Yeah, which is honestly pretty misleading on the part of TRD. It may be that tall but it won’t be nearly as bulky as the Empire State Building.
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Extell sounds like an offshoot of the Bell System breakup. And their buildings look like it.
The 50 W. 66th St. tower — on a site that sat mostly vacant for years — will likely be joined by another Extell tower, this one even taller and more elaborate. Plans call for 77 W. 66th St. to top out at around 1,200 feet — nearly as high as the former Twin Towers, which soared to 1,300 feet, or a quarter of a mile.
The planned ultra-luxury turbotower will cover a 2.4-acre agglomeration of several lots that hosted ABC Studios, including one through the block on West 67th Street that currently incudes a loading dock. When ABC arrived decades ago, the land included a warehouse and a parking lot.
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demolition photos by Michael Young
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Goodbye, extremely high quality building -
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So much history at this location.
Housing & Land Use Committee, Seema Reddy, Chairperson
Wednesday, September 17th, 6:30 PM
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Renders of the 300ft 100% affordable housing component were revealed to the Community Board last week. This will be a RAMSA project. Via SSP:
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Stern has become the Emery Roth of this time period. They need maybe a handful more projects to catch up.
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preliminary filing:
Permits have been filed for a 25-story mixed-use building at 37 West 66th Street on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Located between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West, the lot is one block from the 66th Street–Lincoln Center subway station, served by the 1 train. David Rothstein of Extell Development is listed as the owner behind the applications.
The proposed 355-foot-tall development will yield 384,962 square feet, with 192,481 square feet designated for residential space and 192,481 square feet for commercial space. The building will have 158 residences, most likely condos based on the average unit scope of 1,218 square feet.
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And where is the supertall?
Where is the second supertall?
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I haven’t used this station in a while, maybe they have fixed this but the uptown exit at the 66th St #1 station will need to be reconfigured. There were jams of people trying to exit while others were trying to enter which would be a safety issue in an emergency.
They were adding a new elevator on the downtown side and that is also still blocking the staircase also: it is a rather small station entry point in general, so the construction barriers only exarcerbate the problem. 
On another note regarding this project. Regarding the second tall condo building posted above: not sure of the address for that building - may be the same.
I recall the controversy on the height of the other new condo on 66th street designed by Snohetta. There was some supposed zoning ‘trick’ regarding the mechanical floor calculatons regard the FAR; with the resulting “controversial” height of the building.
The details of that saga I never completely understood; but I did get the general idea.
This new condo at 77 West 66th street is getting similar NIMBY push-back from various community groups. I found this video clip that was very helpful in understanding the general story line on how this building is being built “as-of-right” and hence the extra high condo tower we will eventuall see rising up (hopefully) some time soon.
Enjoy this informative video clip - 
https://www.instagram.com/p/DO6YqWrkSaa/
BTW - Take a look at the zoning “carve out” that is mentioned in the video.
There is not going to be a second supertall, the “initial scheme with 2 skinny supertalls was just a what if scenario, not what would actually be built.
50 W 66th St is also owned by Extell but it has no relation to this project.
To the rest of your post, mechanical floor area is not a factor of FAR, the dispute there involved the height of said mechanical space, which height is not a factor of FAR either. The zoning ordinance that limited height in the Lincoln district was circumvented for 50 W 66th St using loopholes in the code. But DOB and DCP made stricter codes after the dispute was won by Extell to further prevent any such use of loopholes to make buildings taller by greatly exaggerating the heights of mechanical floors.
This building is getting push back only for being tall, while its neighbor got pushback for being tall due to circumventing the zoning ordinances that would have prevented it from being so. There is no known opposition to this building as it relates to circumventing zoning because it can’t do that anymore, regardless if it’s an AOR building or not (though ULURP buildings can get modification to zoning to get around code that strictly applies to AOR constructions) it very difficult for an AOR building to get zoning modifications.
There’s not really anything to understand as it regards an AOR building, as an AOR development is simply one that is designed according to how the land is zoned and how much FAR it is allowed. AOR developments does not equal tall, this project is tall because of how large the combined site is and how much of it is not being built up and left to be built up in a sole tower.
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All great points - thanks. I look forward to seeing this project going vertical: “as of right”. I guess even AOR will have some zoning or community based limits on exactly how tall they can go with this new condo tower.
All I can say is: so FAR, so good. A bit of Architectural/zoning levity there for everyones amusement. 
AOR developments don’t have height limits unless they are in a special district, of which this tower is not in one, 50 W 66th St had a height dispute (other than people not wanting it to be so tall) because it was inside the Special Lincoln Square District which does have height limitations.
Otherwise all AOR developments are limited to whatever zoning they fall under outside of height. AOR buildings can be as tall as they want to be before encroaching on FAA’s 2000’ limitations. But again, this development is so tall because of how “unbuilt” the rest of the combined site is being built up to with most of the FAR (with any additional inclusionary FAR from bonuses) being redirected to the tower and not necessarily because it is an AOR building.
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