The clock starts ticking Monday to win city approval for Midtown’s most ambitious development project — a 1.8 million square-foot,1,600-foot tall tower at 350 Park Avenue, to be developed by a formidable triumvirate of public and private wealth.
The seven-month public review process known as ULURP begins on March 17 for the team’s request for a relatively small increase in floor-to-area ratio, or FAR, which is a measure of a building’s size relative to the size of the land on which it stands, above what current East Midtown zoning allows.
Unlike dreams for some other supertall commercial towers that might or might not get built, 350 Park appears to be a sure thing.
It’s a a joint venture of publicly-traded Vornado Realty Trust, which owns the existing, unattractive Midcentury building at 350 Park Ave.; privately-held Rudin, which owns adjacent and equally unattractive 40 E. 52nd St.; and mega-billionaire investor Ken Griffin. Citadel and Citadel Securities, separate companies that Griffin leads, will be the skyscraper’s anchor tenants with at least 850,000 square feet.
If city approval is granted, the partners can start demolition of the old structures when Citadel employees temporarily move out of the old 350 Park next year.
The cloudbuster will start to rise with or without any additional tenants. Vornado executive vice-president for development and real estate Barry Langer said,
“The magic formula to get a tower off ground is to have an anchor tenant and equity partners, which we have in the form of ourselves, Rudin and Ken Griffin,” he said.
The total estimated development cost is $4.5 billion, Langer said.
The environmentally sensitive, “wellness”-attuned, all-electric tower designed by Foster + Partners will be Park Avenue’s tallest ever, dwarfing the new JPMorgan Chase headquarters by more than 200 feet.
Several steps are needed to increase the permissible FAR on the 53,000 square-foot lot from the current 15 to 25. The partners will tape air rights from St. Patrick’s Cathedral and St. Bart’s Church which they’re buying for a combined $150 million — which requires no public review — and contribute more than $35 million to the city’s East Midtown Public Realm Improvement Fund.
To earn three additional FAR units, the project will include major public amenities: a block-long, 12,500 square-foot open plaza fronting the avenue and wrapping around to East 51st and 52nd streets, designed by High Line designer Field Operations; a five-foot sidewalk widening on each of the side streets; and a fine-dining restaurant on 52nd Street and a cafe on 51st Street.
The alfresco plaza will sit beneath a forty-foot-high ceiling similar to the one Vornado installed at PENN 2, part of its redeveloped Penn Station-area complex.
At 350 Park, Griffin “is intent on creating world-class office space for his team, with great natural light, column-free floors and access to amenities,” Langer said.
He credited the city’s recent Midtown rezoning with “encouraging developers like us who have 1950s buildings with low ceilings” to replace them with 21st Century product. That was our [Vornado’s] motivation.”
He said Rudin — “We are obviously friends” — was motivated by the fact that BlackRock, its main tenant at 40 E. 52nd. St., moved to Hudson Yards, “leaving a huge block of space to be re-leased in an older building.”
The new tower design boasts a series of stepped setbacks on its east-facing side. The tapered form will allow optimum light and views on office floors. Some tenants will have access to private outdoor terraces.
Foster + Partners senior executive partner Nigel Dancey said, “We got to know Ken at 425 Park Ave. [which his firm also designed and where Citadel has a large space.] He’s kind of a perfectionist about beautifully laid-out floor plates.”
Dancey said 350 Park will provide “great diagonal views. We moved the core elevators to the west to create large floor plates on the avenue side.”
The ULURP process begins with an advisory-only 60-day review by Manhattan Community Board 5. The plan then goes to the Manhattan borough president, the City Planning Commission, the City Council, with final approval by the mayor.