At least one developer wants to build more housing at their Hudson Yards site.

With the 7 train extension set to see its first train at 34th Street and 11th Avenue next June, developers are rushing to line up financing and break ground on millions of square feet in new projects. The New York Times took a look over the weekend at the progress at Hudson Yards, but they buried some news deep within the story: at least one landowner—Silverstein Properties, which owns a 90,000-square foot site at 41st Street and 11th Avenue—wants zoning rules changed to allow it to build more housing and less office space.

For an area with poor transit links, the desire to shift from commercial to residential is not surprising. Though there will be a new subway station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue, successful office locations generally require not only transit, but redundant transit.

There are seven different subway stations, for example, along 42nd Street between Fifth and Eighth Avenues. Grand Central has three plus a regional rail terminal, and the Plaza District has around half a dozen, depending on how you define the ritzy submarket.

Hudson Yards, on the other hand, will have just one two-track subway, with Penn Station and the Eighth Avenue subway a few long avenue blocks away, at best. Commuters from Queens may have it easy, but there will be no one-seat subway rides from Brooklyn or any of Manhattan's residential neighborhoods.

While the desirability of housing in New York is also driven by proximity to transit, it relies mainly on access to midtown. Office tenants, by contrast, need transit links to the outer boroughs—a much taller order for out-of-the-way Hudson Yards.

And the market seems to be bearing this out: developers are in some stage of building or have already delivered 10,000 of the total 20,000 apartments that the city has planned for Hudson Yards since 2005, according to the Times, while only one office building has broken ground—Related's tower at 10th Avenue and West 31st Street, where they signed Coach, L'Oreal and SAP as tenants. Extell's building on 11th Avenue is on hold for want of an anchor tenant, and Moinian's mixed-use building doesn't have one either.

Office developers at Hudson Yards get much more space than those who build housing.

And while developers in today's market will throw up as many apartments as they can, builders have to work much harder to woo office tenants. The city has incentivized office space at Hudson Yards through tax breaks and more liberal zoning allowances, but office space at the World Trade Center is even more subsidized and has better transit access. Developers at Hudson Yards are understandably reluctant to throw up new towers while those in more natural locations—say, Vornado at 15 Penn Plaza—are shelving their plans.

More office towers will eventually join Related's first in the lower 30s between Penn Station and the new 7 stop on 11th Avenue, with Related aggressively courting tenants for its second, larger building. But it remains to be seen if there will be demand for the string of commercial skyscrapers that the city envisioned rising along Hudson Boulevard, on sites like Silverstein's which lacks the redeeming proximity to Penn Station. Could a potential request by Silverstein to build housing instead of offices be the first of many?

The city goes to great length to stimulate commercial development—both where there is demand, and where there isn't. At least for the moment, Hudson Yards seems to be a little bit of both.

A massing diagram from 606 West 57th Street's rezoning application.

Back in 2011, AvalonBay abandoned plans to build a 44-story, 700-unit rental building on the block south of West 57th Street between Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues. TF Cornerstone was rumored to be interested in the site, and it turns out the rumors were true: the Manhattan-based developer now wants to build a 45-story, 1,189-unit residential tower on the same site, according to documents filed with the Department of City Planning.

If approved, the project would contain a total of 1.2 million square feet of floorspace, with 42,000 square feet set aside for commercial use and a 550-space underground parking garage. Of the apartments, 20 percent—238 units—would be set aside as affordable housing under the city's inclusionary zoning program.

The project would, along with the residential pyramid that Bjarke Ingels is building for Durst Fetner on the north side of 57th Street, anchor the booming crosstown corridor, where half a dozen other luxury towers are in the works.

One of the site's more attractive buildings.

TF Cornerstone will have to go through the same private rezoning process for 606 West 57th as Dursts and Fetners had to do with the Bjarke Ingels building, involving a slurry of acronyms and eventually a vote in City Council. They're seeking to rezone the parcels—which make up most, but not all of the block—from their old manufacturing designations to a zone that allows the highest residential density in the city.

A building on the southeastern corner of the block, included in the rezoning application but not in TF Cornerstone's project, is owned by Republican mayoral candidate and Gristedes owner John Catsimatidis.

