NEW YORK | 1 Manhattan West | 995 FT | 71 FLOORS

[THE BIG APPLE]

^ Buildings aren't just getting built for no reason. People have to commit to occupying them as tenants. When a tenant is secured a building can progress construction instead of being empty office space on the market which overruns it. That is why 2WTC can't get built yet, because there is no one as of right now who has signed the dotted line in commitment.

[Hudson11]

I wouldn't call the design boxy. (though the top of the buildings surely are) In older renderings, these towers seem somewhat curvaceous, and recent renderings suggest a sloping facade.
I think if it weren't for the Hudson Yards rising in front, Manhattan West would have become the next iconic Twin Towers of NYC

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by Eveningsong

Can someone please tell me why this exciting/good news?

It's good news because it shows the current health and growth of the emerging west side office market. Some didn't think this development would move forward at all.

And this being a skyscraper forum, it's good news that another major skyscraper is getting built.

Hard to see a downside to any of it.



http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/20...far-west-side/

Skadden Arps Plans Move to New Tower on Manhattan’s Far West Side


By ELIOT BROWN
October 24, 2014

A soaring new skyscraper is poised to rise on Manhattan’s West Side, as legal giant Skadden Arps Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP has signed a letter of intent with Brookfield Property Partners to move to the planned 1 Manhattan West tower, according to a Skadden spokeswoman.

Brookfield has been planning a tower at the site for years, going back all the way to the 1980s when its predecessor company, Olympia & York, bought the site on Ninth Avenue and 33rd Street, west of Pennsylvania Station. Last year, it began construction on a deck over below-ground rail tracks—a foundation, of sorts—and began seeking tenants.

With the deal, Skadden would become the latest corporate giant to leave central Midtown for the far West Side, an emerging area that was long filled with warehouses and parking lots. The area was rezoned in 2005 to allow for a host of tall towers, but for years the neighborhood drew skepticism about whether it was too remote to attract employers.

Now, the roster of companies that have agreed to move includes Time Warner, L’Oreal, and SAP, as well as a giant new department store for Neiman Marcus, all of which have committed to move to Related Cos.’ giant Hudson Yards project to the west of Brookfield’s development. And in what would be the largest move of them all, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is pondering relocating to new towers in the area as well.

It’s unclear exactly how much space Skadden is taking in the tower, but the company currently occupies about 800,000 square feet at 4 Times Square, where its lease runs until 2020, according to loan documents. The company made an internal announcement about the letter of intent earlier this week, which was reported by the blog Above the Law.

The deal with Brookfield comes as the landlord has spent years seeking tenants for its giant office complex in Lower Manhattan known as Brookfield Place—formerly named the World Financial Center. It recently filled most its vacancy there with large tenants including Time Inc. and Bank of New York.

https://instagr.in/l/2776419

[Submariner]

So, are the towers going to be built entirely on the side of this site, or will some support structures protrude to the tracks below?

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by Submariner

So, are the towers going to be built entirely on the side of this site, or will some support structures protrude to the tracks below?

The difference between Related's and Brookfield's developments...


http://nypost.com/2012/02/21/manhattan-west-on-deck/

February 21, 2012

Brookfield’s deck, unlike Related’s, is not needed to support its towers. They would rise atop the site’s terra-firma corners, former parking lots, on its Ninth Avenue side, as you can see in the above photo.

Related’s platforms are necessary to support buildings other than Coach. But Brookfield needs its deck — 122,000 square feet, covering 57 percent of the site — just as much, to make what’s now a giant trench visually palatable to tenants being courted by Cushman & Wakefield.

The deck, as seen in the rendering on the right, above, would serve as the floor of a 1.5-acre plaza featuring a dramatic, glass-enclosed atrium. Under a deal with the city, the public amenities will provide Brookfield with a floor-area bonus it needs to build the site to its maximum permissible size.

The towers will overlap...

[aquablue]

I have to say I can't get interested in this design. I will say that the glass is very good and will be a good addition to a mostly brick area.

