The Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board of New York recently and unanimously authorized Related Companies/Goldman Sachs to develop the air space over the two development sites in the Hudson Yards—the Western Rail Yard and the Eastern Rail Yard.

MTA’s cut will have significant benefits from the agreement. “The revenues from this development are critical to funding the MTA’s capital needs, but we made it clear that we would not settle for anything less than a fair deal,” said MTA Executive Director and CEO Elliot Sander.

MTA Chairman H. Dale Hemmerdinger elaborated, “We are extremely gratified that the intense competition for these parcels allowed us to secure a deal that provides the MTA with more than $1 billion. To put this deal back together without losing any time is astounding.”

In July 2007, MTA released its Request for Proposals to develop the Hudson Rail Yards and received five proposals in response. The Board initially selected a proposal from New York developer Tishman Speyer, but after complications, replaced them with the Related Companies/Goldman Sachs team.

“Despite the setbacks of the last few weeks, we are certain that Related and Goldman will realize this tremendous opportunity to develop what is really the only large parcel of undeveloped space left in Manhattan,” said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “The attractiveness of this area for developers stems in part because the City is funding an extension of the #7 line, making this vital new mixed use community of residential, commercial and office space a truly transit oriented development.”

According to the MTA, the approved proposal for the 13-acre Eastern Rail Yard between 10th and 11th Avenues from West 30th to 33rd Streets, will include five buildings over 6.27 million sq ft total, 1.67 million sq ft of residential space with 612,000 sq ft rental, no less than 20% permanent affordable and 1.05 million sq ft condominium residences. Fifty-five percent of the site will be open public space, 3.57 million sq ft will be commercial office space, 565,000 sq ft for retail, 265,000 sq ft of hotel space and 200,000 sq ft for community/cultural use.

For the 13-acre Western Rail Yard, which is bordered by West 30th and 33rd Streets between 11th and 12th Avenues, will have eight buildings over 5.75 million sq ft total, 3.63 million sq ft of residential with 960,000 sq ft of rental, no less than 20% permanent affordable and 2.67 million sq ft of condominium residences. Over 55% of the site will be open public space, 1.92 million sq ft for commercial office use within one building, 192,000 sq ft for retail and 120,000 sq ft for school use, also according to MTA.

The Related Companies/Goldman Sachs proposal also includes rehabilitation of the High Line as well as establishing the project as LEED certified.

The approved proposal will now undergo a series of public, environmental and governmental reviews. MTA anticipates the reviews to be completed in the end of 2009 and construction to begin shortly thereafter.

The New York City Department of Buildings recently began evaluating high-risk construction activities for safety as part of a $4 million Construction Analysis and Oversight Plan.

The new initiative will enable DOB to employ 20 specialized engineering experts who will work for eight to twelve months conducting inspections and site visits, reviewing protocols and developing recommendations to be implemented on a rolling basis, in lieu of inclusion in a final report. The three areas of concentration are high-rise concrete operations, excavations and crane and derrick operations.

“We are conducting a top-to-bottom analysis of how these industries function in the field so that we can best oversee them and hold them to the high safety standards New Yorkers deserve. This investment is about identifying ways in which the Department and the construction industry can make high-risk activities safer,” announced Acting Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri.

DOB estimateed that in 2006 and 2007, concrete operations accounted for 30% of all high-rise construction incidents with a total of 48 incidents, 14 of which resulted in an injury or fatality. Since the incidents have continued in 2008, DOB considers high-rise concrete operations to be a necessary inclusion in the Construction Analysis and Oversight Plan.

Additionally, excavations and trenching operations have accounted for 13% of all construction incidents with a total of 101 incidents, 16 of which resulted in an injury or fatality in 2006 and 2007, according to DOB. To mitigate the incidents, DOB created an Excavations Team, which has conducted a total of 2,575 inspections and issued Stop Work Orders on 475 jobs, said DOB.

