Time Warner, Citibank and Ralph Lauren Polo could be the next big companies to move to mammoth new Hudson Yards on the Far West Side.
All three have had talks with Hudson Yards developer Related Cos. about taking space in the 26-acre site’s second planned skyscraper, sources said.
Related chief Stephen Ross is furiously courting tenants for the project’s North Tower after inking deals yesterday with three major companies for the South Tower — Coach Inc., L’Oréal and tech firm SAP. They will occupy 80 percent of the 47-story building, scheduled to open in 2015.
The North Tower will be much bigger — 80 stories and 1,337 feet tall, which is nearly as tall as 1 World Trade Center not including its spire.
The South Tower has started construction at 10th Avenue and 31st Street on Hudson Yards’ eastern edge. The North Tower will go up at 10th and 33rd Street once tenants are signed up.
The second cloudbuster would firmly establish Related’s Hudson Yards — to be built above the vast open rail yard between 10th and 12th avenues — as the city’s hottest commercial-development district.
It would also cement Mayor Bloomberg’s legacy for kick-starting the birth of a vast new neighborhood on Manhattan’s Far West Side, a dream that started with his failed quest to build an Olympics stadium.
Related’s talks with possible tenants for the North Tower were in the earliest stages. At least one, Citibank, recently seemed to have dropped the idea and was looking elsewhere, sources said.
But, “The finalized deals with Coach and the other tenants at the South Tower change everything,” a real-estate insider said.
“Even though everyone knew they were happening, the real-estate mind knows a deal isn’t closed until it closes. The South Tower deals swept away the last bit of uncertainty about Hudson Yards. Related has momentum now.”
The plan for Coach to move its headquarters there was first heralded by Mayor Bloomberg and others at a photo-op on Nov. 1, 2011.
And leases with L’Oréal and SAP have been reported for months. What happened this week was the final crossing of t’s and dotting of i’s, which Related also did with the site’s owner, the MTA.