[WestSideGuy]

From my apartment across the street, it looks like they have broken ground on the residential portion. Hopefully, Brookfield doesnt have to dig too far down for the foundation, because the rock cracking is the most difficult thing to deal with in the area.

[aquablue]

This would be a good place for UBS, it seems perfect for a bank. Either that or Vanderbilt.

[SD_Phil]

They are about as attractive as glass rectangles can possibly be (I mean this as a compliment). Like most of you, I wish they were a little taller, but I think they'll be fantastic when finished.

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by SD_Phil

They are about as attractive as glass rectangles can possibly be (I mean this as a compliment). Like most of you, I wish they were a little taller, but I think they'll be fantastic when finished.

I don't think the designs are finalized yet. I like the way the base looks, but the rest of the towers could use some work.

[NYguy]

They were working on Brookfield's bid for the railyards while working on these towers, similar scale and height. But I liked the railyard proposals much better.













Compared with Manhattan West earlier versions...

[NYguy]

http://commercialobserver.com/2014/1...-move-in-2020/

Law Firm to Make Big Manhattan West Move in 2020

BY TOBIAS SALINGER
10/27/14

Bigtime law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom will relocate its New York City headquarters to the Hudson Yards area in the spring of 2020 through a 20-year lease at Brookfield Property Partners’ Manhattan West complex.

The firm, with 1,600 attorneys in 23 global offices, will move to the planned 2-million-square-foot, 67-story 1 Manhattan West tower at Ninth Avenue and West 33rd Street, a letter of intent signed and confirmed by officials at Brookfield and Skadden Arps says. The building will be part of Brookfield’s 7-million-square-foot mixed-use development.

“We look forward to being a part of the ongoing evolution of Manhattan’s West Side,” Skadden Arps executive partner Eric Friedman wrote in an email announcing the move to employees, according to a post on the Above the Law legal blog, which first reported the sale.

Representatives for the firm and Brookfield declined to comment or provide information such as the brokers involved in the deal or the square footage that the firm has pledged to lease.

The law firm will vacate its current home at 4 Times Square if it follows through and closes on space at the Manhattan West. It would represent the first tenant announced for the new office tower in the complex, which will include residential and office towers, a renovated adjacent commercial building, a potential 5-star hotel, retail spaces and a two-acre, 60,000-square-foot public space at the center of the development.

Digital ad firm R/GA recently signed a 173,000-square-foot lease at 450 West 33rd Street, where Brookfield is completing $200 million in upgrades and rechristening the building as 5 Manhattan West.

http://www.americanlawyer.com/id=120...20140928000557

In a firmwide memo obtained by Above the Law last week, Skadden executive partner Eric Friedman described the "new, state-of-the-art building" in Hudson Yards to be "part of what we believe will be the most exciting new neighborhood in the city."

Skadden would join nearby corporate tenants including international advertising agency R/GA at 5 Manhattan West (also known as 450 W. 33rd St.), where rents are between $78 and $80 per square foot, according to Brookfield. Other tenants moving to Hudson Yards area developments include L’Oreal USA and German software company SAP, according to The Associated Press. There are also a handful of firms located just north of Hudson Yards, including Proskauer Rose, Goodwin Procter and Seyfarth Shaw.

Skadden has occupied its current Times Square headquarters, owned by the Durst organization, since 2000, occupying 660,000 square feet, according to The New York Times. Class A rents in the Time Square area generally run in the mid-$70s or more per square foot for relatively new buildings.

As reported last week in The Am Law Daily, more law firms are looking for new space outside the central business districts where they have typically located, seeking cheaper rents and more efficient spaces. In New York, that generally means decamping from the Grand Central corridor for lower Manhattan or the far West Side in Midtown, where Class A space costs about the same as Class B space in Midtown. But most new construction near the Hudson River is not slated to come online until 2018 or later, according to Jones Lang LaSalle.

[JR Ewing]

This is big news.

[aquablue]

Holy COW! Those curvalicious tower proposals were stunning.

[JR Ewing]

I like the beer belly towers.

