SkyscraperPage Forum - NEW YORK | 15 Penn Plaza (Hotel Penn) | 1,200 FT / 388 M

Viewing Page 8 of 108

SkyscraperPage Forum (https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/index.php)

- Proposals (https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=361)

- - NEW YORK | 15 Penn Plaza (Hotel Penn) | 1,200 FT / 388 M | 61 FLOORS (https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?t=162701)

Quote:

Originally Posted by scalziand (Post 4703168)

I just find it funny that $83 million is enough to start a project that will ultimately cost several billion.

A little more on that...

Quote:

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/f...nded-1.1764909

First phase of Penn Station overhaul fully funded

February 16, 2010
By ALFONSO A. CASTILLO

Phase One includes doubling the size of the LIRR's West End Concourse, on the Eighth Avenue side of the station, and adding 13 elevators, stairways and escalators leading down to train platforms. It would also improve customer flow to the concourse by doubling the width of the 33rd Street connector.

The Farley building will get new street-level entrances and a new ventilation system for its future train station.

Phase One is expected to be completed by 2015. Phase Two - the actual construction of Moynihan Station inside the Farley building - is estimated to cost between $1 billion and $1.5 billion and will be funded by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Amtrak operations would be relocated from Penn Station to the Moynihan Station.

Highlights of Phase One of the Moynihan Station project, which officials say is now fully funded, with work expected to begin by the end of the year:

EIGHTH AVENUE SIDE

Doubling the length and width of Penn Station's West End Concourse, which serves LIRR customers on the Eighth Avenue side of the station. It will be big enough to house LIRR ticket vending machines.

TRACK ACCESS

Installing 13 new escalators, elevators and stairs to LIRR platforms, which will allow passengers to access 17 tracks from the West End Concourse rather than the current nine. As a result, passengers will clear LIRR platforms more quickly, and trains should be able to move in and out of Penn Station faster.

33RD STREET CONNECTOR

Doubling the width of the connector to the West End Concourse, which will improve passenger flows.

NEW ENTRANCES

Street access to the Farley building, future home of an Amtrak terminal.

Meanwhile, we now enter into the 60-day community board review phase (expect slight turbulence).....:)

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/122098213/original.jpg

Still now word on what CB5 had to say on the proposal, but I'm sure it wasn't favorable...

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/122648694/original.jpg

http://www.observer.com/2010/politic...l-pennsylvania

They're Baa-ack! Bed Bugs Strike Again at Vornado's Hotel Penn, Lawsuit Says

http://www.observer.com/files/full/HotelPenn_2.jpg

By Dana Rubinstein
March 11, 2010

Quote:

New York City's bed bug scourge continues to wreak pain, fear, high extermination expenses, and the occasional overblown lawsuit against real estate moguls.

A Massachusetts woman has sued Vornado Realty Trust, claiming that her September 2009 stay at the Hotel Pennyslvania caused her to “to be bitten by bugs in the bed and/or premises provided by defendants."

The rather overwrought lawsuit reads:

“[P]laintiff was caused to sustain serious injuries and to have suffered pain, shock, mental anguish; that these injuries and its effects will be permanent; as a result of said injuries plaintiff was caused and will continue to be caused to incur expenses for medical care and attention; and plaintiff was and will continue to be rendered unable to perform plaintiff’s normal activities and duties and has sustained a resultant loss therefrom.”

While the litigant's allegations do seem a tad overblown, bed-bug-caused PTSD is not unheard of.

She does not specify how much in damages she is seeking.

Vornado did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is not the first time the Hotel Pennsylvania, at Seventh Avenue and 33rd Street, has gotten a bad rap for bed bug infestation. In 2005, a group of tourists sued the hotel after having been bitten by bed bugs there. They ultimately settled for $100,000.

That said, bed bug infestations are notoriously difficult to eliminate.

According to the University of California Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, "Managing a bed bug infestation is a difficult task that requires removal or treatment of all infested material and follow-up monitoring to ensure the infestation has been eliminated and does not return. Management will require employing several nonchemical methods such as vacuuming, washing bedding at a high temperature, using steam or heat treatment, and sealing up hiding places."

Vornado chairman Steve Roth is not the only New York landlord tarred by bed-bug infestations recently. In the past two years, the Penguin building at 375 Hudson was infested; as was, allegedly, the News Corp.-occupied 1211 Avenue of the Americas. Maybe Rupert Murdoch could offer him some pest-management advice.

It is time for this building to be replaced.

