The clock begins ticking Monday to win metropolis approval for Midtown’s most formidable growth mission — a 1.8 million square-foot,1,600-foot tall tower at 350 Park Avenue, to be developed by a formidable triumvirate of private and non-private wealth.
The seven-month public evaluation course of generally known as ULURP begins on March 17 for the crew’s request for a comparatively small improve in floor-to-area ratio, or FAR, which is a measure of a constructing’s measurement relative to the scale of the land on which it stands, above what present East Midtown zoning permits.
Not like goals for another supertall industrial towers which may or won’t get constructed, 350 Park seems to be a certain factor.
It’s a a three way partnership of publicly-traded Vornado Realty Belief, which owns the present, unattractive Midcentury constructing at 350 Park Ave.; privately-held Rudin, which owns adjoining and equally unattractive 40 E. 52nd St.; and mega-billionaire investor Ken Griffin. Citadel and Citadel Securities, separate corporations that Griffin leads, would be the skyscraper’s anchor tenants with no less than 850,000 sq. ft.
If metropolis approval is granted, the companions can begin demolition of the previous buildings when Citadel staff quickly transfer out of the previous 350 Park subsequent 12 months.
The cloudbuster will begin to rise with or with none extra tenants. Vornado government vice-president for growth and actual property Barry Langer stated,
“The magic formula to get a tower off ground is to have an anchor tenant and equity partners, which we have in the form of ourselves, Rudin and Ken Griffin,” he stated.
The overall estimated growth price is $4.5 billion, Langer stated.
The environmentally delicate, “wellness”-attuned, all-electric tower designed by Foster + Companions might be Park Avenue’s tallest ever, dwarfing the brand new JPMorgan Chase headquarters by greater than 200 ft.
A number of steps are wanted to extend the permissible FAR on the 53,000 square-foot lot from the present 15 to 25. The companions will tape air rights from St. Patrick’s Cathedral and St. Bart’s Church which they’re shopping for for a mixed $150 million — which requires no public evaluation — and contribute greater than $35 million to the town’s East Midtown Public Realm Enchancment Fund.
To earn three extra FAR models, the mission will embody main public facilities: a block-long, 12,500 square-foot open plaza fronting the avenue and wrapping round to East 51st and 52nd streets, designed by Excessive Line designer Area Operations; a five-foot sidewalk widening on every of the aspect streets; and a fine-dining restaurant on 52nd Avenue and a restaurant on 51st Avenue.
The alfresco plaza will sit beneath a forty-foot-high ceiling much like the one Vornado put in at PENN 2, a part of its redeveloped Penn Station-area advanced.
At 350 Park, Griffin “is intent on creating world-class office space for his team, with great natural light, column-free floors and access to amenities,” Langer stated.
He credited the town’s latest Midtown rezoning with “encouraging developers like us who have 1950s buildings with low ceilings” to exchange them with twenty first Century product. That was our [Vornado’s] motivation.”
He stated Rudin — “We are obviously friends” — was motivated by the truth that BlackRock, its important tenant at 40 E. 52nd. St., moved to Hudson Yards, “leaving a huge block of space to be re-leased in an older building.”
The brand new tower design boasts a sequence of stepped setbacks on its east-facing aspect. The tapered kind will enable optimum gentle and views on workplace flooring. Some tenants could have entry to personal outside terraces.
Foster + Companions senior government accomplice Nigel Dancey stated, “We got to know Ken at 425 Park Ave. [which his firm also designed and where Citadel has a large space.] He’s kind of a perfectionist about beautifully laid-out floor plates.”
Dancey stated 350 Park will present “great diagonal views. We moved the core elevators to the west to create large floor plates on the avenue side.”
The ULURP course of begins with an advisory-only 60-day evaluation by Manhattan Neighborhood Board 5. The plan then goes to the Manhattan borough president, the Metropolis Planning Fee, the Metropolis Council, with ultimate approval by the mayor.
