By Matt Chaban 1/24 11:28am

office space

11 Photos

Villareal on Sixth

Avenue of the LEDs: Leo Villareal’s Largest Installation Is Inside a New Durst Office Lobby

Sixth Avenue is a haven for corporate art, from Robert Indian’s Love to Curved Cube outside the Time Life Building, to say nothing of the massive galleries spanning the entire block between 51st and 52nd streets inside the UBS Building. The Avenue of the Americas is also home to mostly older office buildings, still very splendid and class A, but many in need of updating. It has become a hub of new elevators and air conditioners and reconfigured lobbies.

At 1133 Sixth Avenue, the Durst Organization is merging these two currents, popular public art and a sparkling new lobby, into a striking whole. The centerpiece of a new Gensler-designed lobby is an installation by light artist Leo Villareal, Volume (Durst). At 90-feet long, 12-feet high and 6-feet deep, the dazzling sculpture is Mr. Villareal’s largest three-dimensional work yet. Floating near the top of the lobby, it not only enlivens the space but the avenue, as well, fully visible through the two-story windows facing out on the plaza between the International Center for Photography on one side and a bank on the other.

“I love the chance encounter,” Mr. Villareal said at an opening reception for the lobby Tuesday night. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/17 5:47pm

on the waterfront

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His Ship’s Come In: Hedgie Michael Novogratz Named Chairman of Friends of Hudson River Park

The Friends of Hudson River Park have traded a real estate big for a Wall Street one.

Today, the West Side park booster group announced that Michael Novogratz, head of Fortress Capital, will take over from Douglas Durst, the former board chair, who left last month over a dispute about the future of Pier 40 and the direction of the trust that overseas the park.

Mr. Novogratz has been a board member of Friends for some time now, and an announcement calls him “an avid user of the park.” After all, the hedge fund manager and city’s foremost wrestling booster lives around the corner in a multimillion-dollar compound he has assembled at 110 Hudson Street in Tribeca. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/09 6:42pm

on the waterfront

Let's take this plan for a spin. (Dattner Architects)

Douglas Durst Floats Plan for Tech Offices and Galleries to Save Pier 40

Last month, Douglas Durst walked away from the Friends of Hudson River Park advocacy group over a disagreement with the trust that runs the Manhattan watefront park. The key dispute had been over what to do with Pier 40, the libertarian park‘s former cash cow that has become a drain as its pilings deteriorate and the parking garage cum ball fields ever so slowly sinks into the river.

The trust believes that housing should be among the options considered for shoring up the pier’s finances, and by extension its pilings, a move that would likely require a major overhaul of the pier. Meanwhile, Mr. Durst insists housing is undesirable and unnecessarily expensive, and the better option is to keep the pier largely as is, adaptively reusing the space to more efficiently house the roughly 1,400 cars that park on the pier, freeing up room to create commercial space, likely occupied by tech firms, art galleries and other decidely downtown tenants.

Last night, Mr. Durst presented his plan at a public meeting, where it was warmly if cautiously received. Read More

By Matt Chaban 12/20/12 5:55pm

Dizzying Designs

Big, pointy apartments. (Durst/Fetner)

BIG News: Planning Commission Approves Durst’s 57th Street Pyramid Apartments

When Douglas Durst began deciding, yet again, what to do with the almost block-long property he owns at 57th Street and the Hudson River, City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden urged the developer to think big. A high-tech data center, a school and a hotel had all fallen through, so Mr. Durst had fallen back on that most reliable form of New York City development: housing.

Ms. Burden wanted something iconic, especially for a project on such a prominent street at such a prominent location right on the waterfront. With Hudson River Park right there, it ought to be iconic. Mr. Durst delivered something BIG indeed, hiring the Danish wunderkinds at Bjarke Ingles Group to design his project.

Yesterday, Ms. Burden got to put her official stamp on the project, when she and the rest of the City Planning Commission approved Durst/Fetner’s BIG pyramid. Read More

By Matt Chaban 12/18/12 7:53pm

on the waterfront

pier 40 - david shankbone

Parks and Wreck: The Fight for Pier 40 and the Myth of Public Parks

When Sandy swept into the town almost two months ago, Hudson River Park—as its name might suggest—was among the places inundated by the swelling sea under more than a dozen feet of water.

The surge washed over the historic piers and brand-new lawns, filling skate parks, swamping ball fields, submerging mini golf holes and surrounding the merry-go-round. Yet much of the park, in the traditional sense, came through fine.”I think we lost only five trees and a few plants,” Madelyn Wils, president and CEO of the Hudson River Park Trust, said at a post-Sandy conference last Thursday.