TF Cornerstone signed a 99-year lease for the site last May, leasing the land from Montgomery, Alabama-based Four Plus. Charles Edgar Appleby, the progenitor of Four Plus, first acquired land on Manhattan's West Side in the 19th century. He once declared, "It has been my rule to keep the value of my property in land, not in buildings." Apparently his offspring feel the same way.

Like most places south of the Arctic Circle, night falls on NoChe once per 24-hour period.

Manhattan West too corporate? Far West Side too bland? Clinton too anodyne? Hell's Kitchen too imprecise?

"You've heard of NoMad, NoLita, and NoHo," writes Bisnow. "Well, get used to 'NoChe.' " (We'd prefer not to!) "It stands for North Chelsea, pronounced a touch exotically"—because nothing screams exótico like millions of square feet of shimmering class A office space!—"like the Spanish word for 'night.' It's how insiders are referring to the dramatic new area being forged by Brookfield and Related on the Far West Side."

This is the first we're hearing of NoChe, although it isn't the first appearance of the name, which dates back to at least 2005, when Lockhart Steele was still slumming it as a writer at Curbed NY. The New York Times also included the abbreviation in its pages as recently as October, when it quoted broker Clifford Finn, then CitiHabitats' head of new development marketing, as saying, "A lot of people like to think of it as North Chelsea, or NoChe." (The name appears most popular with unnamed "insiders" and "a lot of people.")

The Observer spoke with Hell's Kitchen resident Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation, to get his take on the latest attempt to rename what may be Manhattan's most oft-renamed 'hood.

"I've never heard of that one before," said Mr. Berman, referring to the NoChe moniker. "I've heard of some other funny ones—Hellsea, Chelsea Heights—but those were always sort of tongue-in-cheek, people weren't actually trying to rebrand or rename. At one point somebody was trying to push SoPA—South of Port Authority." (Though Sandy may have, mercifully, put the kibosh on that particular neologism.)

Then again, "stranger things have happened," Mr. Berman conceded. But is it likely? "I think Hell's Kitchen is a great name, and I think people feel a lot of pride attached to it. So... I don't think so."

If you build it, they will come. Promise. (Edward Reed/Flickr)

One of the big debates that has been raging around the rezoning of Midtown East is how it might impact development already underway around the city, much of it funded in part by the public sector, and thus taxpayers. Should these projects fail, Joe Public could lose out on his investment.

The World Trade Center and Hudson Yards have been two focal points, but Manhattan West, which broke ground yesterday, ought to be considered, too. While the project's backers bragged at the groundbreaking about building without public subsidy, they are still competing for the same anchor tenants as their rivals further east. Furthermore, the $2 billion the city contributed to the construction of the 7 train nearby is to be paid back through property taxes on the new projects. No new development, no bond proceeds, big trouble for the city.

Still, Mayor Bloomberg is standing by the decision to fast-track the Midtown rezoning and ensure it gets completed this year.

"There's lots of development going on all over the city, not only on the West Side but downtown, at the World Trade Center, in Brooklyn and Long Island City," the mayor said. "People are surprised by how much interest there is."

Still, the mayor thinks there are provisions being taken to protect these projects. "That's why we set the five year sunrise," the mayor said, referring to the delay in the rezoning taking effect until 2017. Some landlords have complained about the delay, as has Post columnist Steve Cuozzo.

"We think that's a decision to give people plenty of breathing room to get their projects off the ground," the mayor said of the sunrise provision.

John Zuccotti, the former Brookfield chairman who was on hand for the groundbreaking yesterday was unconcerned about the Midtown East rezoning, as well. "I think the rezoning will come in its time, but it won't be as tranformative as this because they're building where there are already office building," Mr. Zuccotti said. "Here there was nothing, and it's all gonna change." It is this total transformation, this neighborhood from nothing, its brand-new glowing greatness, that will make the project so appealing (and cheaper) to companies and residents.

Not that the transformation comes as a surprise to Mr. Zuccotti.