Primarily because of the March 15, 2008 crane collapse in Manhattan where workers lost control of the crane during a 205-ft-tall jump, killing seven people and injuring 24, DOB included crane and derrick inspection in the new plan. Currently, New York City has approximately 30 tower cranes and 220 mobile cranes in use, according to DOB. During a recent safety inspection, eight of the 29 cranes inspected were shut down.

“This year we have seen an increase in accidents and injuries related to high-risk construction activities, and we must make sure that as construction activity in the city continues to increase, the Department’s ability to hold the construction industry to higher safety standards keeps pace,” said LiMandri.

The New York City Police Department will be constructing a 3 million-sq-ft Police Academy campus in College Point Queens and has, in conjunction with The Department of Design and Construction, selected Perkins+Will of Manhattan to design the facility.

The $1 billion project will be spread across 35 acres and consolidate the currently separated training facilities into one space. The new complex will feature a main instructional building, field house, firearms and tactical training facility, Police Museum, visiting lecturer accommodations, parking garage, tactical village, rescue training, outdoor track, outdoor muster deck and driver training.

“The project demonstrates the true commitment of the City of New York to providing the best facilities possible for the officers of the NYPD”, says Greg Williams, Perkins+Will’s managing principal for the project. “Our goal for the new Academy is to fulfill that pledge with a training facility design that will serve as a model for law enforcement agencies around the world.”

After a Request for Proposals was issued, NYPD received approximately 80 submissions and selected four firms to interview and produce a design for the project, explained Anthony Fieldman, design principal on the Academy project. Perkins+Will was among Skimore, Owings & Merrill, LLP of New York, Foster + Partners of London, and Polshek Partnership Architects of New York to submit designs.

As for why Perkins+Will was selected over the others, “We all have conjectures,” said Fieldman. “I’d like to think that our firm and our office’s long commitment to educational and institutional work helped push us over the edge. That, coupled with a very strong interview landed us the job.”

For the design, Perkins+Will, along with architectural design consultant Michael Fieldman Architect, want to “create an appropriately dignified alma matter for people that protect the city,” said Fieldman. “They’ve deserved a proper academy for decades now. We wanted to create something that was as committed to them as they are to the City of New York.”

Envisioning the new Academy, architects have been engaged daily for at least half a year in investigating what the current NYPD learning environments are and how they deliver training. “We spent time visiting international police institutions to understand what the future of police training can offer and how we can consolidate the best of different policing institutions into one,” said Fieldman, who said the firm is still researching on a “huge learning curve.”

The architects will strive for LEED Silver certification as well as for a building which meets the 2030 Challenge Standards—a program from Architecture 2030 which calls for aggressive energy efficiency building standards leading to carbon neutrality by the year 2030. In New York City, Government-funded buildings are mandated to comply with energy efficient standards comparable to LEED Silver certification. “We have every intention of pushing that as far as possible, perhaps even beyond Silver,” said Feldman.

Currently on a 26-month calendar that began in April 2008 for delivery of construction documents, Perkins+Will expects the Academy to be under construction by the end of 2009, as they are currently in the very early stages of the master planning process.

Skanska USA Civil has recently been awarded a contract from the New York City Department of Environmental Protection to construct a clean water treatment plant in Westchester, New York.

The project involves erecting the Catskill and Delaware Water Treatment Ultraviolet Light Disinfection Facility, a new 50-ft UV treatment building. The structure will house process equipment, laboratories and offices. The project also includes drainage, foundation laying, structural concrete work, piping and system installation. Construction began on the project in February 2008.

“The Catskill/Delaware UV facility will consist of fifty-six, 40-million gallon per day UV Disinfection Chambers and is designed to disinfect 2.2 billion gallons of water per day,” explained a spokesperson for DEP.

Following completion in 2012, the facility will produce 7.6 million cubic meters daily of water which will have been cleaned using ultraviolet light.

