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New Skyscraper May Replace Hotel Pennsylvania
Another McKim, Mead & White building may come down for a modern tower. Also, New York City toughens scaffolding safety rules.
Hotel Pennsylvania May Make Way for New Tower
New York’s Hotel Pennsylvania, a McKim, Mead & White building that has a song named after it and whose ballroom hosted every Big Band legend of the 1930s and 1940s, may soon be demolished to make room for a new office skyscraper.
Roanne Kulakoff, a spokeswoman for Vornado Realty Trust of New York, the building’s owner, says the company has no comment as to whether the hotel will be torn down. Hotel Pennsylvania’s press office did not return calls.
But according to the 2007 forecast for New York’s Midtown South released by Grubb & Ellis, a Chicago-based brokerage, Vornado plans to build a new 2.5-million-sq-ft tower in its place by 2011, with five 100,000-sq-ft trading floors. The Hotel Pennsylvania is not a landmark building.
The 1,700-room, 22-story building at 15 Penn Plaza, one of the world’s largest hotels when it was completed in 1919, was designed by the prominent architects behind other city landmarks such as the Morgan Library, the Brooklyn Museum, the James A. Farley Post Office on 8th Avenue, and the former Pennsylvania Station, whose demolition in 1963 is still decried by the preservation community.
Vornado, one of the largest property owners in Midtown Manhattan, is also redeveloping the Farley Post Office into the Patrick Moynihan Station with its codeveloper, the Related Cos. of New York. Those firms also are behind a proposal to move Madison Square Garden to 9th Avenue and replace it with office towers and a new Penn Station.
At least one group has started a forum to save the hotel – HOPE, or Hackers on Planet Earth, a conference sponsored by 2600 Magazine of Middle Island, N.Y., and held at the hotel five times since 1994. The group’s next conference at the hotel was scheduled for 2008.
However, even some HOPE members that want to preserve the hotel agree that it holds mostly symbolic value as a result of its Big Band past. Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington, and Benny Goodman all frequently graced its stages, as did Glenn Miller, whose hit “Pennsylvania 6-5000” refers to the number that will still connect callers to its front desk. Roger Lang, director of community services and programs for the New York Landmarks Conservancy, an advocacy group, suggested that the preservation community is not likely to oppose demolition because “size and a number do not a landmark make.”
“Architecturally, it was a little blip compared to something like Pennsylvania Station,” he says. He points out that it was a late McKim, Mead & White project, when the firm was “past its prime”, with two of the principals already dead.
Finally, despite offering some of the lowest hotel rates in New York, starting at $119 per night, and its ideal location next to Penn Station, the hotel has rated poorly in the recent past. Its user-submitted average rating stands at only 2 to 2.5 out of 5 stars on hotel booking sites such as TripAdvisor, Travelocity, and Expedia, with frequent complaints about untidy rooms and rude service. Ironically, the hotel was named the 2006 eMarketer of the Year by TravelCLICK, a hotel consulting firm, and the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International. The award honors “hoteliers who exhibit outstanding use of electronic channels and online technologies to promote their properties.”
Contractors, Unions and OSHA in Worker Safety Pact
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration formed an alliance with a consortium of contractors and unions over the winter with a goal of creating safer and healthier construction sites in New York City.
Each group, including the Environmental Contractors Association, the Mason Tenders District Council, and the International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators Local 12a will form an alliance to provide all members with safety information and access to training resources.
The alliance hopes to achieve goals such as tapping OSHA’s expertise to develop training and education programs; developing information materials about recognition and prevention of workplace hazards; sharing safety-related information among OSHA personnel and industry safety and health professionals; and convening and participating in forums, roundtable discussions, and stakeholder meetings on asbestos and lead abatement.
New Hotel Rooms for Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan will soon be home to approximately two dozen more hotel projects. The new projects would double the current 2,197 rooms spread among nine hotels, which are operating at peak capacity, according to a downtown revitalization group.
New York’s Moinian Group, Queens-based McSam Hotel Group LLC, LaSalle Hotels, and Hersha Hospitality are some of the developers actively building in the area.
Vacancy rates averaging 8% and a floor-area-ratio that allows hospitality buildings 50% more capacity than residential projects are driving these developments, some of which are also timed with the planned opening of the World Trade Center Memorial in 2009, says Eric Deutsch, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York. He also says that the industry never replaced the 500 hotel rooms in the World Trade Center destroyed during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The hotels, which range from luxury boutiques to limited-service venues, are going up on empty lots, replacing vacant buildings, and converting buildings currently being emptied out. Projects planned or already under construction include a 53-story building with two hotels at 217 Pearl St.; another 53-story hotel and condo tower at 123 Washington St. that will include a sky lobby; a 39-story hotel at 33 Beekman St. and another at 100 Greenwich St., which will also include subway improvements; a 36-story hotel at 99 Washington St.; a 35-story hotel at 50 Trinity Pl., with subway improvements; a 26-story hotel at 126 Water St.; and 20-story hotels at 20 Maiden La. and at 8 Stone St.
New York City Tightens Scaffold Regulations
Stirred to action by 29 construction fatalities in New York City last year, a 61% increase over the prior year, New York City announced new measures in February to protect workers from falls from suspended scaffolds. The new initiative will beef up inspections, improve safety practices by contractors, and assure that Spanish-speaking workers aren’t endangered because of gaps in communication.
 Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced measures developed by a task force that included employers and representatives from the U.S. Department of Labor. Its recommendations will be enacted through new laws submitted to the City Council and through new city policies.
More than half of the suspended scaffold accidents in the city last year involved scaffolds hung from C-hooks. Following adoption of a new law, the city will require that it be notified prior to their use or installation.
A second measure would increase penalties for the violation of regulations governing licensed riggers and others who supervise suspended scaffolds.
“It’s criminal to think that on 67% of the fatalities last year, no master rigger was present,” says Louis Coletti, a member of the task force and president of the Building Trades Employers’ Association, a New York-based group that represents 1,200 contractors. Having a master rigger on site was already required.
A third bill would require daily written inspections by a trained site supervisor rather than by the user of the suspended scaffold, as currently required.
“I know a lot of people will say, ‘oh, more regulation,’ but there were 29 lives lost last year,” Bloomberg said at a City Hall press conference.
To increase inspections, the city will create a scaffold safety unit within its Department of Buildings and add 10 inspectors dedicated to suspended scaffold inspections, Coletti says.
“Being proactive is a new way of operating for the Department of Buildings,” he adds.
The task force recommended heightened outreach to ensure that workers know that they are entitled to a master rigger onsite, and that they must have a certificate of fitness to perform work on a suspended scaffold. About 50% of the fatalities last year involved workers with no certificate of fitness, a current requirement, Coletti says. |
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