Downtown Portland News

[pdxstreetcar]

If theres going to be a hotel lobby and small retail stores on the first floor (in addition to the escalators, stairs and elevators) it appears this new store is going to be quite small.

Nordstrom has 3 floors (4?) and needs more space so when Nordstrom ever gets around to expanding it will likely be the same size or bigger than the "flagship" Meier & Frank, a full-service store.

Any guesses as to what departments will be discontinued at Meier & Frank as the store downsizes?
Furniture?
Kitchen?
Gifts?
Childrens?

[pdxskyline]

I happened to notice that they're posting public hearing notices in the windows of M&F. The one I saw was in a window on 5th Street, on or near the corner of Washington. An employee at the Lloyd Center store told me they'r planning on auctioning some stuff off from inside soon. Whether this means the 1960's-era ugly junk or old stuff, I don't know.

I really don't know if they'd remove any certain departments should they downsize. More than half of that building sits empty. On floors which have shopping on them still, there's a bunch of space by the windows that isn't being utilized. From what PDX streetcar says, just bringing it up to the standards of a 'burb store would do wonders for the place, perhaps without the loss of any depts. It's been long overdue for an overhaul of the current 1960's neglected flea market look that it currently has.

[pdxstreetcar]

I hope the monorail is sold to someone who will keep it open to the public and somewhere nearby, maybe Oaks Park could buy it and run it inside a building.

[designpdx]

Originally Posted by pdxstreetcar

If theres going to be a hotel lobby and small retail stores on the first floor (in addition to the escalators, stairs and elevators) it appears this new store is going to be quite small.

Nordstrom has 3 floors (4?) and needs more space so when Nordstrom ever gets around to expanding it will likely be the same size or bigger than the "flagship" Meier & Frank, a full-service store.

Any guesses as to what departments will be discontinued at Meier & Frank as the store downsizes?
Furniture?
Kitchen?
Gifts?
Childrens?

I remember hearing that the main lobby will not be on the first floor, it will only be an elevator lobby to the main hotel floor. However, I am not sure if this is still the plan or not.

[PacificNW]

When Federated completes their acquistion of the May Company I think we will learn more. I hope that Federated see's the importance of having a store downtown Portland. They spent over $40 million in the late 80's, or early 90's, to update the downtown Seattle Bon Marche.

I think it is foolish for construction to begin prior to the take over because Federated (dba Macy's or Bloomingdale's) might desire different floor plans for the store portion of the development. If M & F become's Macy's I think the mix will be about the same in merchandise but more high end that has been offered.

[miketoronto]

This is Miketoronto's idea on what should happen to the Meier & Frank store. What do you guys think.



Meier & Frank Downtown Store. Bigger, better, and more special then ever!

Meier & Frank department store to see massive renovation and restoration of downtown Portland's most important and historical shopping destination.

Under the renovations, Meier & Frank will become the leading and number one flagship downtown department store in the north western US.

Meier & Frank will see a massive restoration of all 12 of it's shopping floors.

What will the new and improved Meier & Frank store have. It will have the following.

-Greater Portland's largest selection of mens clothing, shoes, and accsessories over 1 and a half floors. Enjoy brand name clothing, as well as unique designer styles designed by local portland designers, only to be found at the Meier & Frank downtown store.

-Greater Portland's largest selection of womens clothing, shoes, mackup, perfume, and undergarments, over 3 floors. Enjoy all the brand names, plus unique designer items designed by local Portland designers.

-Greater Portlands largest housewares selection, and china selection, featuring local designs only to be found at the downtown store, plus famous national and international brands. This department will be featured on two floors.

-Restaurant floor.
Featuring the famous Georgian room, and other restaurants offering a complete assortment of food options. Also enjoy the candy hall located on this floor, featuring candy from local Portland candy and choclate makers.

-Greater Portland's largest childrens section, including toys for the first time in many years. This ares will cover a full floor and be a childrens wonderland. Special counters will be made at childrens heights to make them feel moer special while shopping in the downtown store.

-The other three floors of the store will house unique collections of merchandise from around the world and from local designers.
Meier & Frank will be a unique place to shop offering items and selection not found in any suburban stores or other department stores in the nation.

The Meier & Frank downtown store will feature special events every Saturday, from fashion shows to cooking classes. Meier & Frank will be more then just shopping.