According to a spokesperson for DEP, the Environmental Protection Agency published new regulations in January 2006 to improve control of microbial pathogens. In preparation for this new rule, New York City designed an ultraviolet light disinfection plant for the Catskill/Delaware System. This UV disinfection plant will enable DEP to scale back the use of chlorine pumped into the water, limiting the amount of disinfection by-products that are created. Since UV disinfection is a physical process rather than a chemical one, there are no harmful impacts on humans.

Skanska is currently working on seven of the 14 water treatment plants in the New York area: Newtown Creek, Tallman Island, Bowery Bay, Hunts Point, Wards Island, Jamaica and 26th Ward. All are in various stages of major reconstruction and upgrading.

Architects Gwathmey Siegel & Associates has been hard at work designing SoHo’s latest residential building, Soho Mews, to reflect the neighborhood style.

For the design of SoHo’s latest residential building, Soho Mews, the architects referred to the historic, complex tartan patterns in the neighborhood for inspiration and produced a tartan grid—which is a grid of repeating, standard-size modular squares—for the Soho Mews exterior. Photo Courtesy of Soho Mews.

For inspiration, the architects referred to the complex tartan patterns and produced a tartan grid—which is a grid of repeating, standard-size modular squares—for the Soho Mews exterior. “Aesthetically, it looks great and from a construction standpoint, it allows the building to be built within a reasonable cost,” said Albert Laboz, principal of United American Land, developers of the project.

“The intent of the facade, aside from the literal articulation, was to render a constant changing dynamic ‘light quilt’ that would animate the street as an illusive mural, read differently at different times of day and night,” said Charles Gwathmey, principal at Gwathmey Siegel & Associates.

Composed of stone, metal and clear, frosted and fritted glass, Soho Mews pays tribute to the traditional 19th century cast iron industrial buildings of the neighborhood. The different types of glass are all used to provide depth for the façade, explained Laboz,. “To provide a dynamic façade, frosted glass gives it verticality; fritted glass on the lower half of each bay [window] will give privacy to the homeowner.”

Because the building lies in the landmarked SoHo Cast Iron Historic District, developers were subject to a full landmark review, which was a time consuming process, but was unanimously approved by landmarks commission, and well-received by the community, said Laboz. “As the largest buildable site in SoHo, we sought a design that would be dramatic and contemporary, and yet contextual, echoing the historic character of this rich, storied community.”

General contractor, Plaza Construction Corporation began construction on Soho Mews at 311 West Broadway in February 2007. The building has a stone base with metal panels and recessed glass with horizontal and vertical channels expressing floor slabs and columns. Vertical mullions will shift from bay to bay and floor to floor, to give shadow movement to the façade.

Soho Mews is comprised of two buildings, totaling 171,000 sq ft, and has 68 residences, 59 of which are two- and -three bedroom loft apartments, five are townhouses with private street-level entrances and four are penthouses with wraparound terraces, three of which feature spa hot tubs.

The West Broadway building includes the main lobby, 5,000-sq-ft of retail space and entry to the underground parking facility, while the Wooster Street building houses the five townhouses with private gardens.

A 55-ft courtyard connects the two buildings, designed by Peter Walker of PWP Landscape Architecture of California, and links the nine-story building on West Broadway and the eight-story building on Wooster Street. “The building were broken up because we had enough Floor Area Ratio to build one tall building, but the lot was a through-block, so we decided to build two buildings with a courtyard instead, which is actually wider than a city street,” said Laboz.

Construction on the $100 million building is slated for completion in November 2008.

Construction on the Hudson River Park—a 550-acre open space and recreational area spanning five miles from Battery Park to West 59th Street along Manhattan’s west shoreline—is now 40% complete.

The park is divided into six segments of construction. “In the case of building the park, there was no infrastructure to start with so basically we are building the park not just from the ground up, but also from below the ground as there is no infrastructure underneath it that was salvageable from the old days of shipping,” said Hudson River Park Trust President Connie Fishman.