"It all started with Battery Park City," he said, where Brookfield (then Olympia and York, still led by Mr. Zuccotti) was one of the first builders, creating the World Financial Center. "I was there when the ships left, and it was clear we had to find a whole new use for the West Side. My father took me to the Normandie when it was on fire, so I remember the old West Side, and it's not that anymore, hasn't been for a long time."

"From Nelson Rockefeller to Michael Bloomberg, that's been the transformation, and here we are."

“With today’s groundbreaking, we’re taking a major step forward in the transformation and rebirth of the Far West Side of Manhattan,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said from the podium at the corner of 33rd Street and Ninth Avenue.

Behind him stood the Farley Post Office, some day to become a grand new entrance for Penn Station. In front of him, earth movers had already begun tearing up this former parking lot, making way for one of the project's two 60-story office towers. Directly across the tracks below, on 31st Street, construction workers had not even stopped for the groundbreaking ceremony as they prepped the southwest corner for a residential tower that will rise there. All three towers and a large retail building on the northwest corner are being designed by Ken Lewis and SOM.

Ric Clark, Brookfield's Chief Executive, told The Observer after the ceremony that the project had actually been ready to move forward last year, but the market felt better now, particularly for the inclusion of apartments. "We weren't sure if we would be building one tower at first, or two, but as things progressed, it just made more sense, in terms of economic and market conditions," Mr. Clark said. He had on a long navy overcoat to stave off the cold of the winter morning groundbreaking.

Brookfield has actually controlled most of the parcel since the 1980s, but in the middle of last decade, it acquired the piece Mr. Clark was standing on, at the northeast corner of the site. This unlocked the next important piece of the project, which was determining to build to construct any buildings along the edges of the site. That way, the foundations and cores could be built over terra firma, with only a small section of each building cantilevering out over the train yard below.

In 2009, Brookfield hit upon using a concrete bridging technology that would allow it to deck over the tracks without having to build a huge steel structure reaching down to the yard, holding up what will eventually become the 1.5-acre public plaza at the development's core. Instead, this bridge will be suspended across the 5-acre site.

The final piece was acquiring a 75 percent stake in 450 West 33rd Street, the massive pyramid-with-its-top-shorn-off tower that was the former home of the Daily News and occupied the block front on 10th Avenue. Brookfield is currently redeveloping the property, with architecture firm REX redesigning the structure.

"It's finally the right time," Mr. Clark said.

The developer is still working on finding an anchor tenant before the tower will rise, but until then foundation work will move forward, and numerous tenants are said to be interested.

Correction 1/16: An earlier version of this post stated that 450 West 33rd Street was located on 11th Avenue, not 10th Avenue. The Observer regrets the error.

Looking sharp, but will it fly with the neighbors? (Durst Fetner)

Ms. Durst, baby bump hidden behind lectern. (Matt Chaban)

"My own feeling, and the feeling of board, is that we'd like this project to succeed," J.D. Nolan, chair of Community Board 4’s land-use committee, told The Observer. "The Dursts are great developers, and they have worked very well with us in the past. Nevertheless, this is a rezoning, and the public should benefit as well as the developer."

And so, the full board voted unanimously against Durst Fenter's new apartment building on the far West Side last night. One of the most dynamic designs of the decade, 625 West 57th Street calls for a swooping white pyramid that rises dramatically up from the Hudson like an origami dove taking flight. Designed by Danish wunderkinds Bjarke Ingels Group (aka BIG), the project has even decided to eschew LEED ratings in its quest for singularity.

Still, this was not enough to sway the board, which generally seems to like the design but still has too many issues with the details surrounding it to approve the project at its monthly meeting. The board's vote is merely provisional, though it will be given considerable consideration from officials down the line as they cast their vote for or against the project throughout the rest of the months-long public review process.

Last night, Helena Durst was in attendance to make her family's case, as she has for the past decade as the project has struggled from one plan to another—data center, car dealership, for-profit school, hotel. She looked appropriately pregnant for the occasion, which was held on the second floor of St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital (the maternity ward is on the seventh) on the corner of 11th Avenue and 59th Street, two blocks from where Ms. Durst hopes the 740-unit apartment building might soon rise.

