West Side Rail Yards

It seems the Bloomberg administration has chosen landscape designer Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates to build a new West Side park, though there’s no official word yet from the city.

Last night at a forum on the West Side rail yards, both Vishaan Chakrabarti, an executive at the Related Companies who is leading the firm’s development of the yards, and Assemblyman Dick Gottfried referred to Van Valkenburgh as the winner of a design competition for a mid-block park and boulevard. The park is planned to run between 10th and 11th avenues, from 33rd Street to 42nd Street (though only the first segment, from 33rd Street to 36th Street, is funded).  read more »

Here’s a postcard we got this week from the Friends of the High Line, a subtle call to arms for supporters to show up in force at a West Side rail yards forum on Monday. The incredibly successful advocacy group, which got tens of millions of public dollars to transform the abandoned Chelsea elevated rail viaduct into parkland, is waging, for now, a tepid battle against the Related Companies' plans for the rail yards.  read more »

Construction, it seems, is indeed under way for the extension of the No. 7 line, the cornerstone of the Bloomberg administration’s planned development of the far West Side.

The MTA’s capital construction page shows an update for November with pictures from below, where the agency is hollowing out the cavern for the station and making way for the eventual launch of a tunnel-boring machine, which will slowly dig its way along the 1.5-mile route.  read more »

The deal to put $15 billion in residential and commercial development atop the M.T.A.'s West Side rail yards has hit a delay, as the agency will not sign a contract with developer Related Companies this week, as was originally scheduled. The state authority says it has reached an agreement with Related (which is in a joint venture with Goldman Sachs) to push back the deadline for signing a contract for the property by another 90 days, as the M.T.A. has been slower than expected in producing the needed paperwork.

"We have together agreed on an extension of the designation period," said Gary Dellaverson, the CFO of the M.T.A. (who has to have one of the least enviable jobs in government these days). "Our expectation was that the documents would have been turned a month and a half ago.

"This is my fault—the fault of the M.T.A.," he said. "This is not a product of either Related or Goldman or their lawyers."  read more »

The above clip, shot by The Observer's Azi Paybarah, shows Mayor Bloomberg yesterday answering questions about commercial development in a post-Lehman world.

"Keep in mind," the mayor said, "big developers look for downturns to start projects because that's when your cost of construction should decline, that's when you can get steel and cement delivered on time, that's when you can find labor; and then those buildings will come on stream when the cycle starts going up. You can't build at the top."

Might be a bit premature to get in line for a Related Companies-built condo on the western rail yard. The state released an early document in the rezoning process for the site just south of the Javits Center that lays out a tentative schedule for the eight towers slated to rise on the property, with the earliest completion date set for September 2015, and the latest being December 2018. (The document is for the western half of the 26-acre West Side rail yards, as the eastern half was rezoned in 2005, mostly for commercial buildings.)

Related won the rail yards back in May, when it pledged to give the M.  read more »

Expect changes ahead in the renderings of Related Companies' planned $15 billion West Side rail yards development: The developer has brought on Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates to lead the landscape design, tapping a design firm widely known for its work on public parks, including the planned Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Related was designated the developer of the 26-acre site by the Javits Center in May and is expected to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the owner of the yards, in the fall.

Related's decision to bring on the design firm represents a shift from the bidding process, when it had West 8 lead the landscape architecture for its proposal.  read more »

The Related Companies has boosted the title (and workload, presumably) of Vishaan Chakrabarti, project manager for the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust on Moynihan Station.

Mr. Chakrabarti, formerly a senior vice president, has been named Executive Vice President of Design and Planning. He will continue to lead the Moynihan Station effort, according to a Related spokeswoman.

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The Related Companies has tapped Jay Cross, president of the New York Jets, to lead its $15 billion development over the West Side rail yards, bringing in a driving force behind the failed effort three years ago to build a West Side stadium on the same site.

Mr. Cross is a onetime real estate executive who has spent much of the last few years developing stadiums and arenas for professional sports teams, pushing through the new Meadowlands stadium, Miami’s AmericanAirlines arena and the Air Canada Centre in Toronto.  read more »

Now it's really official: the M.T.A. board this afternoon voted to approve a deal with the Related Companies and Goldman Sachs to develop over the 26-acre West Side rail yards.

