Jagged! (Atelier Jean Nouvel)

Last year, The Observer discovered that Jean Nouvel’s soaring MoMA Tower—called "the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation" by The Times' architecture critic—would not be a jagged victim of boom time hubris but in fact a real part of the skyline after all. Hines, the project’s developer, filed amended plans for the tower last July, showing that even at its Burden’d height of 1,050 feet, the Pritzker prize would still rise.

Now, more encouraging news that this project will actually become a reality: Hines has tapped Corcoran Sunshine to market the MoMA Tower, officially known as the Torre Verre, according to Crain’s, which means sales can't be too far away

"Corcoran Sunshine has always had a great relationship with Hines, a longtime client of the firm, and for the past several years we've been working on the planning and design of this landmark property," said Kelly Kennedy Mack, president of Corcoran Sunshine, in a statement, declining to elaborate on the project. "It will be the ultimate destination for the world's most elite buyers."

Assuming the economy holds on and sales begin in the near future, the project would be well positioned to take advantage of the roaring recovery in the most exclusive corners of the New York City housing market. The past month has seen a record price for co-op ($50.2 million at 740 Park), a staggering Central Park duplex ($70 million at the Ritz-Carlton) and a jaw-dropping new record (somewhere north of $90 million for the penthouse at One57).

Now, we learn that Harry Macklowe’s 432 Park Avenue is well-underway, with building permits recently filed that call for a 1,398-foot tower, as The Real Deal revealed on Friday. At 84 stories, the tower is one foot taller than most recently reported, and technically taller than the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center (might as well be an asterisk). The price will no doubt be just as high.

Whether Torre Verre will be able to command the same prices of some of its rivals will be curious to see. On the one hand, it will not be the tallest, nor directly on the Park, but the cache of both its architect and the museum’s brand name might just help push it over the edge.

Why the name was ever changed from MoMA Tower is a mystery to us. Perhaps the developers should pull a Frank Gehry and call it “New York, by MoMA.” Maybe residents could even borrow art to hang on their walls--for a small donation, of course.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Amanda approves.

It was Amanda Burden who stopped the MoMA Tower, giving Jean Nouvel's 1,250-foot spire a haircut, and it is up to her if the project will ever snake its way onto the skyline. As The Observer revealed last month, developer Hines Interests has resubmitted plans for the shorter, stockier Torre Verre, and they await Ms. Burden's approval. Where the head of the City Planning Department once thought the top of the tower was undignified, unworthy of sharing space with the Empire State Building, she now loves it.

Arts Journal blogger CultureGrrl revealed in a recent post what Ms. Burden told her about the MoMA Tower at May's Downtown Whitney groundbreaking.

"The top is glorious," Burden told me when I ran into her at the Downtown Whitney's groundbreaking, before the plans were formally filed. "It's going to be a great signature addition to the skyline." She added that the building's "facets are more pronounced" and there is more of a sense of movement around the exterior.

High praise!

A department spokesperson cautioned The Observer about reading too deeply into these pronouncements, though it certainly sounds like the tower is on its way to being approved. When that might happen remains unclear because the new plans are currently undergoing a chair certification, which has no set timetable, unlike a standard land-use application. It could be approved tomorrow or in two years—as long as it takes to get the designs in line with what the department, and its strong-willed commissioner, desires.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The Death Spire. (Atelier Jean Nouvel)

New York City may have brought down Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but another torrid Frenchman will not be held up by the likes of us.

Jean Nouvel, winner of the Pritzker Prize and a severe man even by the standards of his profession, delivered unto the city a “real skyscraper” in 2007. The Torre Verre, more commonly known as the MoMA Tower, would rise to 1,250 feet, an obsidian shard piercing the heart of midtown, built on land traded by the museum to a developer, Hines, for $125 million and three floors of galleries in the base of the new building. A rival to the Empire State Building 20 blocks south, The Times’ Niccolai Ouroussoff called it “the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation.”

Mr. Nouvel, in defending his creation to the City Planning Commission, which was then  deciding the outsize tower’s fate, said at a July 2009 hearing, “It’s like music, part of the rhythm of the city and the skyline.” Commission chair Amanda Burden was less taken with Mr. Nouvel's tune, and knocked 200 feet off the top of the tower, bringing it well south of the Chrysler Building it would have eclipsed (and much closer to its as-of-right height).

Among the issues, she deemed the building’s thorny crown an eyesore for visitors to the Empire State Building, a position that drew outcry from the tower's legion of worshipers. "Approving the design of Tower Verre while lowering the height was not a compromise but an example of curatorial caution run amok, an attempt to turn midtown into an architectural preserve," wrote Justin Davidson in New York magazine.

The tower will rise to something closer to the bottom of its crown, though its new profile has not been revealed.

Ms. Burden's burden not withstanding , like many of the starchitectural erections proposed during the boom, the tower was put on hold, left for dead by some. Hines argued during the approval process that the project simply could not work if not approved at its original height. It  would simply be too small to justify the expense of such an ambitious tower. So much for so much.

And yet, this is New York. Expensive real estate can always be justified.

Two weeks ago, Hines quietly filed a new set of plans with the Department of City Planning. They are compliant with two special permits that the commission and the City Council approved in the fall of 2009, which enforce the 1,050-foot height along with restrictions on things like a loading dock for the new building and the museum's sculpture garden fence—something that has been bothering the neighbors ever since the 2003 renovations. According to a department spokesperson, the application is a chair certification, which does not require public approvals. The process is meant to ensure that the project is in accordance with what was previously agreed upon; a review has no set timeframe.

The resolutions required a tower of similar design proportions. How much the new design resembles the old one, just shorter, is not immediately clear. Initially, Hines said it had filed no new plans, but when The Observer pointed to a notice on the City Planning website, spokesman George Lancaster admitted that the project was back on and imminent. “We DID file revised plans with City Planning for the shorter tower adjacent to MoMA,” he wrote in an email. “We aren’t going to release drawings or details just yet but will in the near future.” He would not say whether the project had financing yet.

The controversial crown.

MoMA was equally taciturn. "The filing is Hines' so I don't have any details on it here. Our plans with regard to the project remain unchanged," emailed Margaret Doyle, the museum's communications director. When asked about something Hines would not discuss, the recently acquired Folk Art Museum and how it might factor into the project, she replied, "MoMA has not yet announced any plans for the Folk Art Museum building."

“Of course for the neighborhood it’s going to be a problem, because it’s a big, tall building,” said Al Butzel, attorney for the Coalition for Responsible Midtown Development, a local community group that filed an unsuccessful suit against the project last summer. “Ten-fifty is better than 1250, but it’s still much more than we wanted, which was 500, closer to the Financial Times building next door.”

Justin Peyser, co-founder of the group, put it more succinctly and cynically in an email: "Our city has always been for sale to the highest bidder and this bid is awfully high."

In Paris, they forbid tall buildings, too.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC