional it looks as if (going from the Chrysler Terrace to the Graybar terrace) that’s either a retail center, or a connection to the inside, can someone confirm that for me?
Also on the Chrysler terrace there is a second stairway off of the terrace structure. This is confirmed in another rendering we have seen.
You can see the escalator in the middle of the building leading down to the mezzanine.
One of my favorite architecture photographs is Ezra Stoller’s shot of the expressed structural steel at the base of Hancock. It gives you a sense of the building’s overwhelming scale. 175 Park will be even larger and more impressive.
The other two SOM projects mentioned in that slide (Beinecke Library at Yale and Broadgate offices in London) are also architectural/engineering marvels. The WTC PAC was clearly modeled after Beinecke.
Yes, and Broadgate Exchange Place pioneered elegant structural solutions for buildings over active rail tracks. Both 175 Park and 270 Park take cues from Broadgate in the way the structure meets terra firma.
