I doubt it means anything. Just like the Penn station skyscrapers (besides Penn 15), they’re all just concepts made to give you a feel of the general area. This pic is a hypothetical 2030 as 175 Park is completed in the image. (Though I can’t seem to find 270 Park or a few others.)
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https://www.instagram.com/p/CVRj2ubM9yZ/?utm_medium=copy_link
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https://www.instagram.com/p/CWFMQ27swbb/?utm_medium=copy_link
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very nice post and really good comments, thank you for your participants
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Here is my conjecture regarding that ‘Stadium Concept’. Bloomberg never actually intended to put a stadium in that location: the entire concept was preposterous in every aspect. The time-line to build for completion by the Olympic Games, the parking issues, the feasibility of a 'temporary stadium for this event, the lack of mass transit access - all seemed outlandish.
He needed to buy time so he could put that complex parcel together and work out the various agreements with the major NY developers he favored. The ‘claim’ that he wanted to hold the parcel for the Olympic stadium was just a ruse.
We will never know; but something about that “Olympic stadium proposal” never added up from my cynical point of view.
love this diner!
I agree, and I can’t blame him. I can blame the fact that he was the mayor back then and held the levers of power.
A little more information on the stadium concept, posted above: Remember back in the day when a football stadium was proposed for the Hudson Yards area, dubbed “West Side Stadium”? It was to be the new home for the NY Jets, venue for 2010 Super Bowl, and used for the 2012 Summer Olympics. Those plans were squashed.
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I never believed for a moment that Mike B intended to build a ‘stadium’ - the feasibility of that plan was so outlandish that it was fairly obvious there was another agenda at work. If so, no-one will ever know, but my suspicions remain.
The only remote supporting evidence I have for this wild speculation is this article, and some other various bits of information I had gotten from ‘people close to the project’ as the journalistic saying goes - anonymous sources.
There were a lot of back-room deals that needed to be worked out, and some justification for holding that large parcel needed to be floated to the gullible public. That’s my theory anyway: that STADIUM was fake news. 
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Juan Gonzalez is a terrible journalist. And he always hated Bloomberg.
Hudson Yards has been a massive economic boost to the city tax rolls, and the NIMBYs were again proven wrong, which must make Gonzalez furious.
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I can only take issue with your one objective/verifiable claim: that this project has been a boon for tax revenue.
Hudson Yards has made a ‘meager’ contribution to the city tax rolls. Then when you look at the real estate taxes “secretly funneled” from two large buildings in the area - this has been a massive net loss in tax revenue.
See the article - if those figures are correct - for the indisputable truth. I admit to being biased; as I to have always hated/distrusted Bloomberg.
Quote from article above. - Eight years later, new development is drastically below projections, and the bill for city subsidies keeps growing. Last year, Hudson Yards took in just $27 million in taxes from “new construction” but had to pay $114 million in debt service.
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Way I see it, Bloomberg was using this fairly useless stadium as a bargaining chip for Hudson Yards as it is now. Basically telling everyone that he will slap this dinosaur in the middle of Midtown Manhattan if he didn’t get that site upzoned.
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Those two articles support that assumption: and I agree.
Speaking of the Olympic stadium proposal, do you guys think NYC will bid for the 2040 Olympics?
Summer Olympics will be 2040 and 2044 not 2042.
Yeah, got that date wrong. Meant 2040