"This is an asset for the skyline," she said.

But not yet for the community, at least in its view. Their singular issue is affordable housing, of which there will be some 150 units. The sticking point is that those apartments will only be reserved for low-income tenants for 35 years. The board wants permanent affordability, instead. "As a community board, we are supposed to do the best we can to preserve and maintain our communities and keep them going," Mr. Nolan said. "As we see our neighborhood changing, we see so much luxury housing going up, and we feel that is not contributing to the preservation of our neighborhood."

The Dursts argue they cannot make the apartments permanently affordable because they do not own the site but have instead signed a 99-year land lease with a family that has owned the property for centuries. Now, there are some 150 different family members who have to be negotiated with, and any changes to the amount of affordable housing would require a renegotiation of the lease. Since the Dursts will not own the site in perpetuity, it is not clear the land's owners would agree to a permanent affordable housing provision.

Still, Councilwoman Gale Brewer has also expressed concern about the permanence of the affordable apartments, and since she has the final say on the project, it could continue to be a serious issue.

Other concerns included the appearance of the building along 58th Street. Currently, all the retail is along 57th Street, with entrances, loading docks and mechanical systems on the 58th Street frontage. The board hopes those spaces can be rejiggered, with shops, trees, anything really to make the streetscape, which is nearly a block long, more appealing to pedestrians.

Parking is an issue in two ways. One, board members argued there were too many spaces for a project in the middle of Manhattan. Two, there is an issue with the access to that parking, through a two-way driveway that cuts through the middle of the site and connects to the Helena, a rental building also owned by Durst Fetner on the southeast corner of 10th Avenue and 57th Street. The board wants that space cut down to one lane, with a public plaza created out of the excess space this would free up. "Curb-side drop-off?" Mr. Nolan said. "What is this, Dubai?"

A small community facility building drew concerns because the Dursts have yet to find a use for the building, after a failed bid to have the Manhattan Children's Museum move in. Now, they are looking at other childcare spaces, like day care or early education. Mr. Nolan thinks an art space could be good, too.

"This has always been a place for actors, artists, stagehands," he said. "They need housing they can afford, they need places they can perform. Without them, it's not the kind of New York I want to live in."

To try and counter the local opposition to the project, Durst Fetner made a full political push last night, bringing out speakers and testimonials from the Community Preservation Corporation and Citizens Housing, Settlement Housing Fund and Planning Commission (on affordable housing); New York Building Congress, Regional Plan Association and the Partnership for New York City (on design and construction jobs); members of 32BJ (on service and operations jobs); and the Audubon Society (on how normal buildings have troubling bird strikes and this one will not).

Still, this show of support failed to sway the board to vote for the project.

"We hear their concerns and we will continue to work with them on a solution," Jordan Barowitz, the Dursts' director of external affairs, said after the disapproval vote. "That being said, I think is a very compelling project for the community and the city. It provides desperately needed market-rate housing and 150 affordable units for decades. And it's an innovative and inspiring design. Great design makes for great places, which makes for a great community."

Update: The story has been modified to clarify that the full community board disapproved of Durst Fetner's building last night, not the land-use committee, though it also disapproved the plan at a meeting earlier in the summer. The story also misstated the location of the Helena. It is on the corner of 59th Street and 11th Avenue, not 10th Avenue. The Observer regrets the error.

Welcome to West End Avenue?

Who would want to live all the way out on 11th Avenue, at 54th Street, no less? What’s there? Nothing! Except the Mercedes House, where the answer to first question appears to be: everyone!

According to Two Trees' Asher Abehsera, the second phase of the massive Far West Side development has been renting faster than a sports car, with more than half of the units gone since coming on the market a little over two months ago. So far, 174 of the 384 units have been leased, and move-ins are underway—without the help of any outside brokers, Mr. Abehsera said.

"I don’t know that other people have done 170 apartments at market-rate prices with no outside brokers in two and a half months. That’s probably a big deal," he said.

