Reply With QuoteYou should stock up Amigo!Originally Posted by londonlawyer
Hard to imagine but in the years after the Civil War, when looking overhead in NYC, one must have seen a maze of wires ...
By the late 1880's the lines were coming down and being put in conduits underground ...THE WIRES ON THE ROOFS.; OVER 5,000 MILES OF THIS HOUSE-TOP NUISANCES IN THE CITY.
NY TIMES
December 19, 1883
Mr. Edward Kearny, of No. 265 Broadway, who recently advertised in THE TIMES that unless the telegraph wires were taken from the roof of his building at sixth-avenue and Twenty ninth-street before yesterday he would cut them down, has given orders to his builders to tear down the standard on which they are strung ... Downtown, where the wires are thickest, a man can almost walk on them as he would on pavement ...
CLEARING BROADWAY.; A BIG DAY'S WORK DONE BY THE POLE AND WIRE CUTTERS.
NY TIMES
April 24, 1889
The work of wire and pole cutting went merrily on yesterday, and last night only four poles were standing in Broadway from Twentythird to Forty-second-street. The men, under charge of Contractors Hess and Busbey, went to work early yesterday morning ... Besides clearing Broadway of poles and taking down the two monsters at Forty-second-street and Sixth-avenue Contractor Busbey's men cleared all the Sixth-avenue poles of wires as farup as Fifty-seventh-street ...
You should stock up Amigo!
Cheers, mate!
^ We'll see. I think it'll be nice but doubt it'll top Nouvel's Torre Verre. I want to be proven wrong though.
It would have been nice if they kept the hills. That's one of the things that make cities like San Francisco so charming and unique.
Looks like they're about ready to start going vertical:
Great News! Confirmation of Financing, Confirmation of Christian de Portzamparc
That said lets limit the handcream jokes.
Aabar shifts to New York for its latest acquisition
Bradley Hope
November 17 2009
Aabar Investment, a company controlled by the Abu Dhabi Government, is helping fund the development of a 73-storey luxury apartment building and hotel in New York City.
Khadem al Qubaisi, the chairman of Aabar, confirmed the company had paid Extell Development for a majority stake in a project rising at 157 West 57th Street in Manhattan, just a block away from Central Park and next door to Essex House, a hotel owned by the Jumeirah Group of Dubai.
Mr al Qubaisi said the deal with Extell, the company of the development giant Gary Barnett, could be the start of several property projects in New York.
“We selected Gary Barnett for our first project,” Mr al Qubaisi said, adding that the company was also reviewing other potential property deals in New York. “If things go well, we will start another project.”
The tower would be the latest expansion of Abu Dhabi’s presence in the New York property market. Last year, the sovereign wealth fund Abu Dhabi Investment Council bought a 75 per cent stake in the iconic Chrysler building in midtown Manhattan.
And earlier this month, the UAE Government bought a stalled development project for US$44.7 million (Dh164.1m) at 313-317 East 46th Street. An embassy spokesman said he could not yet divulge information about the Government’s plans for the building. The site is located near the UN headquarters.
Mr Barnett said the 57th Street development would be “one of the greatest buildings in the last 50 years” because of its prime location and ambitious design.
It would also be a lucrative venture because it would begin to be delivered several years from now, when the market is likely to be back on the upswing.
“Things are starting to pick up in New York,” he said. “Office space is improving because the financial sector is doing so well. We’ve seen residential buildings selling at between $5,000 and $6,000 a square foot. Even with the current market still slow, we think it will do extremely well when it is finished.”
In Aabar’s second-quarter earnings report, the company disclosed that it had made advances of Dh491.5m “to a property developer in order to acquire a majority stake in a development project in New York”.
Mr al Qubaisi said the Extell project would be a “combination of residential, office and a hotel”.
“We are negotiating now with hotel operators,” he said.
A construction document filed with the New York City Department of Buildings in March said the building would include 150 apartments and a 20-floor hotel.
Mr Barnett said the design by the French architect Christian de Portzamparc had recently been finalised. “It will be a very unusual building,” he said.
The tower would be higher than the three tallest skyscrapers within the area: Carnegie Hill Tower, the Metropolitan Tower, and CitiSpire.
The deal will add to Aabar’s growing international profile as it transforms itself from a little-known energy investor to a major strategic investment company of the Abu Dhabi Government.
On Monday, Aabar announced it had joined with Daimler to buy 75 per cent of the Formula One team Brawn GP for more than £100m (Dh616.6m). The deal capped a streak of major acquisitions over the past six months, including a 9.1 per cent stake in Daimler and a 32 per cent stake in Virgin Galactic, a commercial space flight subsidiary of the Virgin Group. .
Blair Hagkull, the head of the Middle East and North Africa office of the property consultancy Jones Lang Lasalle, said that such an investment in a trophy property project could be lucrative because it was being built during a down period and would probably be delivered as the market began to recover.
“There is only one Central Park,” he said. “This is a once-in-50-year downturn. There are a lot of opportunities out there.”
There is a major focus on investing in distressed properties in London and this will probably shift to include Paris, Singapore and New York over the next year, Mr Hagkull said.
I hope that Extell comes up with another masterpiece for 225 W 57th. I will celebrate when that crap Landmark HS on 58th, which is part of the site, is razed.
Great news, thanks. I was beginning to regret logging-on today: that post is very uplifting news.
cheeers.
I'll miss the Carnegie Hall Tower, Metropolitan Tower, Cityspire trio.
yourdon
Extell's other tower will effectively wipe away that Random House/Park Imperial bore from this view.
Some others panning to the west.
The Park Laurel (the building with the pyramid top) is one of Kondylis' best buildings. Probably because it was done with the help of Beyer Blinder Belle.
The high rises surrounding Lincoln Center are awful.
Last edited by Derek2k3; January 23rd, 2010 at 05:18 PM.
Isn't 155 W 57th going to be just east of the trio? It shouldn't block them.
Nope, right in front.
That's a shame.
At least it'll be thin. Instead of completing blocking out the trio, I think it'll actually add to the group.
That's another example among many why thin is always better than fat. Besides looking better, they don't block out as much of the views to and from other nearby buildings.
By the way Gary, it is time to RELEASE, yes RELEASE, that finalised design so that we may determine if it is a good unusual or bad unusual.
I assume that he won't release the design until he has a deal with a hotel, at which time, he'll hold a press conference.
The following was filed with the DOB on Jan. 22, 2010:
http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/Jo...ssdocnumber=01
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