Manhattan’s Building Frenzy, Up and Down

When people land in New York city, the first thing they notice is the ever-changing skyline.  The craze is for reaching the sky! Downtown and midtown Manhattan are spiked with skyscrapers increasingly tall and skinny.  The borough of Queens is also attracting developers’ interest and a building boom is now taking place along the East River there.  Nondescript buildings are erected with great views of the river and rents more affordable than in Manhattan.  Pritzker prize winner architects like Tadao Ondo and Alvaro Siza have yet to venture into Queens; so far Manhattan is the sole preserve of their creativity.  Sadly, their creations seem lost among the neighboring unremarkable constructions.  Siza is contributing to the gentrifying drive in Hell’s Kitchen, and Ondo that of Nolita in lower Manhattan.

The new kid on the block so to speak is Hudson Yards, the huge US$ 25 billion real estate development built over the Long Island rail road tracks on the West Side.  The long-awaited and controversial project opened in March 2019; it is the largest private mixed-use development in the United States.  It presently covers 14 acres, nearly 7 hectares.  Residential towers, office blocks, a seven-story mall with restaurants and food courts, a cultural center, plazas and hopefully gardens “are all designed by some of the world’s most iconic architects” asserts the developers’ brochure.  The project benefited from mammoth tax breaks from the state, controversially making rent relatively more affordable, and corporations which operated in other parts of the city moved in.  In my modest opinion, it plays like a geographical and economic zero-sum game: emptying the high rent mid-town to fill the subsidized rent towers of Hudson Yards.

I decided to see for myself this “corporate mega-monstrosity”[1].  I started my exploration on 14^th Street, and walked along the High Line towards the Yards.  Many real estate projects are taking place along the High Line, sadly casting a shadow over it.  Sections of the track are also covered by boards to prevent construction material from falling on the pedestrians.  The first tower one can see from the High Line is 30 Hudson Yards (see picture below).  With its odd deck wedge looking like a beak, it was compared to an “angry chicken” by a Guardian journalist[2].  For me, a lay person in matters of modern architecture and urban development, Hudson Yards looks like a bunch of massive towers built too close for comfort.  A month after its opening, it is still a work in progress, and definitely not of Pritzker prize standard.

The place was packed with tourists and locals who streamed out of the new subway station built at the end of the 7 line.  There are three attractions: The so-called Vessel, a hard to define copper clad building, which was nicknamed the kebab by the same journalist.  I found it rather attractive to look at.  It has become an instant hit among the tourists who queued to climb its stairways to nowhere.  I guess that it is the sole free activity in the area.  The second attraction is the Shed, an arts and cultural center whose architecture looks out of sync with the towers.  With my friend, we ventured inside to see a free exhibit, an installation of fallen trees we could have easily overlooked, and a concert rehearsal taking place behind a glass wall.  Finally, the third and main attraction is the shopping mall and food court extravaganza with 25 restaurants and eateries.

                                                                The Vessel, all copper cladded

The mall displays a mix of high-end stores and high-street brands like H&M, Uniglo and Sephora.  Neiman Marcus, the luxury department store, opened its first New York branch here to provide according to its CEO a “magical and immersive experience.”  To experience the magic, I stepped inside the beautiful but mostly empty department store.  Like the other tourists, I took a seat among the Louboutin red-soles stilettoes and checked my emails: WiFi is free.  I noticed people strolling among the displays eating out of plastic containers not purchased at Neiman Marcus.  One particular bag lady type attracted my attention and that of the sales attendants (who could not do anything), she was comfortably sitting and eating in the Cook & Merchant space where one can buy sweets and gifts and enjoy a coffee.  Our Hudson Yards’ immersive experience was limited to a nice “East meets West” lunch at the Wild Ink restaurant.  So much for my shopping immersion experience: I purchased nothing.

Central Park South and 57^th Street are construction war zones with new skinny towers popping up every day.  Not only do these constructions gridlock mid-town traffic, but the towers cast a shadow over Central Park.  They have rightly attracted negative publicity on the apartment buyers.  Billionaire Ken Griffin (worth estimated at US$ 11.7 b) splurged US$ 238 m on a four-story penthouse, as “a place to stay when he is in town” according to his agents.  Subsequently, a pied-a-terre tax was proposed by the state legislature to make these privileged visitors contribute to upgrading New York City’s transport system which is in dire need of investment.  The tax was dead upon arrival, killed by the real estate developer lobby.  It will be replaced by a more modest one-off tax upon the purchase of expensive pied-a-terre homes. 

Another tax has been approved: a traffic congestion fee.  It will be charged to vehicles traveling in the central Manhattan area, much like that of London.  The tax will kick in 2021 to generate revenues for the decaying subway system.  A congestion tax is already added to car service fares; riding from JFK airport, I paid a $2,75 surcharge when my yellow cab drove south of 96^th street.

All these new taxes haven’t discouraged French entrepreneur Pierre Bastid from lavishly sinking money, some US$ 100 m in Manhattan real estate.  As a result, he and his Haitian voodoo priestess cum chanteuse wife have become the most hated couple around West 69^th street!  Local denizens may forgive a billionaire’s vanity excess as long as they are not negatively affected.  On the other hand, Bastid’s jackhammered underground excavations are driving the neighborhood literally crazy: people and pets alike survive the agonizing noise on prescription tranquilizers. This NIMBY matter has attracted the attention of the New York Times and scores of other papers.  Bastid has purchased two brownstones, kept their façade but demolished their insides.  He is digging a basement pool, Manhattan’s version of London’s iceberg homes.  While waiting for his new adobe, Bastid has moved into another brownstone near-by.  Bastid is believed to be a resident of Belgium, probably a fiscal exile.  Many wealthy French families have migrated to Brussels to avoid paying a wealth tax, labeled “solidarity tax” or ISF.  In order to entice the likes of Bastid to return to France, president Macron has abolished the ISF tax.  Knowing the unpredictability of the French tax man, very few have moved back.  I don’t blame Bastid for investing his money in Manhattan real estate, where there are no yellow vest protesters trashing 5^th Avenue luxury stores and clamoring to reinstate the wealth tax.  New Yorkers will have to put up with the earsplitting fancies of their city's rich émigrés. 

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[1] In the opinion of Pulitzer prize winner Jerry Saltz.

[2] Oliver Wainwright, The Guardian, 9 April, 2019.