Mr. Abehsera credits this to factors both in the market and at the company. "I think to some extent there’s obviously a shortage of product in the marketplace, so anything that’s out there and aesthetically is nice, people have a real interest in," he said. "At the same time, I think, we’re probably doing better because our design is so spectacular. It’s an odd shaped building, it’s really impressive, it really feels when you walk in the lobby or see the building from a distance, it has a premium feel."

Take a tour of the Mercedes House >>

The project was designed by Enrique Norten, the inventive Mexican architect whose profile has been on the rise in New York during the boom. His biggest project yet, it features a unique zig-zagging design that creates courtyards on two sides of the building, perched atop a Mercedes Benz dealership (hence the name). Mr. Abehsera said that open space was among the features that was helping to attract renters.

"We have a spectacular amenity program with 28,000 square feet of interior, contiguous space, with light and air and 60,000 square feet of outdoor space," he boasted. "Within that interior space there’s weight lifting, boxing, yoga studios, an indoor pool, spin room, juice bar and all that. One of the outdoor decks had a lounge pool, which is pretty impressive. That’s actually a big role in the decision making of people moving out to the building."

According to Streeteasy, rents start around $3,600 for a one-bedroom, $4,150 for a two bedroom. The entire first phase of the project, which hit the market in spring of last year, have been leased.

For those without the means to lease, check with the city, because there are 96 affordable units in the building, part of the inclusionary housing program. There are also condo units on the top 10 floors of the 32-story building, but it looks increasingly like those units will be rented, instead. "As we approach completion, around Thanksgiving time, our thinking would be probably to rent them," Mr. Abehsera said.

Despite what seems like a challenging location, well, it's not, according to Mr. Abehsera: "I think that going into the product, when we first came to market, we had no expectations, we had no real confidence in terms of what we would be getting. And what happened was a couple of things. We didn’t realize the built-in audience who works on 8th Avenue, 7th Avenue in the 50s, the financial firms, for them it’s a breeze in terms of walk to work. You also have a real audience concentrated in living on the waterfront, you know, spectacular views, you have the Hudson River Park. You’re only a very short walk to Columbus Circle, you’re a very short distance, also, to the Upper West Side, if you wanted to go that route. Or to Midtown or the Theater District."

"I’m seeing, just from the people moving into the building, who we’re interacting with, it’s a real, dynamic, young New York market that’s just excited about living on the West Side," he added.

Still, to further his efforts, Mr. Abehsera has hatched an ingenious plan to help the once dowdy area's cache: he wants to extend West End Avenue all the way down to 42nd Street. He said the idea dawned on him once while walking to the project from the Upper West Side. Looking around at all the development going on, he believes it makes perfect sense.

"If you got to 58th and 11th Avenue, there’s no such thing, it’s 58th and West End Avenue," Mr. Abeshsera said. "If this was called 53rd, 54th and West End, you’re talking about a very different building. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be, between us, Silverstein, Related, Gotham West, and you have Durst, as well, with their project on 57th."

"People don't realize it yet, but this is the place to be."

Yet 435 50th Street is anything but flashy and new. A throwback in the grandest sense, in that it is a far bit better than the original, the project is the second coming out for Ralph Walker, the long-forgotten AIA president and Art Deco master who dotted the city with at once industrious and luxurious old towers for the New York Telelphone Company. It is noveau prewar of the first order.

The first such was the now eponymous Walker Tower, just off Sixth Avenue between 17th and 18th Streets, where developers JDS Development and PMG hope to achieve some of the highest prices not only downtown but in the entire city, including a possible duplex penthouse overlooking Chelsea and the Village asking $94 million. Walker also designed such tough jewels as 1 Wall Street and the Barclay Vesey Building, landmarks you never knew you knew.

On West 50th Street, the plan is much the same. JDS and PMG bought both the West 18th Street building and the West 50th Street building from Verizon, which retains control of the lower floors for office and operations while the developers assemble grand condos above, designed by Cetra/Ruddy. The developers paid $20 million for the latter building last July, and according to city records, Barry Sternlicht's Starwood Capital—also a backer in the Chelsea project—just injected $25 million into the project last week.

"Construction is under way and we expect to complete the project in early 2014," JDS principal Michael Stern said in a brief statement.

