| NYguy |
Jun 4, 2018 8:05 PM |
https://propmodo.com/what-happens-wh...s-useful-life/
What Happens When a Skyscraper Outlives Its Useful Life?
https://i2.wp.com/propmodo.com/wp-co...g?w=1200&ssl=1
JPMorgan Chase plans to demolish its Midtown East headquarters on 270 Park Avenue to construct a new office tower for 15,000 employees.
Travis Barrington
06/04/2018
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After more than a century of skyscraper construction, many aging office towers in Manhattan are in need of extensive renovation. Some are architectural gems loved by nostalgic New Yorkers like the Art Deco monuments of the 1920s and ’30s, while others are just generic, asbestos-filled symbols of corporate gluttony.
Built in an era of cheap energy, many post-war Manhattan towers have facades of single-glazed glass, and structures that can’t support the weight of additional insulating glass. Many have low ceilings, tight column spacing, and inefficient heating and cooling systems. Often these have become even more cramped by having to accommodate the infrastructure of modern information technology. Buildings like these — and others that might take decades for owners to see a return on their renovation investment — may be good candidates for demolition. Replacement towers could provide owners with more space at higher rents and consume less energy. But to tear down and rebuild a skyscraper in a dense city like New York requires navigating a patchwork of zoning laws, NIMBYs, and engineering challenges.
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Despite spending millions on a 2012 renovation of 270 Park Avenue, which at the time was hailed as the largest ‘green’ renovation of a headquarters building ever, Chase says it has pushed the existing structure to its limits. It currently has about 6,000 employees crammed into the 52-story tower, which was built for 3,500 Union Carbide employees in 1961. So why not just add more floors to the current structure? That option would be preferred by some who believe the building deserves protection because it was designed by trailblazing woman architect Natalie de Blois and well-known architect Gordon Bunshaft, both of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM).
If Chase were to add-on to the old structure, it could conceivably double its existing square-footage to nearly 3 million square-feet — more than One World Trade Center — as long as it preserved some existing building elements like parts of foundations or facades.
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“Preservation is one tool to create a dynamic economy, but so is development,” said Carol Willis, an architectural historian and founder of The Skyscraper Museum in New York City. She explained that many of Midtown East’s buildings are competing for tenants with the new state-of-the-art subsidized towers at Hudson Yards and the World Trade Center. “Midtown needs to answer the demands of the 21st century and shouldn’t be disadvantaged.”
So how big can developers build under the new Midtown East zoning? In Manhattan, new construction must conform to predetermined floor area ratios (FAR), the ratio of total building floor area to the area of its zoning lot. Each zoning district has a FAR which, when multiplied by the lot area, produces the maximum amount of floor area allowable. The new Midtown East zoning allows increased FAR in exchange for developers funding public transit or street improvements. For example, SL Green Realty Corp. agreed to fund $200 million worth of transit improvements in and around Grand Central Terminal, in exchange for the right to build the 1,401-foot-tall skyscraper One Vanderbilt.
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This won’t be the first time a pile of rubble existed at the 270 Park Avenue site. Chase’s current tower actually replaced a 12-story, stone-clad building that contained the Hotel Marguery and 108 luxury apartments. Built in 1917, the building — home to Nikola Tesla and other celebrities — was hailed as the largest apartment building in the world and its rents were among the most expensive before it was torn down in the 1950s.
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In 2016, to make way for One Vanderbilt, SL Green demolished a block full of buildings including the 22-story Liggett Building and 18-story Vanderbilt Avenue Building, both very old but not considered historically significant. Over on Sixth Avenue in the Garment District, developers Isaac Chetrit and Ray Yadidi are planning to tear down a 20-story office tower to make way for an 80-story mixed-use skyscraper, but first they must wait for an existing tenant’s lease to expire in 2020.
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Perhaps the most likely method for demolishing 270 Park Avenue, which Chase has said will commence early next year, will be a top-down disassembly. Taisei Corporation has perfected this method using a “hat” to wrap the top three floors of the structure. The covering withholds noise and dust and debris. As soon as the construction team tears down the walls and the floors, it continues to the next floor below. The “hat” continues to move down the building as floors are removed. Another company from Italy, Despe, is applying a similar technique. As the work progresses, the platform descends in a controlled manner until it reaches ground level and the building has been completely demolished.
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Will the reconstruction of 270 Park Avenue usher in a new wave of high-rise demolition throughout Manhattan, as developers look to modernize the City’s aging office buildings? Probably not, said Carol Willis. “A full-block site like 270 Park is an extraordinary anomaly in Midtown. Plus buildings completed before 1961 were allowed much more floor area than would be allowed under current zoning in most parts of the City,” she explained.
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https://i1.wp.com/propmodo.com/wp-co...g?w=1200&ssl=1
One way to demolish a skyscraper is top-down disassembly. A “hat” wraps the top three floors while a construction team tears down walls and floors. The “hat” continues to move down the building as floors are removed.
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