• The Need
• The Precedent
• The Vision
The
Need
For
centuries, New York has grown to meet the
employment and housing needs of its citizens.
The foresight
of the city’s leaders – exemplified
best in Manhattan's grid plan of 1811 and the
annexation and consolidation of 1898 – has
been matched by private entrepreneurship,
especially in the railroads and in the subway
systems
that reached out from the City's point of
origin in
Lower Manhattan to the outer boroughs. Over
time, in large part because of that confluence
of transit
lines, the office market settled in Manhattan. That demand continues – the 2000 Census indicated
that over 8 million people now live in New York City,
the most in the City’s history. Companies continue
to seek out New York City as a place to set up headquarters,
the latest example is Bank of America. In the New
York region, it is anticipated that there will be
the need to accommodate over 440,000 new workers,
requiring 111 million square feet of new space by
2025. If Midtown captures near its historical share,
45 million square feet of office space would be needed
over the next 20 years. The problem is that there
are few sites remaining in Midtown to accommodate
new office buildings. Recent studies indicate that
at most, there is perhaps room to accommodate only
20 million square feet in Midtown. In a place where
dreams and ambitions are limitless, land is not.
Manhattan in a few short years will be out of developable
land for new office construction.
There is one last frontier available in Manhattan
- Hudson Yards, the underutilized area bounded roughly
by West 42nd Street and West 30th Street, Eighth
Avenue to the Hudson River. It is in these 360 acres
that the City can meet its public responsibility
to continue to provide job and housing opportunities
for all New Yorkers.
This need in Midtown is unrelated to - and not competitive
with - the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan. Rebuilding
Lower Manhattan and the World Trade Center is the
City’s first priority and great progress is
being made. The Trade Center is the last location
in Lower Manhattan that can accommodate commercial
buildings. With the completion of the Trade Center,
Lower Manhattan will have no more capacity for new
office development. The Trade Center is expected
to be redeveloped over the course of the next decade,
providing nearly 10 million square feet of commercial
space. As the Trade Center is nearing completion,
only then will Hudson Yards have the necessary subway
access and public amenities to attract new development.
We must look ahead, and plan ahead, so that New York
will continue to provide office employment opportunities
for its citizens in the future.
There is an unacceptable alternative: to abdicate
and do nothing. Over the last several decades, regional
office growth trend shifted from the City to New
Jersey and Long Island where land is plentiful and
cheaper. This shift in office locations has implications
for the Region and New York City. Suburban office
development has an environmental cost as workers
shift from mass transit to private automobiles and
patterns of regional sprawl expand. Not only does
suburban office development have a negative impact
on the region, but it negatively impacts New York
City as well. Income taxes and real estate taxes
generated by Manhattan office space is the major
contributor to our city's operating budget. This
revenue provides services to all New Yorkers in every
borough. It is our responsibility to all New Yorkers
- not only for direct jobs, but for those indirect
revenues - to recapture our market share by making
new sites available.
Office space is not our only need. Our convention
center, the Jacob K. Javits, whose spin-off effects
include jobs in retail, tourism, food and entertainment
sectors, ranks only 18th in size in North America.
The Javits is not only hindered by its size, but
also by its array of spaces it can offer conventions.
The Javits can't serve the 60 largest annual shows,
and is fully booked for the limited space it does
have. The convention center must expand to be competitive
and must provide more meeting spaces, ball rooms,
and plenary halls to attract new users.
Increasingly, people are moving into, and back to,
Manhattan - to be closer to work, and to feed off
Midtown's cultural and entertainment energy. The
demand for new housing in New York City is great
and is expected to grow. Hudson Yards provides not
only for future commercial development in Manhattan,
but also for approximately 12,600 new housing units.
Hudson Yards will provide opportunities for the
desperately needed office space, convention center
expansion, and residential growth that the City will
need in the coming decades.
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The Precedent
New York's greatness over the centuries
has been its ability to make major public investments
that
trigger private market response. The gridplan of
1811, laid out the future of development for the
entire island of Manhattan at a time few people thought
development would expand above Houston Street. Central
Park was a visionary undertaking that is a treasure
to the City and a much needed recreational space
for thousands of New Yorkers. Hudson Yards is based
on the ability of New York to make strategic public
investments that provide invaluable returns long
into the future. Much of Hudson Yards, 33 acres to be exact, today
is below grade railroad tracks that are proposed
to be “covered over” to accommodate development
and parks. The City is confident that this area can
be transformed into one of the most desirable neighborhoods
in the 21st Century because it accomplished this
feat at the beginning of the 20th Century.
In 1903, the state legislature, responding to public
outrage at the pollution and filth of the New York
Central Railroad rail yards in mid-Manhattan, passed
a law requiring the railroad to "cover its tracks".