Come to the new Meier & Frank today.
Instead of downsizing, we are getting better.

[PDX City-State]

And you have a buying, marketing, and merchandising mindfuck. Do you know how many high-paid buyers you'd have to employ to run the store you just described. Good ideas can be good on paper but financially unfeasible.

[DubbaG]

I love the M&F sooooo much. It's one of my all time favorite buildings to stare up at from the base.

[PDX City-State]

Me too. I'm very happy they were able to find a feasable solution that will allow the building to continue functioning as a quasi-public space--a department store. I think the hotel will become signature--near the Square--and will provide a much needed revenue stream for the improvements. I'm excited to finally see this building look its best again.

[edgepdx]

Being in the wholesale fashion industry and counting both niche chain retailers and department stores as customers I can firmly say that department stores are slowly expiring and no remodel will stop that. The department store buyers are exactly the problem, they are extremely conservative and always buy the same stock year over year ignoring trends that niche retailers always ride the peak of.

If you want to see the future of retail look at the Adidas Originals store in the Brewery Blocks. They put the product front and center, treating a $60 pair of sneakers like a piece of art. Departments store stuff the sales floor full of product in order to make the store look full. This leads to confusing flea market look.

Anyway, I do hope something nice is done with the M.F. building, it's a Portland icon.

[edirp]

Lessons from the past
Meier & Frank makeover traces path taken by 5th Avenue Suites

In fall 2007,at the conclusion of a massive remodeling job set to begin this September,Meier & Frank Co.’s downtown flagship will emerge with a Marriott Renaissance Hotel on the top nine floors and an updated department store on the first five floors.
But the $137.3 million project, aimed at keeping a viable retailer in the heart of Portland’s shopping core, won’t be a simple transformation. For one thing, the department store on Southwest Morrison Street will remain open during the remodeling. And as part of the work, the 665,000-square-foot building, which occupies an entire city block, will get a seismic upgrade for earthquake safety.
Demolition of the top nine floors is scheduled to start in September; it will take a break during the holiday shopping season, with reconstruction beginning next February.
Built in earlier days when flagship department stores were full-service institutions that sold everything from fabric to toys, millinery to groceries, the mammoth buildings can pose a unique redevelopment challenge.
There’s an example of retail-to-hotel use just north across Southwest Washington Street from Meier & Frank, where the 221-room boutique hotel 5th Avenue Suites now occupies the 10-story building that originally housed the Lipman Wolfe Department Store.
The hotel opened in 1996, a few years after Lipman’s successor, Frederick & Nelson, went bankrupt and closed.
The extensive renovation of the former department store took the building down to bare walls and floors, said David Sussman, vice president of hotel development and design for Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group LLC, which owns 5th Avenue Suites.
“One of the most vivid memories for me about that job was watching workers with torches cutting out the old escalators,” Sussman said. “We didn’t need escalators in the hotel as they did in the department store.”
Getting rid of the old escalators was an expensive part of the demolition, he said.
Because the layout of a department store is considerably different than that of a hotel, converting a large multifloor store to hotel use can carry its own set of complications.
In the case of the Lipman building, Sussman said, “there were windows around three sides, with a huge center core, which isn’t very useful for a hotel; you can’t put people into spaces without windows.”
As a result, the hotel “became a building with a lot of suites — extra-long rooms with a living room area that opened into a bedroom area,” he said.
“Even with that we still ended up with some central core space on each floor, about 2,500 square feet. In some cases we put in meeting rooms, in other cases it’s nothing more than storage — which drives up the cost of development.”
Sage Hospitality Resources, the Denver company that will build the hotel in the Meier & Frank building, intends to address the center-core problem with a light well in the center of the structure. It also plans a grand lobby on the sixth floor, with a smaller entrance lobby at street level.
Both the Meier & Frank building and the former Lipman building are on the National Register of Historic Places, which means work has to be done in accordance with U.S. Department of the Interior rules.
The Lipman building, like Meier & Frank, is faced with white glazed terra-cotta tiles. “It has a beautiful terra-cotta exterior, and we had to restore that; wherever pieces were loose we had to reattach them,” Sussman said of the Lipman conversion. “Where they were broken or missing, we had to refabricate them. It’s a little hard to find people who still do that work.”
Sage, similarly, will be restoring the Meier & Frank building’s exterior.
Both Kimpton and Sage have restored a number of historic buildings and turned them into hotels. “We’ve probably done more historic projects in the hotel business than anybody,” Sussman said.
Converting an older, existing building to hotel use, known as adaptive reuse, “is certainly cheaper than building from the ground up” if the initial real estate purchase price is reasonable, he said, despite the fact that it’s getting harder to find realistically priced buildings for conversion.
“The interior finish is the same as in a new building,” he said. “If you can buy a building cost-effectively, you can bring the project in below replacement cost.”
There also can be tax breaks if the project meets federal Department of the Interior standards, as much as 20 percent of construction cost for National Register properties, he said.
The Portland Development Commission is loaning Sage $13.9 million to fund a portion of the hotel project. Sage in turn will purchase the top nine floors of the building from Meier & Frank’s owner, May Department Stores Co., for $30 million, which is expected to fund the aging store’s restoration to a more upmarket retail setting.
Doing a massive renovation while the store stays open “is a complicated, artful, intuitive process,” said Macy’s spokeswoman Kimberly Reason, describing the 2 1/2 year project that updated the eight-floor Bon Marché flagship in downtown Seattle from 1989 to 1991.
Store executives “need to determine how much space to allot to construction,” she said. “The more space, generally speaking, means construction can proceed a lot faster, which means you end construction sooner, and open the store in a much-upgraded condition, which will drive sales.”
But she said it’s also necessary to consider at the start “how much space you give up now, in terms of sacrificing sales.” And that decision, she said, comes down to a variety of factors, from the seasonal sales plans to the advertising calendar, the entire scope of the project.
Work on the Bon store, which also has a basement and a sub-basement like Meier & Frank, was notably more complicated than redoing a two- or three-level mall store, Reason noted. Parent corporation Federated Department Stores Inc. renamed the Bon stores Macy’s earlier this year.