It was the more manmade features, the development that undergirds the park and pays for its upkeep, that struggled to weather the storm.“The buildings, however, did not fare quite as well,” Ms. Wils explains. “We’re still without power, because we are on our own grid, and we’ve had to work on our own to restore that.”

This is only the latest, and in some ways the least, of the troubles on the waterfront, where a bitter disagreement between Ms. Wils and the park’s biggest backer, developer Douglas Durst, reveals cracks in the public-private model by which the city’s parks are so often built and maintained these days. These partnerships are both sustainer and straightjacket, leading to the creation of more parks in a generation, but also limited means to keep them up and running. Call them libertarian parks. Read More

By Matt Chaban 12/16/12 10:00am

on the waterfront

Adrift. (HRP Trust)

Sinking Pier 40: Durst Leaves Hudson River Park Amid Mutiny Over Its Future

Even before Hurricane Sandy buried it under more than a dozen feet of water, Hudson River Park was struggling to stay afloat.

The past decade had seen substantial progress on the long-planned park, made possible by the demolition of the old West Side Highway (which provided some of the initial funding) and the realization New Yorkers actually wanted to return to the waterfront (which provided the drive). By last year, more than 70 percent of the park had been completed, including many of the piers, transformed from places of work into ones for play, and the generous esplanade connecting them all, running from the Battery all the way up to Riverside Park.

But the grass is not always greener in a new park. Like so many other open spaces created in recent years, Hudson River Park receives limited public funding. Instead, it is expected to generate its own revenue through not only fundraising but also development within the bounds of the park, everything from floating restaurants to parking garages. Everything from rock climbers at Chelsea Piers to the tourists taking Circle Line cruises contributes in its own way.

At one time, Pier 40 was the park’s biggest single source of funds, but increasingly, it has become a drag on the park, and a dispute over its future has led to the departure of one of its biggest backers. Read More

By Matt Chaban 8/28/12 10:24am

Greensward

Little help? (agent j loves nyc/Flickr)

Douglas Durst Wants to Put Lofts for Techies and Galleries in Pier 40 to Keep It Afloat

The problems of Pier 40 are well documented by now. Once the golden goose of Hudson River Park, the pier is now so deteriorated, it costs more to maintain than it earns for the libertarian park. In two years, the pier might have to be shut down all together. With hopes of MLS soccer headed to Queens instead and a housing proposal on the rocks, what’s a park to do?

Well, it looks like Douglas Durst to the rescue. Read More

By Matt Chaban 7/30/12 7:04pm

Machers

Stick to your back yard. (Durst Organization)

Durst in China: Development Is for Locavores

Leonine developer Douglas Durst might not be quite the public presence than his father Seymour once was—a regular in the letters to the editor column and on local talk shows, among other outlets for his restless mind—yet he still very much knows his way around a podium. Last week, he found himself in China, talking about New York, and he even seems to admit that the one investment his firm recently made just across the Formosa Strait might not have been its best.

“My experience is almost completely New York centric,” Mr. Durst said at the China Alliance’s US-China Investment Summit: Focus On New York Real Estate in Shenzen. “Our one experience outside of New York convinced us to stay in New York. Real Estate is always local.”

He also, naturally, talked about his kids—it’s now a fourth generation business!—and how building sustainably not only provides better buildings, and thus better income, for them, but also a better world. There was talk of 4 Times Square and 1 Bryant Park, but nothing about the widely anticipated, mildly concerning West 57th Street pyramid. The full speech is below. Read More

By Matt Chaban 7/24/12 3:35pm

Dizzying Designs

5 Photos

The Little Building That Couldn't

A BIG Nothing: Durst Planning, But Not Building, Tiny Apartment Building Next to West 57th Street Pyramid

One of the big surprises to come along since the boom has been Durst Fetner’s new apartment building planned for the end of West 57th Street. The pyramidal structure designed by the Danish wunderkind Bjarke Ingels Group, aka BIG, is the kind of ambitious creation that was supposed to have died during the decadent days of the last decade. (We may actually start to see more of the exquisite as the super-high-end continues to out-perform every other housing sector in the city.)

Within the BIG surprise was hidden a smaller one, revealed in planning documents filed when the project was approved two weeks ago, dubbed Development Site 2. Plans call for a 110-unit apartment building that backs onto the pyramid apartments, though it is unlikely it will be built in that form, if at all. Instead, it is a zoning technicality. Read More