[ad_1]
Related Companies plans to build a 1,200-foot supertall skyscraper on Madison Avenue, CEO Jeff Blau told Realty Check.
The cloud-bursting building, which will include luxury apartments, shops and possibly a hotel, will be built at 625 Madison Avenue, which will include the 58 E. 39 next door.day Street, the former site of Lavo Restaurant.
Although it had been reported previously that Related was looking to construct a new building, the scale of it was not known until now.
Blau said Related recently acquired the site from SL Green for $632 million. SL Green announced the contract in December, but the closing of the deal has not yet been posted on the city’s Department of Finance website.
Blau said the new supertall building could be built “as a matter of course” — apparently meaning it wouldn’t require a zoning change or city land-use review.
Blau spoke to The Washington Post last week after Stephen M. Ross, Related’s founder and chairman, announced his historic but not entirely surprising departure to form a new development company in South Florida.
Although this seems to put Blau in a political dilemma, as Related is trying to win the Hudson YardsBlau described it as a “formality.” Ross, 84, moved mostly to West Palm Beach a few years ago. Since then, Related has been run by his friend Blau, company president Bruce Beal Jr. and chief operating officer Kenneth Wong.
Blau clarified that the newly formed Florida company, called Related Ross, is a “completely separate entity” from the Related Companies.
He has yet to share images of the 625 Madison plans.
“We have nine months of demolition work to do first,” he said.
“Stephen and I spent the first 15 years of my life in that building,” Brown fondly recalls. The building was once the headquarters of Ronald Perelman’s Revlon. It’s also where the first-ever Realty Check column took place—Ross was interviewed there in 1999, as demolition was underway at Columbus Circle, the building that would later become Related’s Time Warner Center.
Of course, Related’s most ambitious project in the Big Apple is a proposal to build a 3 million-square-foot Wynn-branded casino resort on the undeveloped West Side of Hudson Yards.
Blau is excited about Related’s $12 billion plan to build out the entire Western Shipyard.
“It certainly can’t get any bigger than this,” Blau said.As first reported by The Washington Post last summer, the resort skyscraper will include a 250,000-square-foot casino, a 1,700-room hotel and 20 restaurants.
The West Yard plan also includes a 2 million-square-foot office building, a 1 million-square-foot apartment building with 324 affordable housing units, a new public school and a nearly 6-acre public park — “bigger than Bryant Park,” Blau said.
But that is up to the New York State Gaming Facility Site Selection Commission, which is expected to select a winning proposal from more than a dozen proposals to receive a casino license in New York City by the end of 2025.
State officials are eager to see Related’s 26-acre Hudson Yards project completed. But other casino partnership proposals also promise broad benefits for the community.
For example, SL Green claims that its dream of opening a Caesars-branded casino at 1515 Broadway is necessary to stem the recent decline of Times Square. Casinos such as the Soloviev Group/Mohegan near the United Nations and the Steve Cohen/Hard Rock International near Citi Field have their own selling points.
Formal offers aren’t due until June 2025. The state Legislature wants to move that deadline up to next month, but Gov. Kathy Hochul hasn’t signed the bill yet.
“We want to get the proposal out there as soon as possible,” Blau said. “We’d love to get it out there and start working with the community to resolve any issues. But obviously we’ll do what’s necessary.”
He downplayed recent objections from the Friends of the High Line to the height of the casino/hotel tower’s podium, saying Related has met with the group ten times in the past year and made changes to the design.
Related is also busy with new housing developments at Willets Point in Queens, and the New York City Housing Authority’s West Chelsea Fulton Elliott Chelsea Housing project in partnership with Essence Development. The latter will create 3,000 new affordable housing units as part of a “no home displacement” initiative, Blau said.
Related owns about $60 billion worth of real estate in the U.S. Although New Yorkers mostly associate it with large office developments, it is also the largest private owner of affordable housing in the country.
[ad_2]
Source link
