Google Is Checking Out Manhattan West
Office tenants of all stripes are watching the massive city within a city rising on the Far West Side. It's one of Manhattan's most-anticipated transformations, and that's why we're thrilled to be holding Bisnow’s Future of Manhattan’s Far West Side event next week. And it might get even hotter: We're told the mother of all tech tenants, Google, has talked to Brookfield about Manhattan West. Here's the latest on that and Related and Oxford's Hudson Yards.
Brookfield's 7M SF Manhattan West
We visited Brookfield’s US development head, Phil Wharton (who will speak at the event a week from today) at his Brookfield Place office to talk about the project, which from 31st to 33rd from Ninth to Tenth. He tells us six of the 16 concrete spans that will form a deck over Amtrak’s tracks are done. Phil joined the company two-and-a-half years ago, and the spans started going into place a year later. Progress is humming now, and the deck will be done by the end of the year. Phil tells us the platform added little to Brookfield’s basis in the project.
The five-acre project includes a two-acre east-west central plaza that’ll continue the pedestrian walkway that will run west from Madison Square Garden, through Moynihan Station, and then across Ninth into Manhattan West. Eventually, it’ll run through Manhattan West’s existing building, 450 W 33rd St, to Tenth Avenue.
What many don’t realize, Phil tells us, is that Manhattan West is the farthest east of the Far West Side projects. It’s half a block from the southern entrance to the new 7 line subway station at Hudson Park but also just one block from the Amtrak, LIRR, NJ Transit, and PATH entrance now under construction in Moynihan Station (on which Phil is resting his hand, probably causing an earthquake in this model town).
Brookfield will begin $200M of renovations, including a new shell, on the 1.8M SF 450 W 33rd, which takes up the western third of the site. The work will be done with tenants in place and finish in Q1 '16, and the building will be rebranded as 5 Manhattan West. And as soon as the deck over the train tracks finishes at the end of this year, the 60-floor 3 Manhattan West (844 apartments) in the middle of the southern side of the site will start going vertical. Renters will be able to move in February 2017. 4 Manhattan West (hotel and condos) is planned for the northern side of the site, opposite 3 Manhattan West.
Brookfield also will build 2M SF of new office in two towers on the east side of the site: 1 Manhattan West (at right) on the northern corner and 2 Manhattan West (at left) on the southern. Phil tells us Google is among the tenants that have talked to him about leasing, and if a 300k-plus SF tenant signs on, the 67-story 1 Manhattan West (rendered at right) could start going up at the same time as the apartment building. 200k SF of retail will scatter the site, much of it on the central plaza, and a grocery store is among the possibilities, Phil tells us.
Related & Oxford's 17.4M SF Hudson Yards
Related and Oxford Properties’ granddaddy-of-them-all project (30th to 34th from Tenth to the West Side Highway) is changing so fast that Stephen Winter, who joined from CBRE in November to oversee office leasing (and who also will speak at Bisnow's Future of Manhattan's Far West Side event), felt rusty when he returned from his one-week honeymoon (Hawaii) on Thursday.
The 1.7M SF 10 Hudson Yards at 30th and Tenth will house Fairway in 46k SF on the bottom, with Coach just above in 740k SF, L’Oreal above that with 402k SF, an available block of 34k SF, and then SAP in 150k SF on the top five floors. (To answer your question, it's Coach, the handbag company, not a museum for the Craig T. Nelson sitcom.) It has risen to the eighth of 52 floors (we ran a picture in yesterday’s issue) and will be ready next year.
We also snapped the loads of building molds Related has made for its model. 10 Hudson Yards is on the southeast corner of the site. The 1.3M SF, 51-story 55 Hudson Yards (which like Moinian’s 3 Hudson Blvd will open right onto Hudson Park) will begin at 34th and Eleventh in January and will deliver in late 2017. The building won’t go spec, but Stephen has no doubt that tenants will be lined up in time, considering he’s done 52 tenant presentations since January. Construction for 30 Hudson Yards, the 2.6M SF, 80-story behemoth office at 33rd and Tenth with a 1,100-foot-high observation deck will break ground sometime this year and deliver in 2018 for Time Warner’s new HQs. Stephen tells us the imminent office delivery dates are a boon. They mean Related isn't talking just to the big-dog tenants; smaller tenants with shorter horizons are kicking the tires at Hudson Yards, too.
The resi buildings will begin this year, as well. The 70-story, 250-unit condo/apartment combo 15 Hudson Yards at 30th and Eleventh (the view from the penthouse looking toward the WTC is rendered above) will deliver in 2017. The 79-story 35 Hudson Yards (250 condos and 150 hotel rooms) will come online in 2018 at 33rd and Eleventh.
A million SF of retail will connect 10 and 30, and there’s the public plaza, the 2.3M SF 50 Hudson Yards office building at 34th and Tenth that has yet to be unveiled, and the Culture Shed with retractable roof. (Any shed can be a culture shed if your wheelbarrow likes Shakespeare.) All of the buildings mentioned above will be under construction by this time next year and done by 2018—and then it’s time to start on the western railyard, where another 2M SF of office, 4M SF of resi, 100k SF of retail, and a 120k SF K-8 school will rise by 2024. If the entire 28-acre, master-planned project seems gigantic to you, consider that half of it will be open space. And believe it or not, there's even more you don't know yet, so don’t forget to sign up to hear from Phil, Stephen, and plenty of others!