Of the 36 piers in the project, nine public park piers (34, 45, 46, 51, 66a, 66, 84, 95, 96) and six development piers (including Chelsea Piers and World Yacht/Circle Line) are completed. Additionally, a ferry terminal pier (79) and five municipality piers (52, 53, 76, 98, 99) as well as two development piers (40, 57) have yet to begin construction. Six piers (25, 26, 62, 63, 64, Intrepid Museum pier) are currently under construction.

“We follow the highway strategy of building, sort of a mile at a time,” said Fishman. “With a project this big, it would have been virtually impossible to do it all at once, not to mention funding it all at one time.”

Construction on the Hudson River Park—a 550-acre open space and recreational area spanning five miles from Battery Park to West 59th Street along Manhattan’s west shoreline—is now 40% complete. Construction teams are currently working on the Tribeca section of the park, pictured left and shown under construction; pictured right, a rendering of the completed Tribeca section. Photo courtesy of Hudson River Park Trust.

To date, $340 million have been spent on the Park, with another $42 million secured from the New York State and New York City to spend on contracts in Tribeca and Chelsea in 2008.

The Hudson River Park Trust plans to issue new Requests for Proposals for Piers 40 and 57. Related Companies and The Camp Group responded to the initial RFP but the board did not approve the designs. “We are hoping that [The Camp Group] will come back with something we can in fact approve, and if they don’t we, than we have more work to do,” said Hudson River Park Trust Chair Diana Taylor.

The peak construction period also coincides with the 10th Anniversary of the Hudson River Park Trust, which is a partnership between NYS and NYC to design, construct, operate and maintain Hudson River Park. The Anniversary marks the date legislation was signed to proceed with the Hudson River Park plans. Construction began in 1999.

HRPT anticipates 80% completion by 2010.

Key Players by Segment:

Segment 2

Work done by New York City Department of Transportation

Segment 3

Turner Construction – Construction Manager
Trevcon Construction – Pier 25 & Waterfront Structures
Mathews Nielson – Architect of Record
Padilla Construction – Upland Park Construction

Segment 4

Abel Bainnson Butz - Architect
Forms & Surfaces, Inc. - Park wide Bulkhead & Pier Railings For Segments 4 & 7
Tully Construction Co. - Segment 4 Upland Park
Weeks Marine, Inc. – Pier’s 45, 46 & 51

Segment 5

Michael Van Valkenburgh Assoc. – Architect
Mueser Rutledge – Marine Engineering
Breeze National – Pier 63 Demolition & Segment 5 Site Prep.
Skanska USA – Construction Manager
Lomma Construction – Piers 62 and 63 Deck Removal
Weeks Marine, Inc. – Pier 64 Waterfront Structures
Carousel Works, Inc. – Design and Engineering services Pier 64
Spearin, Preston & Borrows – Pier 63 Waterfront Structures

Segment 6

Weeks Marine – Pier 66
AWL Industries – Pier 84 Boat House Building & West 44th Street Park Building
Community Electric – Pier 84 Boat House Building
M.A. Angelaides – Pier 84 Boat House Building & West 44th Street Park Building
Pulsar Electric Installations - West 44th Street Park Building
Skanska USA – Construction Manager
Spearin, Preston & Borrows – Pier 84
WDF Greene - Pier 84 Boat House Building & West 44th Street Park Building
Metrotech Contracting – Pier 84 Upland Park
Kelco Construction – Furnish and install landscape features
R.A.M.S. Mechanical Inc. – Pier 66 Boathouse
Lafata-Corallo Plumb – Pier 66 Boathouse
D-Annunzio & Sons – W26 st – W29 st Upland Park Construction
Berardi Stone Setting – Pier 84 Stone Materials
Professional Pavers - W26 st – W29 st Stone Materials Construction
J.C. Macelroy Co. – Water Wheel Art Piece Pier 66

Segments 6 & 7

Richard Dattner Architect – Architect
Skanska USA – Construction Manager

Segment 7

Han Padron Associates – Waterfront Structures
Community Electric Inc. – Pier 96 Boat House Electric
Nelson Air Device – Pier 96 Boat House Mechanical
Spearin, Preston & Borrows – Pier 86

Dutch architect Ben van Berkel, co-founder of UNStudio in Amsterdam, has designed Tribeca’s newest residential tower, Five Franklin Place.

