[NYguy]

http://www.observer.com/2012/05/gary...d-57th-street/

Gary Barnett on How He Chooses His Designers and the 1,250-Foot Starchitect Tower Planned for Broadway and 57th



The new skyline, come 2020? 432 Park is at left, One57 is just right of One Bryant Park, and 225 West 57th Street is just to the right of that,
then 15 Penn Plaza and, on the farthest right, Hudson Yards. (sbarn/Skyscraper Page)

By Matt Chaban 5/10

When Gary Barnett builds, he wants everything to be “the best,” as the Extell exec made clear in our recent profile. Bigger is not always better, but it certainly does not hurt, especially in Manhattan. That is part of the appeal of Mr. Barnett’s One57—not only will the views be dead-center on Central Park, a fact Mr. Barnett keenly brags about, but there are also the bragging rights of having the tallest residential tower in the Western Hemisphere. At 1,005 feet, it beats Frank Gehry’s 8 Spruce Street by more than 100 feet.

But this is New York, and the record will never hold for long, as competitors like the MoMA tower and 432 Park start to rise. But Mr. Barnett has an ace up his sleeve just down the block, a large development site on Broadway running between 57th and 58th streets. The lot, site of the former B.F. Goodrich Building is nearly twice as large as One57′s, and more importantly the tower could be many hundred feet taller, as well, as Mr. Barnett continues to assemble air rights and properties, one of his favorite parts of the business. For this stratospheric project he also turned to several top-shelf designers, none of whom Extell has ever worked with before. As reported in our profile, Swiss starchitects Herzog & de Meuron won an invited competition to design a tower that could rise to 1,250 feet or more....

As Mr. Barnett made clear, any of this could change, but it shows a continued commitment to high-end design at the very least. When asked about how he chooses his designers—without making mention of this project in particular—Mr. Barnett gave some insight into how this little competition might have been put together. “We like to work with the firms we know, we know they can do the work,” Mr. Barnett said walking down 57th Street between the One57 site and the showroom just across Fifth Avenue. “But sometimes we want to give somebody else a chance, we’ve seen their work and we figure, why not give them a shot.”

Mr. Barnett said that quality design “probably pays for itself” but sometimes he does wonder if it is worth it. “I sometimes question our commitment to design,” he said. “These architects, the good ones, they can be difficult sometimes, but the product is definitely better. I look at the guys putting up just total crap, and I wonder if they don’t make the same return.” Still, Mr. Barnett stressed that since he prefers the creative aspect of development above, or at least in equal measure to, the money, that probably helps explain his continued interest in what his buildings look like. “It’s just more interesting this way, and it certainly helps with the marketing,” he said.