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The High Life in Harlem
Neighborhood's First New Hotel
Will Be Its Tallest Tower
by Dave Platter
A diverse group of investors break ground recently on a 29-story,
mostly glass tower in Harlem that will house a 208-room Marriott
Courtyard hotel, catering spaces, jazz club and 250,000 sq.
ft. of office space.
At 475 ft., the new building - known as Harlem Park - will
be the tallest in the northern Manhattan neighborhood when
it opens in December 2005. Its 585,000-sq.-ft. total size
will make it far and away one of the largest buildings north
of Midtown Manhattan.
It's the first major hotel to be built in Harlem in almost
40 years.
"Thirty percent of all tourists in New York come because
of Harlem," said Michael Caridi, chairman of Majic Development
Group. Caridi conceived the $190 million project and is managing
principal of 1800 Park Avenue LLC, the newly formed entity
that is developing Harlem Park. "Now there will be a
place to stay."
Caridi's partners include Jackie Autry, widow of Western
entertainer Gene Autry, and Kevin Liles, president of the
hip-hop music company, DefJam Recordings.
Hard costs for the construction account for $125 million
of the total, or about $214 per sq. ft.
"Similar projects can run anywhere from $165 per sq.
ft. up to about $270 per sq. ft. in hard costs," said
Jeffrey T. Hass, senior vice president for China Construction
America, Harlem Park's construction manager. "We have
a nice design, but we're also very efficient."
The builders will excavate a total of nearly 50,000 cu. yds.
of dirt and stone from the 32,000-sq.-ft. site so they can
lay the foundations and create three levels of underground
parking.
Hass said his team will probably use a secant wall system
to shore up the excavated area and seal out groundwater where
the site borders the elevated rail line above Park Avenue
and the neighboring New York College of Podiatric Medicine.
The secant wall, a series of interlocking caissons placed
in excavated trenches, would create less disruption for the
neighboring facilities because it does not require piles to
be pounded into the ground.
"We're going to have to maintain the podiatric college
that adjoins," Hass added. "We're trying to design
a system that will be least intrusive because of the sensitive
nature of their equipment."
The builders also face limited site access and limited room
for the construction crane, which as a result will have to
swing over the podiatric college.
Harlem Park could herald a new era of large glass buildings
in an area better known for masonry structures dating from
the 1920s and earlier. The design calls for a dramatic tower
whose two visual elements appear to be shearing apart, said
the project's architect, Michael Duddy of TEN Arquitectos
of New York, N.Y.
Along Park Avenue, a large glass cube will float above an
opaque, four-story podium. The podium will hold retail and
catering space, and the glass cube will encase the office
space.
Hass said the cube and the tower will essentially be two
separate buildings. "Trying to use a mixed system on
the same footprint was going to create engineering nightmares,"
he added.
Rather than use a steel structural system in the office building
and concrete in the hotel, which would probably have been
the choice were the buildings to go up independently, the
engineers decided on an all-concrete structure, Hass said.
A curtain-wall atrium, with a roof spanned by all-concrete
beams, will link the two structures so the larger area of
the office building can help support the taller, thinner tower.
The structural system should shave as many as eight weeks
off the 24 months of total construction time, Hass said. .
That schedule should allow the Marriott Courtyard to open
in time to receive visitors during the 2005 holiday season.
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