This may be a really redundant question that I am sure has been asked on this thread countless times, but is there a construction timeline on this? This one is by far one of my most anticipated projects out there right after the WTC! I really like where the height lies being almost right in between the Empire State Building and the Bank of America Tower!

Well the first step is of course to do away with the Hotel Penn which seems to be happening later rather than sooner.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dac150 (Post 4744606)

Well the first step is of course to do away with the Hotel Penn which seems to be happening later rather than sooner.

I think that would be step number two or three. The first step would be getting the zoning approvals, a process currently underway. The hotel isn't doing so well for Vornado right now, but whether or not they will move on demolition before signing a tenant is questionable. Previously, I would have said no. But they seem more determined now.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/busines...YBFPKeFPgIt2bO

Vornado's Penn tower deal

By STEVE CUOZZO
April 13, 2010

Quote:

Vornado Realty Trust is offering a deal it hopes the city can't refuse.

The publicly traded real estate giant is promising an unprecedented slew of improvements to the Herald Square-Penn Station area's confusing, overcrowded mass-transit nexus. The plan includes new subway entrances and the reopening of a long-closed underground pedestrian tunnel.

Those upgrades would provide riders with easier access to an underground network that will eventually stretch from Sixth to Ninth Avenue, and include the new Moynihan Station.

Vornado would pay for and build the transit amenities in exchange for variances it wants for a proposed office-tower development on the site of the Hotel Pennsylvania. Vornado bought the hotel in 1997 as a linchpin of its strategy for the bustling area, where it also owns several office buildings.

The company can replace the gloomy hotel with an 1.15 million square-foot office tower without public approvals. But it would prefer to put up a tower with nearly twice as much floor area -- just under 2.053 million square feet.

It would increase the size through a zoning change, a 20 percent floor-area bonus for the transit upgrades, and a transfer of air rights from its adjacent Manhattan Mall.

The zoning change and transit bonus would increase the floor area ratio (FAR) -- total floor area in relation to the size of the ground lot -- from the current 12 to 18 for the combined, 160,000 square-foot hotel and mall footprint.

Vornado would not immediately raze the Pennsylvania even if it got approvals for the tower overnight. Rather, it would wait until it pre-signs at least one large office tenant -- which could take years.

But Vornado chief Steven Roth wants the project, called 15 Penn Plaza, to be "fully entitled" well in advance of finding an anchor tenant.

The New York Observer first reported that Vornado would pursue an approve-now, build-later strategy for a tower rising to 1,216 feet. But no details emerged on 15 Penn Plaza's bulk or on most of the transit upgrades until this week.

The proposal goes before Manhattan Community Board 5 on Thursday -- a step in the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. The plan requires the blessings of the Planning Department, City Council and Mayor Bloomberg.

The tower would come in two configurations -- one for a single financial-industry tenant requiring trading floors, the other for a mix of tenants.

Vornado's environmental impact statement reveals that either scheme would be considerably larger than its nominal 2.053 million square feet -- 2.82 million "gross square feet" for the larger version. The difference results from the fact that the zoning count doesn't include mechanical space or below-ground floors.

To allow the tower to taper gradually as it rises and to be set back 15 feet at the base from the Seventh Avenue property line, Vornado needs waivers to city height-and-setback rules.

But, if Vornado is asking a lot, it's also promisingwhat's believed to be the most extensive transit-center upgrades ever offered by a private developer here at one location.

The improvements, a source said, were "a wish-list basically dictated" by the MTA, the Port Authority and Amtrak.

According to the environmental impact study, Vornado would build new subway entrances at Seventh Avenue between West 32nd and 33rd streets; widen the congested northbound No. 1 line platform by six feet; and widen stairs and build new escalators and elevators to serve the subway and PATH lines. It would also improve access to the Sixth Avenue subway and PATH entrances, which are both now hidden inside the Manhattan Mall.

In an oral presentation to CB5, Vornado officials indicated that the existing train entrance at Sixth near 33rd would be moved to the corner sidewalk.

But the most dramatic change in the proposal might be a plan to open a sanitized, 21st Century edition of the old Gimbels Passageway -- the creepy corridor that once connected the Herald Square and Penn Station/Seventh Avenue subway stations, until crime and squalor forced the MTA to close it in 1980.

The dimly-lit tunnel ran parallel to the basements of the department store and the hotel. Users endured an interminable slog past homeless cripples and harmonica-playing squatters who rose shrieking out of the dark.

