You've heard of NoMad, NoLita, and NoHo. Well, get used to "NoChe." It stands for North Chelsea, pronounced a touch exotically 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.
We snapped the sign at
Ninth and 33rd referring to Brookfield's
five acres, where shovels started turning in October to create
5.4M SF by 2016:
two 62-story, 2M SF office towers; a residential behemoth with
900 apartments and condos; 40k SF of
retail; and 1.5 acres of public space, including a broad
pedestrian walkway down the middle to be christened as a new 32nd Street. In January, Brookfield locked down a
$340M loan (from Wells Fargo, Bank of NY, HSBC, US Bank, Toronto Dominion, and Scotia) to match its own
$340M in equity, covering $285M to build the platform, existing investment, and land acquisition, bringing project funding
current.
We snapped this of the site from
450 W 33rd (which Brookfield will be renovating). You've probably spent time down below
without knowing it: Those tracks are what you arrive on as Amtrak transports you
into the city from Newark. With the foresight that developers dream of, Brookfield and its predecessor
Olympia & York acquired the property over
20 years through daunting economic and regulatory challenges. The first phase over two years: laying a platform on terra firma across an existing trench. At the other end of the lot is the
Farley Post Office, to be converted into
Moynihan Station.
Brookfield development chief
Phil Wharton, right, and project construction director
Henry Caso tell us the new towers will feature
30k-45k SF floor plates, much larger than the Empire State Building's in the background. Phil arrived at Brookfield recently with decades of experience at Lincoln Property and AvalonBay in New York, and Henry was practically born into the development industry, coming from a family of architects. The district has been
up-zoned from industrial to
high density mixed-use and is the only place where Manhattan can grow today on a large scale. Turner is constructing the platform, but building contractors
haven't been chosen yet since SOM is still designing. It's not too late to apply, but you should have experience with some pretty big projects.
Phil and Henry remind us that the last big NY platform built over tracks was 100 years ago—becoming
Park Avenue between 42nd and 57th Streets—and that
Grand Central was financed through air rights sold to building developers. They predict that as Park Avenue became a link among different parts of the city, so too will NoChe, creating an
easy way to get from Midtown to the booming activity of Chelsea and Meatpacking via the
High Line at 34th.
Related has
20 acres at
Hudson Yards immediately to the west, where it will create an extensive platform
at grade, requiring piers to be set among the tracks. The famous extension of the
7 line will open next year to the right, guaranteeing crowds. We'll be reporting more on this extraordinary development in
coming weeks.
As for the expansion of Penn Station, the late Senator
Pat Moynihan will be remembered via the conversion and renaming of the Farley Post Office because he long argued that travelers deserved a
grander place to arrive in Manhattan.
Still wondering how all this massive magic gets done in such a complicated space? Here's a snappy three-minute video on the Brookfield work that will make you very smart. And don't forget where you first heard the name NoChe.
