Brookfield Office Properties has stated that it is to use bridge-building technology to cover a 65-foot railroad trench on the site of an office development it is building.
The technology has never before been used in a building project of this nature.
According to Brookfield the use of the new technology will save the developer years of labour and approximately half its costs in its race to develop Manhattan’s West Side.
Joseph Harbert, Chief Operating Officer for Cushman & Wakefield told Bloomberg: “Once those platforms are up, that place is going to be on fire.
“If they can get it up faster and at a lower cost, that stuff is going to rent.”
Three office towers are planned for the site, two of which will feature two million square feet and the third to have 1.2 million square feet.
Brookfield’s rival developer Related is also planning a major development for the West Side, which will involve almost 13 million square feet, six million of which would be office space.
Related’s ambitious project would also boast five million square feet of housing as well as a hotel, school and cultural centre.
Both Related and Brookfield claim that they will have their first building in the West Side completed by 2015. The two companies are targeting media, fashion and financial services companies to rent the new office space.
Alexander Garvin, President of AGA Public Real Strategists said: “The opportunity of the platforming on the far West Side is an opportunity to extend the central business district to the Hudson River.
“If we do it with the same quality of excellence that was done by the New York Central Railway, then we will do a very fine thing for New York.”
Editor’s notes: Brookfield’s One Manhattan West is located at 395 Ninth Avenue and was completed in 2019 at a cost of $1.91 billion.
Work commenced on the 2.1 million square foot, 67-storey building in 2015 once a pre-leasing agreement was completed with anchor tenant white-shoe law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom which agreed to rent 550,000 square feet of office space on a 20-year lease.
As of July 2023, the tower was 86% leased with a tenant directory that also included Accenture, Ernst and Young, McKool Smith, and the National Hockey League, amongst others.
The LEED Gold certified 1MW is part of the larger 8 million square foot Manhattan West district that offers custom-designed office spaces, curated food and retail, pop-up experiences, plentiful green spaces, homes, and a boutique hotel.
Related and Oxford Properties’ 28-acre Hudson Yards scheme which is the largest private real estate development in the history of the United States, provides 12 million square feet of commercial and residential space.
The Eastern Rail Yards was completed in 2019 and contains soaring commercial towers 10 Hudson Yards, 30 Hudson Yards, and 50 Hudson Yards which was completed in October 2019.
In 2016, Blackrock agreed to a pre-leasing deal which saw it lease 15 floors of 50 Hudson Yards to create its New York headquarters.