As Time Warner nears a deal with Related Cos. to move its headquarters to Hudson Yards, Brookfield Office Properties has started major construction of a 120,000-square-foot deck over the Amtrak rail yard for its Manhattan West project.
Time Warner’s tentative plan to move to a new tower at Related’s site, first reported in the Wall Street Journal, would be momentous, allowing a second tower to go up that’s even larger than the one Related is building for Coach.
But, even before it lands a tenant or starts a building, Brookfield’s deck is meaningful too — the first platform over the yards between Ninth and Twelfth avenues after years of promises by both developers.
The photo on this page shows a just-completed temporary platform spanning the train yard from north to south on the Brookfield 5-acre site’s western edge adjacent to Dyer Avenue between West 31st and 33rd streets. Manhattan West lies slightly east of Related’s much larger site.
The temporary platform will support a “launcher” that will receive prefab concrete slabs from an adjacent staging area along the West 31st Street side. The slabs will then be assembled into 16 “bridges,” which the launcher will slide into place above the yard one at a time.
The deck is to be completed by the end of 2014.
Brookfield announced plans for a deck in 2006, but held it up over economic issues and site-plan changes.
The Brookfield and Related projects are, by far, the largest that are being planned for the Hudson Yards District — and they are the centerpieces of Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s dream to create a new commercial and residential community in the far West 30s.
Both need platforms over the rail yard 65 feet below street level — not to support buildings (which will be anchored in bedrock on the yard floor and rise through the decks), but to establish a suitable environment for office and residential tenants.
As Brookfield CEO Dennis Friedrich told us and we first reported in January, the publicly traded company is financing the full platform with $300 million of its own capital and a $340 million construction loan.
Manhattan West is a $4.5 billion complex to include two new office towers, one residential tower and a 1.5-acre public plaza. The platform will likely make it easier for Brookfield to find commercial tenants.
Meanwhile, Related has yet to start building a deck over its 26-acre site.
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An ownership-management partnership has paid $34.342 million for a six-building apartments-and-retail portfolio at a prominent Greenwich Village corner.
The seller was Noah Osnos, whose multigenerational firm had owned the buildings for 60 years. The buyers were Dalan Management and RWN Real Estate Partners. Eastern Consolidated chairman Peter Hauspurg repped Osnos, and Eastern senior director Ben
Tapper brought in the buyers.
The half-dozen buildings are 89 and 91 Christopher St. and 329, 333, 337 and 341 Bleecker St. They command a corner with 90 feet of prime retail along each street.
Tapper said, “The mixture of regulated and free-market apartments combined with below-market retail tenancies offer significant financial upside to the purchasers.”
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Digital analytics company Return Path Inc. has scored the entire 41st floor penthouse at Charles S. Cohen’s 3 Park Ave. The firm signed for 23,280 square feet, which had an asking rent in the mid-$60s.
The top-floor space boasts 360-degree views from the crown of the tower, which is set 45 degrees off the street grid.
Return Path will move from 304 Park Avenue South later this year. Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s Ira Rovitz represented the tenant while Cushman & Wakefield’s Bruce Mosler, Charles Borrok and David Glassman acted for the landlord, also repped in-house by Marc
Horowitz.