[edirp]

M&F hotel on shaky ground
Prevailing-wage requirement could scuttle makeover
By JEANIE SENIOR Issue date: Fri, Jun 17, 2005
The Tribune
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A $137.3 million deal to redevelop Meier & Frank Co.’s downtown flagship into an updated department store with a hotel on the upper floors may be collapsing.
The make-or-break issue rests on whether the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries determines that a $13.9 million loan from the Portland Development Commission to Sage Hospitality Resources transforms the remodeling into a public works project, according to PDC Executive Director Don Mazziotti.
Sage, based in Denver, is the company that will build the Marriott Renaissance hotel portion of the project. The development agreement calls for Sage to buy the top nine floors of the building from May Department Stores Co., which owns Meier & Frank, for $30 million.
That money, in turn, would fund the department store’s update.
However, if remodeling is deemed a public works project, that could raise the cost because it would require Sage and May to pay prevailing wages to every worker on the job.
Prevailing wages in the construction field are essentially the lowest wage a contractor can pay on public projects. The state’s prevailing wage law was adopted in 1959 to ensure that contractors maintain wage standards while competing on their ability to perform work competently.
“May Company and Sage have told us that if BOLI determines their project by virtue of PDC loans (becomes) a public works project, and thus they must pay the prevailing wage, the deal will collapse and they will walk.” he said.
This week, Mayor Tom Potter convened a meeting with Mazziotti, Sage and May representatives and Oregon Labor Commissioner Dan Gardner to discuss the issue.
“I don’t know what that’s all about,” said Sage representative Scott Conrad, who attended the meeting. “You may want to talk to PDC.”
May Co. Vice President Vince Corno, also at the meeting, could not be reached for comment.
A labor and industry spokesman did not return calls from the Portland Tribune by deadline.
Potter could not be reached by deadline.
Mazziotti, whose agency started working on a redevelopment of the aging 665,000-square-foot store four years ago, and started negotiating the present deal with Sage and May about a year ago, said he’s alarmed at the impact the deal’s collapse could have on downtown Portland.
A downtown retail study, completed about two years ago, called Meier & Frank’s continued viability essential to the health of the central business district. The massive block square building is considered to be at ground zero of downtown retail.
The matter is complicated by the fact that May is in the process of being acquired by Federated Department Stores, a deal that’s expected to be consummated in the next couple of months.
If there’s no redevelopment under way when Cincinnati-based Federated takes control of May Co. stores, that could torpedo the future of the downtown store, Mazziotti said.
“That outcome is disastrous for downtown Portland,” he said.
Jon Bell contributed to this report.

