Demolition at 99 Church St. is done, but that doesn’t mean developer Silverstein Properties can leap right into the construction of the new Four Seasons hotel and condo tower.
Before Richard McKinley, Silverstein’s development manager, can look up to see the tower rise, he has to look down. The site abuts the 2/3 and E subway lines, so workers need to brace the concrete bathtub wall that traces the border of the property. That work started in late May and should conclude soon.
At Community Board 1’s W.T.C. Redevelopment Committee in June, McKinley updated the board on progress at the site of former headquarters of Moody’s Corp.
Starting in the winter, workers demolished one floor every two weeks, knocking out concrete, burning steel beams and pushing in walls, using the elevators as trash chutes.
Now workers are reinforcing the bathtub, and once that is complete, Silverstein will build the foundation. By February 2009, the superstructure will start to rise. Then, by June 2010, McKinley expects the building, designed by Robert A.M. Stern, to top out at 912 feet. The facade will follow no more than a month behind, completed in July of that year.
McKinley hopes to open the 190-room five-star hotel in January 2011 and start moving people into the 143 condos about six months later.
The market-rate condos won’t be accessible to everyone, but McKinley showed one feature of the project that has no entrance fee: an 8,600-square-foot public plaza on the east side of the site that will be open 24 hours a day.
Dara McQuillan, spokesperson for Silverstein, said the plaza will be modeled after the one outside 7 W.T.C., which has a European style.
Silverstein will install one crane on Church St., which will require a lane to be closed, and may install another on the east side of the site near Park Place.
With concern over construction — and especially crane accidents — on everyone’s mind, McKinley promised that contractor Tishman Construction Corp. would be extra cautious. McKinley agreed to implement at 99 Church St. the same safety measures Tishman is using on its Goldman Sachs site, after a sheet of metal flew off the Goldman building and landed in the adjacent ballfield.
Although some board members protested the project’s lack of affordable housing and the public garage with 60 spaces that could encourage driving Downtown, the reaction was mostly positive.
“It’s too bad we have to wait another four years to see the completion of this,” committee chairperson Catherine McVay Hughes said.
–Julie Shapiro