The Hudson Yards is amazing.

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by aquablue

Holy COW! Those curvalicious tower proposals were stunning.

The were very nice. I don't see why they couldn't do that at the Manhattan West site.

[NYguy]

http://nypost.com/2014/11/06/empty-n...c-badly-needs/

Empty new offices NYC badly needs

By Steve Cuozzo
November 6, 2014

Samsung Electronics, the South Korean tech giant, is hunting a new Manhattan home of up to 1 million square feet, The Wall Street Journal reports. It’s a case study in why our new and under-construction office space — often assailed for creating a market “glut” — is indispensable to the city’s future.

Samsung, which now has minimal Manhattan presence, is unlikely to move into a tired office tower built in the 1960s — or even the ’90s. It has its eye on newly-minted, state-of-the-art space that it can tailor to its unique digital, environmental and security requirements.

That likely means at the World Trade Center, Hudson Yards or Manhattan West (just east of the Yards.)

The first two complexes comprise the lion’s share of Manhattan’s nearly 5 million newly-minted square feet still seeking tenants — including in towers recently completed (1 and 4 WTC) and under construction (3 WTC; 10 and 30 Hudson Yards).

None of those is a “spec” project started without any pre-signed tenants. But less than half their space is yet spoken for — nearly as scary to those who fear a “glut.”

And more is coming: A planned tower at Manhattan West, where Skadden Arps is to be the first tenant, will add 1 million more square feet to the market.

.....Had today’s naysayers been around in 1930, they’d surely have sought to block construction of the 100 percent-spec Empire State Building.

But New York, in a battle with London for commercial supremacy, is on a roll. Our overdue construction boom has come just in time to catch the wave of creative, technology-forward companies and traditional financial firms that have no use even for buildings that went up seemingly yesterday.

This demand for “new” is why Microsoft moved to 11 Times Square, why Condé Nast is leaving 4 Times Square (which was advanced for its time in 1999) for 1 WTC — and why Time Warner is leaving its Columbus Circle home since 2003 for 30 Hudson Yards.

It’s why IBM Watson is moving from Westchester to 51 Astor Place, why media firm GroupM is moving to 3 WTC, why tech giant Media Math to 4 WTC and why digital-ad agency Kids Creative took a floor at 1 WTC for the highest rent ever paid downtown.

It’s also why Bank of China is close to leasing most or all of 7 Bryant Park, which was launched without a single square inch leased.

The wave of spec and mostly-spec development grew larger still last week when Larry Silverstein sold $1.6 billion in tax-exempt Liberty Bonds to bankroll construction of 3 WTC.

Obstructionists like Port Authority Commissioner Ken Lipper had claimed the project would add to an alleged glut. Media outlets including The New York Times repeated the lie.

The fearmongers routinely defame spec and mostly-spec building as a reckless strategy that drags down the market. In fact, towers all over town that were done entirely on spec are howling successes.

Some recent examples: 4 Times Square, 7 WTC, 11 Times Square, 51 Astor Place, 505 Fifth Ave. and 222 E. 41st St. All were launched over the past 15 years, and all filled with tenants soon enough.

Yes, slow early leasing did cause some developers to squirm. But our priority should be production of state-of-the-art offices to accommodate a drastically changed business climate — not the remote possibility a developer might lose his project to banks, which hasn’t happened to a new Manhattan office tower in at least 20 years.

An average of nearly 60 million new square feet was created in Manhattan in each decade of the 1960s-’80s. But a mere 29 million feet were built from 1991-2009.

Now, at last, the pendulum has begun to swing the other way — and not a moment too soon.

[NYguy]

I can confirm that the final span is in place, and darkness is upon us on the tracks below.



Good job, and a major milestone in the development of this site has been reached.

[colemonkee]

What's the next step in the process?

[Hudson11]

Originally Posted by NYguy

I can confirm that the final span is in place, and darkness is upon us on the tracks below.



Good job, and a major milestone in the development of this site has been reached.

the space below is now territory of the mole people.


I guess now work can start on the plaza.