[MarkDaMan]

Pay stalls Meier & Frank project
A state legal issue with wages for construction workers has the PDC scrambling for a solution to revitalize the historic building
Thursday, June 23, 2005
DYLAN RIVERA

An imminent redevelopment of the downtown Meier & Frank department store could die as early as next week if city and state officials cannot resolve a dispute over wages for construction workers on the long-awaited project.

The prospective developer of an upper-floors hotel as well as the corporate owner of the department store are pushing for a Sunday resolution of a dispute over whether the project must comply with state wage standards for public works, Don Mazziotti, executive director of the Portland Development Commission, said Wednesday.

The PDC, which has pushed for the building's revitalization for years, is scrambling to work out a compromise with state labor officials over the wage requirement, Mazziotti said. He would not detail those negotiations.

City and business leaders have ranked retention of the anchor store -- a historic mainstay at the heart of the city's commercial core -- as their top goal in safeguarding downtown's hard-won vitality.

Developer Sage Hospitality Resources, based in Denver, has lined up financing and development deals for a hotel in the top 11 floors of the 16-story building to coincide with a face-lift of the department store on the lower floors.

In recent weeks, some labor advocates have called for the state Bureau of Labor and Industries to require the hotel developer and the department store to pay a state-set prevailing wage.

The wage issue recently landed the PDC and the Labor Bureau in court. The PDC sued the bureau May 12 to challenge its decision that a PDC-financed office building rehab in North Portland falls under the wage standard. The bureau expects to respond to the PDC's suit in coming weeks, according to the Oregon Department of Justice, which represents the bureau.

Local government and housing advocates have said recent broadening in the wage law's application could threaten a number of public-private projects, including the Meier & Frank renovation. On Wednesday, for the first time, Mazziotti publicly estimated how much the requirement would raise the project's $137.3 million cost: between 8 percent and 14 percent, or between $11.0 million and $19.2 million.

Sage Hospitality said the extra expense would make the hotel portion of the project financially unfeasible. Sage previously put the hotel cost at $107.3 million but did not disclose an additional labor cost estimate.

"Should we not be able to work it out, we will have to seriously consider walking away from the project," said Ken Geist, executive vice president for Sage Hospitality. "Everybody's worked extremely hard on this project for over three years now, and to have this come up at the very last minute is extremely unfortunate." Geist said he was optimistic that a resolution could be reached by early next week.

Annette Talbott, deputy labor commissioner, said she doubted requiring compliance with the prevailing wage would add significantly to the Meier & Frank project's cost.

"We have no facts to suggest whether that's true or false," Talbott said. "I don't believe they've done that analysis."

The bureau is studying the Meier & Frank project in hopes of resolving the controversy within a few days, Talbott said.

Officials with Meier & Frank's parent company, May Department Stores Co., based in St. Louis, would not comment on the issue Wednesday.

The significant threat to the project comes as PDC and city leaders thought they soon would see their dreams of a revitalized building and department store become a reality. Former Mayor Vera Katz worked for years to preserve the department store and trumpeted the hotel plan in her last days in office. Mazziotti advanced the project for years, although he plans to step down June 30, raising questions about the city's ability to follow through on the project.

Mayor Tom Potter, who took office in January, convened a meeting last week to bring the PDC, the Labor Bureau, the hotel developer and the retailer together to discuss the wage issue. This week, Potter said, he met with Mazziotti and Labor Commissioner Dan Gardner to press the two sides to draft a policy for Meier & Frank and similar projects.

"We need to resolve this," Potter said Wednesday. "Each month that it's delayed costs the developers money, so I want to see it get resolved."

PDC officials have said time is short for several reasons. The hotel developer was hoping to finish major upstairs demolition before the winter holiday shopping season, a peak time for the department store. In addition, with a merger between May Co. and Federated Department Stores Inc. pending this fall, any lingering uncertainty would raise concern about whether Federated would follow through on the redevelopment plan.

Dylan Rivera: 503-221-8532; dylanrivera@news.oregonian.com


I thought this was a done deal, we have vitually seen the same story in the big O three weeks in a row and there doesn't appear to be any progress in resolving what seems to be a drop in the bucket compared to the overall cost. It would really suck if this thing didn't get completed!

