They won’t shoot out of the ground overnight, but a 72-story skyscraper apartment tower and a 28-story hotel are in the future for the burgeoning Far West Side, aka the Hudson Yards District.
Gov. Kathy Hochul named a four-member development partnership as “conditionally designated” to build the tower and a Hilton-branded hotel at 418 Eleventh Ave. between West 35th and 36th streets.
The site is now a vacant lot opposite the Jacob Javits Convention Center.
It will have almost 1,400 apartments of which 404 would be permanently affordable, ESDC said.
The hotel would provide 455 much-needed rooms for Javits Center attendees.
The development team, known as the Hudson Boulevard Collective, consists of publicly traded BXP (formerly Boston Properties), Joseph Moinian’s well-known New York-based Moinian Group, and minority-owned BRP Companies and the Urbane Group.
BRP is a partner in the successful Urban League headquarters on West 125th Street. BRP and Urbane represent 31% of the Collective’s stake.
The project is expected to cost $1.35 billion. FXCollective will be the lead architect.
The site — one block north of Related Companies’ Hudson Yards complex and diagonally across from Tishman Speyer’s The Spiral — has a troubled history.
The state has long wanted to see it developed as a complement to private-sector projects nearby.
Under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the Empire State Development Corp. planned to choose a developer for a mostly commercial project.
But the state’s priorities changed with the office market turndown during the pandemic and as city officials and civic groups clamored for more housing.
Hochul yanked the original request for proposals in 2021 and issued a new RFP requiring housing and scrapping the commercial part.
That step doomed developer Don Peebles’ widely publicized proposal for a so-called “Affirmation Tower” that would rise to over 1,600 feet but include no housing.
Because the land is state-owned, it’s exempt from city zoning rules but must still undergo environmental review and take public comments.
Construction won’t likely start for 3.5 years, Crain’s reported, with the residential tower to be completed first.
ESDC chief executive and president Hope Knight said the site’s development “represents a pivotal moment in the evolution of the Far West Side.”