A few nuggets of rail yards info from the meeting: According to M.T.A. CFO Gary Dellaverson, who summarized negotiations to the board, the key to the Related Companies' victory was its willingness to literally pick up the $1.054 billion Tishman Speyer deal and sign it, only inserting one notable change.  read more »

Jerry Speyer, whose Tishman Speyer recently had a falling out with the M.T.A.  read more »

The video above, courtesy of The Observer's Azi Paybarah, features City Council Speaker Christine Quinn expounding this morning on major development projects like the Javits Center expansion and renovation; the stalled Moynihan Station plan; and the Related Companies' West Side rail yards plans.

"I really see all three of them as critically important," Ms. Quinn said. Of Related's rail yards plan specifically: "Now, yesterday, we had a terrific step forward...  read more »

The storyline behind Related’s surprise win in the West Side rail yards bidding goes, more or less, as follows, according to a Monday afternoon press conference with M.T.A. officials and Related Chairman Stephen Ross:

Back in the late winter, when a round of bids was due to the M.T.A., executives at News Corp. gave Related Companies a call within 24 hours of the bid deadline, announcing that the company would not commit to becoming an anchor tenant in Related's bid as it had previously indicated. With little time to think before its bid was due, and at a time when Bear Stearns was collapsing, Related backed out of its full bid, hoping to hang on to a partial deal for the western half of the rail yards.  read more »

Check out the above rendering. We got it on Monday afternoon at a press conference to tout the deal struck this weekend between the Related Companies and the M.T.A. over the development rights of the West Side rail yards.

Look closely. An old rendering, from Related's original rail yards bid in November, featured a sign above the concert stage that read "myspace.com". It was, of course, a reference to then-anchor tenant News Corp., owner of MySpace.  read more »

It’s official: Jumping back from the collapse of a deal with Tishman Speyer Properties, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is going with Stephen Ross’ Related Companies to develop the West Side rail yards, Manhattan’s largest remaining parcel of developable land.

As we first reported last night, Related snapped up the deal from the M.T.A. less than a week after it abandoned talks with Tishman Speyer. Tishman—apparently scared off by the tremendous risk involved in developing with no anchor tenant, a parcel in need of rezoning and an inclement lending market—tried to change the terms of the deal to lessen its risk at the last minute.

In a release from the M.T.A., it seems the agency gave Related, in a partnership with Goldman Sachs, an option to have more time to build before they start making rent payments if the developer so chooses, allowing the team to defer payments for two years.

The deal is very similar to the Tishman proposal in terms of finances, pegged at $1.054 billion in net present value.  read more »

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has reached a tentative deal to award development rights for the West Side rail yards to the Related Companies, according to a person familiar with discussions. The deal for the 26-acre site on Manhattan’s West Side comes less than a week after the M.T.A. broke off talks for the property with Tishman Speyer, the major development firm that was announced the winning bidder in late March.  read more »

One of the remaining bidders for the West Side rail yards, a team of the Durst Organizaiton and Vornado Realty Trust, said it is expecting that S.I. Newhouse’s Condé Nast will remain part of its bid as an anchor tenant.

“We expect that Condé would be our partner,” said Durst spokesman Jordan Barowitz.

However, Condé, which began a new search for space after Tishman Speyer was named the winner over the Durst/Vornado team in March, did not make clear its plans, as a company spokeswoman, Maury Perl, declined comment.  read more »

A day after the M.T.A.’s West Side rail yards deal with Tishman Speyer Properties was officially declared dead, Mayor Bloomberg today pointed to the gubernatorial roller coaster in Albany to explain the troubles for his economic development agenda.

“The chaos in Albany was not good for us,” he told reporters. “I’m not disparaging what they were trying to do, it’s just that when you change administrations, it does slow things down, and nobody expected when the administration changed a year and a third ago, that a year and a third later, they would go through the same process.”

This is a tune the mayor has been singing for a few days now—in London, he was more explicit, saying, “When Eliot Spitzer came in, he basically stopped every project that the Pataki administration negotiated, saying he wanted to look at it.”  read more »

With Tishman Speyer out of the picture at the West Side rail yards, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is now headed back to the other three bidding teams (Extell Development, the Related Companies, and a joint venture of the Durst Organization and Vornado Realty Trust); that is, if they’re still interested.

The apparent frontrunner, given that it was the runner-up to Tishman in the original bidding, would be Durst/Vornado, the only remaining team in late March with an anchor tenant, S.I. Newhouse’s Condé Nast. If Condé Nast is no longer on board with a move—The Times has reported that Tishman failed to woo them in recent weeks—that could mean trouble for the Durst/Vornado bid, or certainly the value of it.  read more »

Big news from the M.T.A. via a statement. After Tishman Speyer tried over the weekend and in the past two days to revive talks, the state agency has officially stopped discussions and is opening up talks again with other developers.

