Thanks.
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567 ft office tower, what a letdown for what this site could have been.
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Found this very interesting image on the website of the rendering studio Byencore â what seems to be a massive version of the office design!
Source
The studio also has nice hi-res renderings of the two earlier proposals weâve seen:
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interesting indeed. whatâs more likely, that this is an exaggeration/error, or that theyâve worked out additional FAR from the other parcels around the site? i havenât really been following this one closely tbh
how many ft would you say that is? anyone
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Holy crap. Thatâs at least 1,250.
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As pointed out by a user on SSP, that little corner building is gone in that rendering.
It has to be the most recent proposal.
This is amazing.
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^Thatâll be me! I suppose I should post this comparison here too, for all you kind YIMBYs!
What do we think? I wonder if this is a more recent designâŚ
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Nope, that is not the most recent proposal, there is no record that Extell has purchased the corner site.
Aside from that the design would not have drastically changed from what that odd one out render shows. A building with the massing is also not even remotely allowed with zoning.
Doesnât matter if one works for KPF or Extell or Ikea or not, one should come to that same conclusion based on the evidence present, not some render just debuting or being found.
The building is as small as it is because it did not go through the zoning amendment that wouldâve allowed it to be larger than 1 million sqft. It still hasnt gone through that process and it wont be per Extell.
Also @SamLYNY the compared image is not of the final design, that was the original office counterpart design. This is the final design,
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The studio Byencore seem to be pretty good with keeping their work under wraps until theyâve left the NDA period, so I think itâs safe to assume that the rendering doesnât show any active design, just like the original office and residential concepts. I just thought it was interesting to see a concept that was so much more massive than the rest weâve seen, in terms of floorspace and height.
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I looked for the original Forbes article and that render is nowhere to be found. They used an image of the base of the recent shorter version with the IKEA. You can still see the little building on the corner in that render. So Byencore actually went through the trouble of photoshopping this larger version into their screenshot of the Forbes article.
Oddly, I looked around on Google images and the image result for the Byencore page uses the original Forbes image. So the unaltered screenshot was on their website and cached by Google images. All of this is weird.
I think itâs clear that the render you found predates even the 2 schemes that were released to the public and not that its newer than the newest/agreed upon design.
It shows no progression from the newest proposal, doesnt adhere to zoning, is clunky, and is very prematurely designed.
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They had 2 options and somehow found a #3 that was worse than both of them
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I donât understand why everyone dislikes the end result proposal, because itâs not tall? Iâm not suggesting you in particular are saying that is why you dislike the building but it seems like thats the sole reason other might not like it.
I had already always been saying people shouldnât have expected the taller proposal anyways because Extell never went through ULURP approvals to build the larger towers anyways, so the previous opts were really never in play, the building was always going to be built AOR with the 1 million sqft. A building on a lot of this size wouldâve never been âtallâ.
I donât see any problem with the design, KPF always produces quality work and that is what we are going to get in the end. If people want to complain and dislike the building simply for being âshortâ so be it but there is nothing wrong with the design, keeping in mind that Extell has produced other works around the city recently that arenât anything to be interested in.
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To be fair, the four design variations that weâve been shown have been pretty similar in facade and form, so the biggest difference between them was height â and comparing them on that basis alone, the tallest naturally wins of course.
The current design itself definitely looks nice, to me it feels like a gold-bronze 55HY which I really like.
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I see, but of course that doesnât mean that they might not at some stage. The same can also be said about 15 W 46th. Itâs not built yet, so we donât know what their final plans are.
Iâm not really clued in, what are the chances the site does undergo ULURP to build a larger tower seeing the news about the site on 46th?
My assumption is itâs very unlikely.
Youâre right, I used the render of the older version as the staging and perspective were more similar to the byencore render. Purely for scale reasons. I much prefer the latest version of this tower. As you say, taller does not always mean better.
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That is true that they could still always purchase other properties, but that would greatly affect the timeline and progress that has already been made for the project to already be moving into the next phase past conceptual, issue new drawings to DOB as well as investment negotiations with Ikea who is only investing in a 3rd of the project, if the building were to increase in size Extell would be financing more of the project, at which point they probably wouldnât continue forward.
The building isnt built yet as you said, but taking the other factors that already exist we can see the building actually being built with the conditions as they exist now and not if the building was to get bigger or for Extell to wait and purchase more surrounding lots.
Regardless of if they purchase more of the surrounding lots or not, the chances of them going through ULURP approvals seems slim to none because they never filed for it to begin with in the first go round. Thereâs no reason to think theyâd just decide to go through with a long drawn out process on a project thats already been trying to move along for over a decade.
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On another note
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