Take a Fly-Through Around Manhattan West and Empire Station in New Film from Brookfield Properties

By CityRealty Staff | From Future New York Friday, March 23, 2018

Manhattan West's public space looking south (Visualhouse)

Some sunny day in the distant future, the Empire Station Complex (Moynihan Station) will be open, Madison Square Garden will be gone (in its present form at least), and a new Gateway tunnel will shuttle commuters under the Hudson River. With the sluggish pace this is all happening, we’re not holding our breaths and neither are nearby developers apparently.

Rendering inside the Empire Station Complex (Visualhouse)

As our bureaucracies move at glacial speeds to make all this much-needed infrastructure a reality, developers have been throwing up new towers like crocuses in springtime. Recently, one of the area's largest developers, Brookfield Properties, published a new CGI film that begins at a future Madison Square Garden/ Penn Station, sweeps into the finally-underway Empire Station and spirals through their completed Manhattan West project. Behold:

To refresh your memory, Manhattan West is a long-in-the-works project that rises largely atop a former rail cut servicing trains in and out of Penn Station. The six-building, multi-billion-dollar endeavor is the second largest master plan in the Far West Side area — only outsized by Related/Oxford’s Hudson Yards. It will accommodate seven million square feet of office, retail, hotel, residential and retail space.

There will be two supertall office buildings, One and Two Manhattan West; a 62-story residential rental tower called The Eugene; the reinvention of two commercial loft buildings, and a ground-up 30-story hotel-condo building. The buildings would be crisscrossed by a 60,000 square foot public park to be designed by James Corner Field Operations and 200,000 square feet of shops and restaurants will encircle a central plaza. See VR tour here.

So far, the Eugene is the only structure fully open. The 844-unit rental is the tallest of its kind in Midtown and has no fee apartments starting at $3,489/month. Amenities in the building include a rock climbing wall, basketball court, roof deck and poker, to name a few. Like One and Two Manhattan West, The Eugene was designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) and sports an all-glass façade.

Rendering looking south showing (L to R) One MW, The Eugene, The Lofts, 4 MW, and 5 MW

Nearly finished is Five Manhattan West at 450 West 33rd Street. The Brutalist-style anvil, finished in 1969 underwent a $350 million top-to-bottom renovation designed by Joshua Prince-Ramus of REX. The once foreboding exterior has been mostly replaced with a sawtooth glass façade, and new retail space and elevators have been introduced. Amazon is slated to bring 2,000 sales, finance, marketing, and IT jobs to the 16-story building. Additionally, Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon, will occupy a 60,000-square-foot space on the ground floor.

5 Manhattan West

The plan’s two commercial anchors, One and Two Manhattan West are under construction. The nearly-1,000-foot concrete core of One MW is nearly fully up and Two MW is busy preparing its foundation. The National Hockey League, Skadden Arps, and Ernst & Young are among the many tenants signed for the development.