From M.T.A. spokesman Jeremy Soffin:

The MTA met today with Tishman Speyer. Despite the best efforts of both sides, a final agreement could not be reached. The MTA has now re-entered discussions with other interested developers and remains committed to timely development of these unique and valuable parcels of land on Manhattan's Far West Side.

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At a press conference earlier today, Michael Bloomberg pushed back against Chuck Schumer’s suggestion that building Moynihan Station should take precedence over developing the West Side rail yards.
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Speaking from London earlier today, Michael Bloomberg said the deal for the West Side rail yards was still alive, and called on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to work out its differences with Tishman Speyer and come to an agreement. The M.T.A. said it reached an impasse with Tishman Speyer yesterday.

“These projects are phenomenally complex—they have lots of different layers of government involved,” Mr. Bloomberg said, speaking to reporters. “My hope is that the state government, really the M.T.A. in this case, can get together and solve the problems that they have and that Tishman Speyer has so that they can come together. But I don’t think it’s the least bit fair or accurate to say that anything’s dead.”

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Did Jerry and Rob Speyer dive into a project too big for the real estate giants to handle?

When Tishman Speyer Properties was announced winner of the West Side rail yards development rights in late March, the scene was a cheery one, with the governor and mayor on hand at the yards to hail the Speyers as victors. Now, with the deal apparently dead, the mood has changed substantially [background on the deal collapse here].

In the weeks since the March announcement, Tishman Speyer appeared to grow unexpectedly wary. What was ultimately the sticking point in negotiations—the firm wanted to wait an extra year or so before closing on the eastern rail yard, until the western rail yard was rezoned—was a point that Tishman accepted a few weeks back when it was selected.  read more »

With the West Side rail yards development deal on very shaky ground, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky today announced a bill that would chart a new course for the 26-acre parcel west of Penn Station, bringing in a new authority to follow a Battery Park City model of piecemeal development.

“Instead of selling at the bottom of the market for a price that was never really what the property was worth in the long run,” Mr. Brodsky said, “we should do what we know works.”

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the rail yards, has been trying to sell them to a private firm to develop, though yesterday talks broke down with selected developer Tishman Speyer, which had planned to pay the M.T.A. about $1 billion for the property.  read more »

The deal for billions of dollars worth of development over the West Side rail yards collapsed Thursday afternoon, with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Tishman Speyer hitting an impasse in negotiations. The failure to reach a deal came more than five weeks after the M.T.A. announced Tishman Speyer as the winner of the development rights, after a months-long bidding contest between six of the city’s largest development firms.

According to a statement from the M.T.A., the failure to complete the deal came as Tishman Speyer refused to close on the agreement for the eastern half of the rail yards until the western half was rezoned, a process that could easily take until late 2009, if not 2010. The accord reached in late March held that Tishman would close on the eastern half; then, after the western half was rezoned, they would close the deal on that section, completing the deal. The total deal was estimated to bring the M.T.A. about $1 billion from Tishman.

The collapse in talks came one day after the M.T.A. passed a self-imposed seven-day deadline to finish negotiations and sign a conditional letter of designation, a document that was not signed when Tishman won the bidding. Officials said at the time of that announcement, in late March, that they were highly confident a final deal would be reached, characterizing the designation letter as something of a formality.  read more »

Five weeks after Tishman Speyer was announced the winner of the West Side rail yards, negotiations are still unfinished between Tishman, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the city, an M.T.A. spokesman confirmed.

The parties yesterday missed a seven-day deadline set by the M.T.A. at its board meeting last week, with the final details of a conditional letter of designation yet to be finalized.  read more »

A month after the state declared Tishman Speyer winner of the bid to develop the West Side rail yards, the  read more »

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Tishman Speyer have missed their first deadline in the project to develop the West Side rail yards, as the date for the MTA to officially designate Tishman Speyer as the developer has come and gone.  read more »

By almost any measure, Jerry and Rob Speyer’s planned development of the West Side rail yards is on a grand scale.

Its space (26 acres), price tag (perhaps $12 billion to $13 billion, based on the cost for two similar proposals at the site), and size (13 million square feet) all outstrip major development projects such as Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, the World Trade Center, and Sheldon Solow’s seven-tower complex planned for the area just south of the United Nations.