The facade of Five Franklin Place will be wrapped in a shifting pattern of horizontal black metal, which was intended as a direct homage to the applied metal façade decoration of Tribeca’s celebrated 19th century cast iron architecture, said architect Ben van Berkel. Photo Copyright Archpartners 2008.

Leeds United Construction of New York began construction in May 2008 on the 134,644-sq-ft building and upon completion in late 2009, it will contain 55 one-, two-, three- and four-bedroom apartments (configured as duplex lofts or single-level homes) as well as three duplex penthouses with interior elevators and rooftop terraces. Amenities will include a 24-hour concierge, valet parking service, private spa and fitness center.

The 20-story building is broken up into three “zones,” which were designed according to the amount of natural light each receives. “On the lower floors where there is a need to maximize daylight, we have specified the lightest-colored floors and fixtures and wall colors throughout, said van Berkel. “On middle floors where there is more daylight because the residences are above adjacent buildings, we have a more cream-colored palette, softer because there is more natural light and less need to push for its reflection into the homes. And on the top levels of the building, where there is very abundant light, we have used richer, deeper colors and finishes in a very luxe way.”

The most striking feature of the design is the façade. The building will be wrapped in a shifting pattern of horizontal black metal, which was intended as a direct homage to the applied metal façade decoration of Tribeca’s celebrated 19th

century cast iron architecture, said van Berkel. The reflective “ribbons” will vary in thickness and wrap around the entire tower. “Exploiting the light and views to the maximum extent was our priority,” said van Berkel. Materials used to create the exterior include cast in place reinforced concrete and unitized aluminum curtain wall system with an applied/integrated architectural metal banding.

The metal “ribbons” outside will also be reproduced on the interiors to match the design effect. The bathrooms for example, will have circular sliding doors and bathroom and bedroom unite to share the same view.

As part of the project, the team restored Sugar Loaf Alley—a narrow, cobbled north-south lane which was once the heart of New York City’s 19th century sugar trade—which will serve as the entrance to the building.

“With Five Franklin Place, our entire team aspires to celebrate the art of building, to translate Ben’s vision into a perfect local expression, and to prove that the sublime and the practical can exist side by side in a perfect place to live,” said a spokesperson for Sleepy Hudson, LLC, developers of the project.

Five Franklin Place is UNStudio’s first major project in the United States.

Construction recently began on the new 38, 000-sq-ft Sayville Library on Green Avenue in Sayville, New York in January 2008.

The new structure will be on the site of the former 1988 library building which was destroyed by fire in the 1960’s, said Danny Tanzi, project manager at H2M, the engineers and architects for the project. Following completion and occupation of the new library in the summer of 2009, the existing library on Collins Avenue will be returned to the school district.

H2M partnered with LPA Architects of Sayville to design the facility. Park East Construction of South Huntington is the construction manager and Lipsky Enterprises of Bayport is the general contractor.

The library will have two stories above grade and one story below grade as well as a split level with a mezzanine. The library will feature a children’s stack space with dedicated program rooms, a young adult space on the mezzanine, an expanded adult and reference space with an adult reading room, multiple meeting and quiet study rooms and an outdoor amphitheater space, explained Tanzi.

Although the building is not applying for LEED certification, the project team is incorporating many sustainable design features such as geothermal heating/cooling system, photovoltaic electric system, use of regional/local materials and natural light, low water consumption fixtures, voc free paints, green label carpets and formaldehyde-free wood.

Thus far, the architects have run into a few challenging project elements, most relating to minimal site space. “There is minimal space around the perimeter of the site to stockpile materials and stage construction operations,” said Tanzi. “In addition, we are working directly adjacent to a full year program school, so there have been scheduling challenges associated with that as well.”