Plan opens new West Side story

Plan opens new West Side story
By David M. Levitt 2007-7-16
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MANHATTAN'S West Side rail yards are being offered to developers under a city and state plan to turn the 26-acre (10.5-hectare) parcel into an office and residential district.

The state and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, owner of the property, will begin soliciting proposals for the site's development rights, Governor Eliot Spitzer said.

The yards stretch from the Hudson River to 10th Avenue between 30th Street and 33rd Streets and may accommodate 12 million square feet (1.11 million square meters) of skyscrapers and apartments as well as parks and a cultural center.

"Today is the beginning of a new West Side story," said Spitzer. "This will be one of the largest and most important development projects in the history of New York City."

Developers including the Durst Organization, Brookfield Properties and Vornado Realty Trust may bid for the site, lured by the potential to build skyscrapers and the availability of a large piece of land in Manhattan.

Any developer would probably have to spend US$1 billion to build a platform over the rail yards before constructing anything at the site, Durst President Douglas Durst said, according to Bloomberg News.

The development will be "a huge driver of economic growth," Spitzer said. "The 12 million square feet is going to be larger than Rockefeller Center by two million square feet."

The governor announced the release of two "requests for proposals" from developers, one each for the eastern and western sections of the yards.

The plan calls for office towers and commercial development to dominate the eastern yard, between 9th and 10th Avenues. On the western side, between 11th Avenue and the river, at least 20 percent of the development must be commercial, another 20 percent residential, with the builder free to propose the remaining mix.

The western end of the site is where Mayor Michael Bloomberg was thwarted in 2005 in an effort to build a stadium for the 2012 Olympics and the New York Jets football team.

The new plan for the western end includes a 250,000-square-foot cultural center, a public school, and five acres of parkland.

About 20 percent of the rental units proposed for the western rail yard must be affordable housing under a city program which provides tax-exempt bonds for such development, according to the bid documents.

Two sites near the yards, an MTA parking lot at West 54th Street and the space above an Amtrak rail cut near West 48th Street, will also be set aside for low and moderate-income housing.

The development "will have a significant component of permanent affordable housing," said City Council President Christine Quinn. "And that will send a message, I think, to other developers, that you can do big-scale development, and get real, permanent affordable housing which our city is desperate for."

Developers considering bids include Durst, Brookfield Properties Corp, Tishman Speyer Properties LP and The Related Cos LP, the New York Times reported.

Durst said he intends to bid jointly with Vornado to "create a new destination in New York. It will be a place that people must go to."