In response, the railroad built a deck over newly
electrified tracks from Madison Avenue to Lexington
Avenue, from East 42nd to East 56th streets. Down
the middle of the deck a grand boulevard, Park Avenue,
was built. It was crowned with a magnificent new
train station, the Grand Central Terminal. Over the
next three decades, new hotels, office buildings,
and apartments sprang up along Park Avenue, forming
the core of what would become the world's greatest
central business district. One hundred years later,
the trains still run under Park Avenue, and on the
blocks over the tracks 160,000 people earn their
living.
The vision for Hudson Yards is to transform today's
underused Far West Side into a place where New Yorkers
and tourists will want to live, work, play and visit.
Just like Park Avenue 100 years ago, we must look
forward to secure the City’s future.
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Hudson Yards Vision
Rendering of Hudson Yards |
The
Hudson Yards is a comprehensive proposal to realize
the development potential of Manhattan’s
Far West Side. The Hudson Yards area extends from
West 28th Street on the south, Seventh and Eighth
avenues on the east, West 43rd Street on the north,
and the Hudson River on the west. Hudson Yards
is ideally located to allow for the expansion of
the Midtown Central Business District and to help
secure New York City’s economic future. The
project includes a series of actions to transform
Hudson Yards into a dynamic, transit-oriented urban
center, permitting medium- to high-density development
and a mix of uses, including commercial, residential,
open space, cultural and entertainment. |
The plan for the transformation
of Hudson Yards is based on
the “preferred
direction” for the
area, proposed by the Department
of City Planning and the Economic
Development Corporation in
2003, and by the Far West Midtown
Framework for Development completed
by the Department of City Planning
in 2001.
The proposal identifies the
following four key public sector
actions that would be necessary
to attract private development
to the area:
- Extending subway service
Establishing a new open space network
Zoning for appropriate densities and uses
Creating a Convention Corridor
Extending Subway Service
No. 7 Subway |
In conjunction with the Department’s rezoning proposal, the MTA is planning
for the extension of the No. 7 Subway line. The No. 7 Subway line would be
extended to the west from the existing terminus at West 41st Street and Seventh
Avenue,
with a station at West 41st Street and Tenth Avenue, and then south, to a new
terminus at West 34th Street and Eleventh Avenue. The proposed extension would
place nearly all points in Hudson Yards within less than a 10-minute walk to
a subway station.
Creating Open Space Network
The Hudson Yards plan includes a major new open space
network (over 20 acres) that would travel through the
heart of the new commercial district. Beginning at West
42nd Street the network would rise on a pedestrian bridge
south to West 39th Street, where it would expand into
a linear north-south park bordered by a new tree-lined
boulevard (“Hudson Boulevard”) between Tenth
and Eleventh avenues, terminating at a six-acre public
square between West 30th and West 33rd streets. The new
park and street system would be built on new platforms
above the Amtrak rail road cut and the MTA’s Eastern
Rail Yard, thereby regularizing the area’s topography
and covering over the presence of unsightly transportation
infrastructure. The park system would also link with
the planned reuse of the High Line elevated rail line
to the south in West Chelsea, and two new full block
waterfront parks to the north and south of the New York
Sports and Convention Center (NYSCC). Municipal parking
facilities would be relocated from
area waterfront piers to below-grade space beneath one
of the new full block waterfront parks, allowing for
expansion of the adjacent Hudson River Park.
Zoning for Appropriate
Densities and Uses
Rezoning the Hudson Yards area would reinforce existing neighborhoods while
transforming underused areas into a thriving and desirable
urban district. The proposed rezoning is based on a land
use plan to allow significant
commercial expansion over the next 30 to 40 years. The
absence of sites in Midtown Manhattan for large floor-plate
office buildings has led many
companies to leave the City for larger sites elsewhere
in the region. Rezoning would ensure that redevelopment
of the area supports the larger goal of
keeping New York competitive as a global city for the
next several decades. While accommodating approximately
28 million square feet of commercial
office growth, the plan also provides for approximately
12.6 million square feet of residential expansion.
Convention Corridor
The need for a larger and more versatile Convention Center
has long been apparent. Hudson Yards addresses this longstanding
need with the creation of a Convention Corridor. Concurrent
with the rezoning, two projects under State
leadership will provide a first-class convention complex.
The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center is proposed to
be expanded north to West 41st Street with a hotel on
West 42nd Street. The expansion will increase the size
of its contiguous exhibition area from 760,00 square
feet to 1,300,000 square feet. Additionally, the expansion
will provide a convention center hotel, a ballroom of
86,000 square feet, and an increase in meeting rooms
to 365,000 square feet.
Imagining the Future of Hudson Yards
Hudson Yards is the future of New York City. Over
the next decade the public sector will provide
subway service, create parks, deck over unsightly
railroad infrastructure and expand the convention
facilities. These improvements are anticipated
to be completed by 2012; private sector development
is expected
to occur over a longer period, transforming the
area with highrise and midrise office and residential
buildings.
View on the pedestrian bridge connecting 38th
and 42nd Streets, looking south
|
View of the High Line Market proposed along
30th Street, looking west |
|
