BY YANNIC RACK | The skyline of the West Side has been changing rapidly in recent years, and it can be hard to keep track of all the new developments currently springing up in Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, and in between.
The largest project of its kind in the area, and the city for that matter, is Hudson Yards — the cornerstone of a new neighborhood that is set to breathe life into this long-neglected part of the city.
Currently under construction atop the active rail yards between W. 30th and W. 34th Sts., and 10th Ave. and the Hudson River, the project will be completed in stages over the next ten years, with the first office tenants scheduled to move in next spring. It will eventually accommodate around 125,000 residents, visitors and workers every day.
“That’s Cambridge, Massachusetts. That’s Burbank, California. It is a city in and of itself. And that’s just our project, not including Brookfield and the other projects in the area,” says Michael Samuelian. As a vice president with Related Companies, which is developing the site together with Oxford Properties, he is responsible for the urban planning, architectural design, marketing and public approvals of the $20 billion project.
Samuelian and Related’s Geoff Butler — who oversees the construction at 10 Hudson Yards, the first office tower that now stands almost complete — recently sat down with Chelsea Now to talk about what it’s like to be involved in one of the largest private real estate developments to ever be built in the country.
Originally from Seattle and now living in New Jersey, Butler has been working in New York for the last 20 years and was most recently involved in the construction of 3 World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.
“A lot of that helped with this, managing not just your own construction site but coordinating with neighboring ones as well,” he says. “It’s kind of one big construction site but within that there’s a lot of individual projects.”
Samuelian, who grew up in Brooklyn, was also involved with the World Trade Center. As the Director of Lower Manhattan Special Projects at the Department of City Planning, he helped the city’s efforts to redevelop Downtown post-9/11. This project, however, is like nothing else he’s been involved in.
“At Hudson Yards we’re starting from zero. We’re not rebuilding anything. We’re building stuff. We’re kind of trying to capture the essence of what makes a great neighborhood,” he says. “We’re very much at the edge. We’re at the edge of Chelsea, we’re at the edge of Hell’s Kitchen, we’re at the edge of Midtown, and we’re kind of that hole in the donut. And it’s a great opportunity to fill that up with the best of New York.”
The first building of the development, 10 Hudson Yards, now sits at the southeastern corner of the site, at W. 30th St. and 10th Ave. It has almost reached its final height of 52 stories and is emblematic of the quick pace that the whole project is moving at.
“You’re putting up steel and curtain walls that are kind of chasing each other, but now we have interiors going on, we have structural steel going on, we have foundations going on,” Samuelian says. “It’s like building an entire city simultaneously.”
“Very soon it’ll reach its height and you’ll see the glass wrap it up into early next year,” Butler adds. “And then people will be sitting at their desk in their new office in the spring.”
Most of the site rests on hundreds of caissons that are drilled into the bedrock between the train tracks running underneath and support the platform that stretches over both the Eastern and Western yards. Butler says it is currently about 60 percent complete.
“Earlier on, we had a tunnel going in and we were chasing that with the platform. Right now, a lot of the platform is done and it’s chased by building on top of the platform,” he says. “We’re kind of our own site now and above the rail yards, so it’s more normal construction.”
Once complete, the neighborhood will have a multitude of notable amenities. The platform will be home to a cogeneration plant and a trash disposal system of pneumatic tubes (like the one already being used on Roosevelt Island, as well as a ventilation system to keep the heat of the train yards from killing plants on the public plaza, which will serve as a connection between the buildings as well as the High Line and the Hudson Park and Boulevard.
The latter recently opened north of the neighborhood on Sept. 13 and now includes three blocks of park space as well as the entrance to the new 7 subway extension.
In order to maintain the many parts of the project, Related will stay in charge of the neighborhood once it’s up and running, also managing the office, retail and residential buildings through a newly created subsidiary.
“What distinguishes us from other developers is that we will continue to own the assets,” Samuelian says, “so we will have a continuing role in the neighborhood — forever. We can’t just let it go, it’s too big of a project. We’re going to have to hire gardeners for the first time.”
Samuelian says the developers also took a page from the destruction wreaked by Hurricane Sandy, to minimize the impact a similar catastrophe would have on the neighborhood. “The cogeneration plant is a direct result of Sandy, to some extent, so we will have energy independence,” he says. “Hudson Yards will be up and running in the case of a blackout on the East Coast or New York City.”
Due to the nature of building on top of the rail yards, the neighborhood’s electrical equipment is located on the fourth and fifth floors. “I can’t imagine anything more resilient than having all our utilities elevated,” Butler says.
“We don’t have a basement, so even before Sandy all of our equipment was elevated on upper levels,” Samuelian adds. “Unlike Downtown, where most of the electrical equipment was in the basement, we’ve never had that condition from day one. And our first floor is higher than Tenth Avenue. The water [during Sandy] didn’t quite make it to Tenth, so think about that.”
Samuelian says all of those different aspects will hopefully set new standards for future development in the city.
“I would hope to say we’re raising the standard for New York City, whether it’s about having energy generated on site via the cogeneration, having a smart trash system, having storm water retention, having a green and sustainable environment,” he says.
“But there are certain things that are limited [to a project like this]. A microgrid requires private utility. It would be difficult or near impossible for a series of developers to kind of gang together and run utilities in public streets. There are certain things you can only do if you have a campus.”
For Samuelian, being involved with Hudson Yards and adding to the city’s skyline has all the more meaning because it’s right in his own backyard. He describes himself as a “real West Sider” because he has lived in Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen for the last 15 years.
“I have a great deal of pride, as a New Yorker building more New York,” he says. “It feels really good to be able to do that. And also filling in a hole in the city, that in particular — this huge urban design benefits and really connects these neighborhoods. For the first time, Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen are going to be connected.
“The skyline is important, and I take pictures too, but I think doing it right on the ground is even more important to New Yorkers. My fantasy is that, in fifty years, nobody views Hudson Yards as separate from the neighborhood. It will be just one contiguous piece of the West Side fabric.”