But as the largest development project to grace New York City’s presence in generations, it carries with it great risk—risk that if it were to fail, it could bring down the emerging far West Side with it; risk that if the urban design is poorly planned, the area could be scarred with a large, barren public space for decades. Once eyed to hold an Olympic stadium, the rail yards are intended to be the anchor for the new Midtown West business district—the catalyst that would give the emerging area its critical mass and invite a set of apartment and commercial towers.  read more »

Above is a rendering of some of the 13 acres of public space in Tishman Speyer's winning West Side rail yards bid. Here's some more.

Conde Nast was one of the tangential losers in the West Side rail yards bidding. The magazine publishing giant was the anchor tenant for the Durst-Vornado bid, and that bid, of course, lost yesterday to Tishman Speyer's.

But! John Koblin, at our brother blog Media Mob, reports that Conde Nast C.O.O. John Bellando sent out an internal memo this morning telling employees that the company was still looking to build a new tower--somewhere--by 2016.

From the memo:  read more »

If there is anything to be learned from the moves and actions of the Speyer family over the past few years, it is that its members have a penchant for high-profile trophy properties; they have no qualms about aggressively engaging in mega-deals for the city’s largest sales; they can win out in tough contests; and they sell buildings for tremendous returns.

The Tishman Speyer kingdom, already extending to more than a dozen U.S. cities and three continents, will now raise a flag on the far West Side of Manhattan. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority yesterday declared the longtime New York real estate firm the developer and owner-to-be of its 26-acre rail yards, Manhattan’s largest chunk of undeveloped real estate, bounded by 11th and 12th avenues, and 30th and 33rd streets. [See our coverage from Wednesday here, here, here, and here.]

Now the fate of the West Side rests in large part in the Speyers' hands, as officials and real estate executives say the successful creation of a new business district a few avenues west of America’s largest central business district depends on the development of the rail yards, long eyed as the site for something other than open air.  read more »

A few statements from various politicians and organizations, including Friends of the High Line and State Senator Tom Duane, about the selection of Tishman Speyer as developer of the 26-acre West Side rail yards:  read more »

In the beginning, there were five teams that included the city's biggest developers vying for the West Side rail yards. Today, the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the yards' owner, voted to negotiate solely with Tishman Speyer over acquiring and developing the 26-acre site.

Gary Dellaverson, the MTA's CFO, talked at today's board meeting about the bidding that was closely watched for months even though few people beyond those directly involved knew what was really going on. According to Mr. Dellaverson and an MTA summary handed out to board members:  read more »

Maybe it’s best to keep the champagne on ice just for a few more days.

There’s a bit more work to be done on the deal between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Tishman Speyer over the West Side rail yards, as the MTA did not give, as it once planned to, a “conditional letter of designation” to Tishman today for the deal. With some final details yet to be ironed out, that designation comes in the next 14 days, to be followed by a contract within 120 days after that.  read more »

Our brother blog The Politicker reports that Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg have scheduled a 3 p.m. press conference at the Hudson Yards.

It's quite a real estate empire the Speyers now have. When they get done building 10 million square feet of office space and 3 million square feet of residential on the West Side rail yards, they can add that to the following massive trophies:

Stuyvesant Town and Cooper Village, the Manhattan apartment complexes Tishman Speyer and junior partners acquired in late 2006 for the record price of $5.4 billion. The complexes have 110 buildings total with over 11,200 apartments, many of which are moving toward market-rate.  read more »

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As expected, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has selected Tishman Speyer to develop the West Side rail yards. We'll have more on this later in the day.

My colleague Eliot Brown has a story in today's paper about the next steps for Tishman Speyer in developing the 26-acre site.

As The Observer noted in November, Tishman Speyer's West Side rail yards bid leans more heavily commercial than any of the others. Its original bid had 3,000 apartments and 10 million square feet of office space. That office space component may have dwindled as Tishman Speyer lost Morgan Stanley as an anchor tenant earlier this year.

Tishman Speyer appears to be in the pole position going into the final stretch of the West Side rail yards saga, as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, as of this morning, was still negotiating with the firm to hammer out an agreement before Wednesday’s MTA board meeting, according to three people familiar with the talks.  read more »

A developer for the West Side rail yards could be selected as early as tonight, with Tishman Speyer and a venture between the Durst Organization and Vornado Realty Trust leading the field, according to two people familiar with discussions.  read more »

Revised bids for the West Side rail yards were due today, and Brookfield Properties did not submit a response, leaving four of the city’s biggest developers in a battle for control of the 26-acre site west of Pennsylvania Station.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the site, put out a statement a few minutes ago saying that the