It may be bigger than Baltimore or Stamford, and it will probably be prettier, too. The plans for Hudson Yards continue to impress, as the office towers get refined and high-profile firms sign up to do the residential buildings. The first big news was that High Line designers Diller Scofidio + Renfro would be responsible for one of the apartment buildings, and now The Observer has learned that none other than money-minting godhead Robert A.M. Stern is designing another.
Steve Ross has actually been a regular client of Mr. Stern’s in the past.
The architect has completed a number of residential developments for The Related Companies both in New York and around the country, among them the Chatham and Brompton on the Upper East Side, the Westminster in Chelsea and two towers in Battery Park City. The latest project, Superior Ink (where Mr. Ross purchased an apartment for $0.00) set the record for a downtown sale when it went for $31.5 million two years ago.
Related must hope to be bringing similar sales, and hype, to its nascent project on the Far West Side, where construction of the first office tower, anchored by Coach, is just getting under way. That and the Diller Scofidio tower are expected to be completed around the same time, in 2015. When the Stern tower will come online is unclear, but like its two, it is being built on terra firma, not the platform Related has to build over the Penn Station rail yards, so it will likely be sooner rather than later.
The tower is not technically part of the Hudson Yards, located across 30th Street, on the southwest corner of 10th Avenue, in the crook between the High Line and its spur. The site has hosted a Tom Colicchio food bizarre, a Target-sponsored play ground and other events in the past.
Plans have already been filed with the Department of Buildings to begin working on the project, though Related, which declined to comment for this story, was not planning to announce it officially until next year.
While designs have not been officialized, and could change like those of the KPF-designed office towers, the plan at present is not that dissimilar to what has already appeared in renderings of the site released upon the Coach groundbreaking. They show a red-brick building, similar Superior Ink, rising to more than 40 stories—tall, but not tall by Hudson Yards standards.
Considering the horror Curbed commenters expressed when they saw this project and believed it to be the work of Ishmael Leyva, the developer-friendly boxed-living builder who is the architect of record on this project, The Observer cannot help but wonder what their reaction to the very same building will be now that they know one of their favorites is responsible for it.