The project is expected to come on the market some time next year, and renderings show new windows added to the grand 1930s facade but little alterations beyond that. The exact price of the renovation was not given, but for comparison, the one at Walker Tower is set to surpass $200 million.

All told, there will be somewhere around 65 and 70 units on floors 10 through 17. Prices have also not yet been set, and while this building might not have the same commanding views or white hot neighborhood to boast, the area is certainly on the up and up. And so, too, is this new building.

Striking, but affordable? (Durst Fetner)

Durst Fetner is at work on arguably the most dynamic, certainly the least square, apartment building in New York City. Jean-Daniel Noland, chair of Community Board 4’s land-use committee, even cautioned his fellow committee members against overwrought superlatives when they considered the project last night as it entered the first phase of public review.

“We are in a house of worship, so no talk of icons tonight,” he said from behind a long table inside the Actor’s Temple synagogue on West 47th Street. “Only Jehovah can do that.”

Still, his colleagues on the committee could not resist, referring to the building as beautiful, interesting, celebrated, stunning, beautiful, attractive, singular, impressive, beautiful and destination architecture. At the end of the meeting, when a resolution was being drafted to make recommendations to the full board on what conditions it should support the project, James Wallace said, “I think we should go out of our to note the spectacular beauty of this design."

“Now, now, that’s a value judgment, and we just can’t do that,” Mr. Noland said.

“How about striking,” Lee Compton said. “Whatever your opinion, you have to admit it’s a striking building.”

Yet no matter how striking, beautiful or iconic the design, the committee could not surmount one serious issue. Despite effusive praise for Durst Fetner’s legacy, the inclusion of a grocery store, a commitment to public art, and yes, that incomparable design, the fact that the developers had committed to only 35 years of affordability for the below-market-rate apartments it was setting aside within the 740-unit pyramid-shaped struck the committee as an unconscionable act.

“The high-end architecture doesn’t do anything to keep the neighborhood diverse,” Joe Restuccia said. In other words, a façade is just a façade. Permanent affordability is forever.

Durst representatives claimed they could not, for financial and fiduciary reasons, pursue a project with unlimited affordability to it. Much of this has to do with an unusual ground lease on the development site, which belongs to the Smiley family, once one of the city's largest landlords. Now comprised of some 100 trustees, the Smileys present complex, almost impossible negotiation, according to the Dursts, and it would be difficult to go back and negotiate a deal that would facilitate additional affordability. "In a way, it's 150 units of affordable housing or none," Jonathan Drescher, director of major projects, said.

This comment particularly set the committee members off. "We've heard that so many times before, and we just don't buy it," Mr. Restuccia said. "You're going to get what you're going to get, so we have to do what we can to ensure this project serves the community, too."

Mr. Noland emphasized that this was a matter of precedent. "I think our concern is, affordable housing is an important component of this community," he said. "If you only give it a certain number of years, and you change it, we don't think that's good for the community, we don't think that's good for New York." He later emphasized that this could set a precedent whereby other developers would come in and say, well, the Dursts only had 35 years, so why should we do more.

In a way, the firm's reputation was as much of a hindrance as a help. People just expected more.

But it was also a difficult community to be operating in. On the one hand, Hell's Kitchen had benefited from a great deal of affordable housing development in recent decades, but much of it had been built with a sunset similar to the one being discussed by the developer now. "Look at Trump, many of those units aren't affordable anymore, and that is a problem we have to confront," local councilwoman Gail Brewer told The Observer after the meeting.

"What are we creating up here?" Mr. Wallace said. "Trump, Extell, now this. It's turning into an island of luxury."

The only other major concern for the community besides affordable housing was a desire to see more retail along 58th Street, where the developer has place most of its mechanical systems. Questions were also raised specifically about what might occupy a 16,000 square-foot community facility building the Dursts want to build on the street. They have proposed childcare of some sort but have no firm commitments, which the committee said it would like to see by the time the project reaches the full board in September.

Whatever the concerns, there was genuine excitement about the project on both sides. "As many of you know, we have tried to get many projects off the ground here," Helena Durst said before presenting the plan. "In fact, this is the fourth time I've come before you."