[cab]

IfSage walks away from this deal, Annette Talbott, deputy labor commissioner should be fired and then sued for destroying one of the most important project for DT Portland in years.

[PacificNW]

Developer not bound by wage law
The Oregon labor commissioner says state-set prevailing wages don't apply to downtown Meier & Frank project
Saturday, June 25, 2005
GAIL KINSEY HILL

A recent cloud hanging over the long-awaited redevelopment of the downtown Meier & Frank department store lifted Friday when the state labor commissioner concluded that Oregon's prevailing-wage law did not apply to the $137.3 million project.

Earlier this week, a key developer had threatened to pull out of the project if the wage law were deemed applicable, claiming that higher compensation requirements would push construction costs too high.

"We're very pleased to have this matter resolved," said Don Mazziotti, executive director of the Portland Development Commission, the city agency that has helped coordinate the project.

In a news release on the issue, Labor Commissioner Dan Gardner sharply criticized the PDC, both for not seeking clarification on the matter earlier and for sounding public alarms about the issue's threat to the project.

The redevelopment of Meier & Frank has taken years of sensitive negotiations, and the project's completion is considered crucial to the vital downtown core. It involves the renovation of the department store's lower floors and the development of a hotel in the top 11 floors of the 16-floor building.

May Department Stores Co., which is based in St. Louis and owns Meier & Frank, is responsible for sprucing up the retail portion of the building. Sage Hospitality Resources of Denver is the hotel developer.

The wage dispute arose just a few weeks ago when some labor advocates called for the state Bureau of Labor and Industries to require the hotel developer and the department store to pay a state-set prevailing wage. Project developers, in the final stages of signing development agreements and loan documents, also requested clarification on whether the wage law would apply.

"There was a big question mark," Mazziotti said.

The state's prevailing-wage law requires that construction workers on public projects be paid state-set standard wages and benefits. Gardner, who oversees the labor bureau, had to decide whether a loan from the Portland Development Commission to Sage Hospitality constituted a substantial enough link between the agency and the hotel's construction to classify the redevelopment as a public project.

Gardner concluded that the relationship was insufficient to trigger the prevailing-wage law.

Nevertheless, Gardner said he supported the law as a "reflection of the standard wages set by the local market."

"It is important to remember," Gardner stated in a news release, "the prevailing wage rate law represents good public policy regarding the construction of high-quality public projects with taxpayers' dollars."

Gardner's news release leveled unusually pointed criticism at the PDC, saying the agency waited until the eleventh hour to bring the wage issue to the commission's attention, then fanned worries of the project's possible demise.

"It is unfortunate that PDC chose to bring us a development agreement at the very last minute and then unnecessarily created concern that the entire project could be jeopardized," Gardner wrote. "The project was never in jeopardy. There was never a crisis.

"PDC's failure to work with the bureau months ago created unnecessary confusion and consternation that did not serve the public interest."

Mazziotti said the wage issue arose only during final negotiations of the development agreement and loan documents. Both May Department Stores and Sage Development, he said, "basically said they wouldn't proceed without clarity" on whether the law applied.

Then, Mazziotti said, "We immediately went to BOLI for a determination."

PDC chief objects to claims

Mazziotti also objected to Gardner's claims that the PDC unduly stirred up worries about the project's status.

"The project was in jeopardy," he said. "We weren't going through this for our health."

Earlier this week, Mazziotti estimated that a prevailing-wage rate could have increased project costs from 8 percent to 14 percent, or from $11 million to $19 million. At that time, Sage Hospitality said the extra expense would make the hotel portion of the project financially unfeasible.

Neither Sage Hospitality nor May Department Stores could be reached for comment Friday.

Reliable estimates on the effects of the wage law are hard to come by. The labor bureau said studies show the difference may be less than 5 percent.

"At the same time, studies also show higher quality work, so the actual cost may be less," said Marc Zolton, a labor bureau spokesman.

A recent informal survey showed that a worker involved in building demolition was paid a prevailing wage, including benefits, of $28.48 an hour, while a similarly employed nonunion worker was paid $28.13, a difference of 35 cents, or 1.2 percent, Zolton said.

"There are competing studies and estimates," Mazziotti said.