The concourse would be widened to 16 feet from 9 feet and crafted like Rockefeller Center's, with stores, artwork and mid- block access points.

And where using the old tunnel re quired paying an additional fare to go from one station to the other, the new one would offer a free transfer -- at least one feature of Vornado's dream unlikely to start an argument.

i have alot of faith in this project,i really think this'll get built =)

CB5 meeting tonight. I'm sure they won't have anything good to say about the height. I just wonder if they will admit that the transit improvments are worth it.

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/123636725/original.jpg

Have these same NIMBYs stay at pest filled rooms at the Hotel Penn for a week. Perhaps, that'll change their minds.

^^ Is the hotel really THAT bad? Or is it just its reputation?

^^For a while it was really bad, and it still apparently has some problems.

Also, I can't wait to hear what happened in the meeting tonight.

Quote:

Originally Posted by scalziand (Post 4796930)

Also, I can't wait to hear what happened in the meeting tonight.

It's a terrible hotel (though not the only one), that's practically closed already, as far as street presence goes.

Haven't heard anything about the meeting, but anything other than a total thumbs down from those folks would be shocking.

All going according to script...

http://www.observer.com/2010/real-es...-vornado-tower
Hotel Penn Forever? Community Board Scoffs at Giant Vornado Tower

By Eliot Brown
April 16, 2010

Quote:

Score one for the gritty Hotel Pennsylvania.

Major landlord Vornado Realty Trust was rebuffed by the local community board on Thursday night in its effort to clear the road for what would be the city's third-tallest tower to rise in place of the Hotel Pennsylvania across from Madison Square Garden.

Manhattan's Community Board 5 voted 36-1 against the plan, and did not even offer a list of conditions—typically community boards will give a road map for a compromise—as numerous board members told the developer to come back at some later time when the firm actually had a tenant in-hand. Vornado in 2007 had a short-lived handshake agreement with Merrill Lynch to build a new headquarters there as the first step in a remade office district. Now, it is seeking approval to allow for a faster construction process should it ever have a tenant.

The vote came after a parade of fellow landlords and business owners—many of which were enlisted by Vornado to come speak—testified in favor of the plan, given that it would involve more than $100 million in transit improvements, including opening an underground passageway between Sixth and Seventh avenues. The Durst Organization and Madison Square Garden were among those in favor of the project, and there was also support from the Regional Plan Association and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.

Many community board members seemed almost offended that Vornado had requested both an air rights bonus for its transit improvements and an additional increase in the density beyond what they would normally be allowed (one called it "double dipping"). Still, community boards often vote against projects, and some board members did acknowledge that this was a good space for a tall building.

The rezoning plan now goes to Borough President Scott Stringer for his non-binding recommendations. Ultimately, the City Council must approve or deny the plan, and the local member is Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

The only surprise here was support from the Regional Plan, usually against everything. Now we move forward to the next phase of the review process.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NYguy (Post 4798342)

All going according to script...

http://www.observer.com/2010/real-es...-vornado-tower
Hotel Penn Forever? Community Board Scoffs at Giant Vornado Tower

By Eliot Brown
April 16, 2010

The only surprise here was support from the Regional Plan, usually against everything. Now we move forward to the next phase of the review process.

does it still have a chance?

Jesus Christ, it's a huge city with no space that desperately needs larger office towers, What are these people's problem? We seriously need to throw those clowns out of office... morons.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkyscrapersOfNewYork (Post 4798607)

does it still have a chance?

of course, this was just a meeting. last step is the far more important city council.

Why does it take a so long time until they start construction with all that amazing proposals? It's not only that one here, as well Manhattan West, Tower Verre, The GiraSole and so on.
I think they all have the same problem like Silverstein: They don't find tenants.:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Quote:

Originally Posted by OneWorldTradeCenter (Post 4799176)

You've answered your own question.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkyscrapersOfNewYork

does it still have a chance?

Of course. That community board (the same one up in arms over the Tower Verre) was never going to come out in favor of the tower. But this is the way the approval process works - they get to voice their opinions. It's the City Planning and City Council the gives the approvals. Of course, since both the office tower and the transit improvements are basically what the CPC wants for the site, the attention should not be on whether or not the bonuses are approved, but what Amanda Burden thinks of the design. She opened up that can of worms back during the Tower Verre approval process. And since this tower would be only a couple of blocks east of the Manhattan West tower of the same height - 1,216 ft - the Empire State argument doesn't hold here. I'd like to see what she has to say.

Viewing Page 8 of 108