Mazziotti said he hopes to meet with developers on Sunday and within the next couple of weeks to review and approve the final documents. The tiff with the labor bureau, all told, he said, may have added another month to the project's timeline.

He said it's essential that construction begin by August -- for one thing, so that the department store can be ready for the peak winter holiday shopping season.

Gail Kinsey Hill: 503-221-8590; gailhill@news.oregonian.com

[MarkDaMan]

Historical panel OKs Meier & Frank remodel
The Portland commission presses to keep the Georgian Room, although interiors are outside its scope
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Fred Leeson

A $137.3 million makeover of the downtown Meier & Frank building earned a green light from the Portland Historical Landmarks Commission on Monday, but only after a tiff over an interior room outside the commission's legal purview.

As the design stands, the Georgian Room -- the 10th-floor elegant dining room -- will be eliminated to make way for hotel rooms on the upper 11 floors of the 16-story historic downtown building at 620 S.W. Sixth Ave.

City regulations say the commission can rule only on exterior changes to designated historic landmarks. But that didn't stop commission members from voicing support for keeping the dining room.

Commission members repeatedly asked John Tess, an architectural consultant working on the redevelopment proposal, about plans for the Georgian Room.

Tess declined to comment, saying it was outside the commission's scope of review.

Later, Tess said, "We know something has to be done there. We haven't really looked at that element."

Commission member Robert Dortignacq pressed Tess again. Dortignacq said there was no other public forum to discuss the fate of the room. Would it be retained?

"I'd be happy to go through some of that stuff later," Tess answered.

Moments later, Tess said, "There is no way of retaining it in its existing location."

Commission member Melissa Darby urged him to reconsider. "It's a beautiful space, a traditional space," she said. "We're here to give you advice. Our best advice is to try to save it."

As part of a 4-0 vote approving exterior details of the remodeling plan, the commission instructed the developers to return at an unspecified date for an "informational hearing" on the Georgian Room.

Key elements of the exterior work include returning the first-floor facade closer to its original condition and trying to simplify what architect John Echlin called "an abomination" on the top floors.

The project is intended to restore economic vitality to a full square block that was once considered the heart of Portland's retail core. As commission Chairman John Czarnecki said, "Support for this project is pretty much universal. We look forward to it regaining its prominent place in the city."

Sage Hospitality Resources of Denver will remodel the upper floors into a hotel. The first five floors will be revamped by store owners for Meier & Frank. A merger is pending this fall between May Co., Meier & Frank's corporate owner, and Federated Department Stores Inc.

Key changes at the ground floor will include uncovering transom windows now covered by awnings above the display windows. Smaller awnings will replace the existing ones. Midblock entrances that were closed off on Southwest Fifth and Sixth avenues will be reopened as kiosk retail spaces.

The entrance to the hotel will be at a new midblock entrance on Southwest Morrison Street. Terra cotta on the exterior will be repaired where necessary, and original windows will be restored to operating condition. Metal fire escapes will be removed and replaced with internal emergency exits.

A restaurant and some hotel rooms will be added at the top of the building. Echlin said his goal is to clean up the roofline as much as possible, but mechanical systems and elevator housings mean that uniformity cannot be achieved from all views.

The building was erected in three stages, in 1909, 1915 and 1932. New rooftop structures will be finished with sanded cement plaster instead of terra cotta-colored metal panels as recommended by the city design staff.

The existing rooftop floors include both metal panels and cement plaster. Echlin said he thought trying to mimic terra cotta with metal would be a mistake. "We're not going to cover up the cement plaster," he said. "It's up there to stay."

Ross Planbeck, a Portland Development Commission project manager, said elements of the complex deal are coming together in time for a Sept. 1 deadline. "It's highly important to the downtown," he said. "Everyone is on the side of keeping this great terra cotta building."

Fred Leeson: 503-294-5946; fredleeson@news.oregonian.com

-So how many more approvals must this thing get before they start the demolition of the interior?

[MarkDaMan]

This is to be built on a small parcel next to where the Eliot tower is being built on.

[crowdedhouse]

Seems like error on the part of the developer?

[MarkDaMan]

error?

[edirp]

crowdedhouse,

Those renderings are for "The Madison" offices being built next to Eliot Tower. They are not part of the Eliot Tower project.

The two buildings will share a plaza between 11th and 10th Avenue.