A major step forward for the New York City skyline was taken on Tuesday morning. Elected officials joined developers to celebrate the official groundbreaking for One Vanderbilt.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, SL Green’s Mark Holliday, and others break ground for One Vanderbilt. All photos by the author
Located along East 42nd Street between Vanderbilt Avenue and Madison Avenue, the SL Green-developed, Kohn Pederson Fox-designed building will reach 1,401 feet into the air. It will encompass 58 stories and 1.7 million rentable square feet, featuring column-free space. It will also come with over $220 million in mass transit improvements, part of the deal struck with the city to allow the tower to rise so high.
One Vanderbilt construction site
Mark Holliday, CEO of SL Green said the tower will “elegantly punctuate and celebrate our skyline.”
SL Green CEO Mark Holliday
Mayor Bill de Blasio noted that none of the upper floors’ tenants will be allowed to move in until the mass transit improvements are in place. He said One Vanderbilt represents the “right kind of growth for the city.” “That’s how we will get things done,” he said, referring to this and future similar projects.
Mayor Bill de Blasio
U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney praised the development team’s “love and professionalism.” City Council Member Daniel Garodnick said Vanderbilt Avenue had been held back by “outdated rules,” but the process used for this tower represents a “new and positive path for East Midtown.”
Model of Midtown East with One Vanderbilt, seen at the groundbreaking
One Vanderbilt’s anchor tenant will be TD Bank, with about 200,000 square feet of office space, plus a retail space on the corner of 42nd and Madison. The building itself will be LEED V.3 Platinium have a 30,000-square-foot tenant-only amenity floor.
Model of One Vanderbilt with a slice of Grand Central Terminal, seen at the groundbreaking
The public transit improvements includes modernization of the 4/5/6 station at Grand Central, to reduce overcrowding and modernize service. That will include two more trains per hour, new staircases to street level, a waiting area inside One Vanderbilt, and direct connections from One Vanderbilt to the trains, including Metro-North Railroad and the Long Island Rail Road (when East Side Access is complete). There will also be a 14,000-square-foot outdoor public plaza on Vanderbilt between 42nd and 43rd streets.
One Vanderbilt Avenue from above, courtesy SL Green
The building is expected to be complete by 2020.
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That poor guy, second from the left on the ground breaking shot 🙂
According to the tallest in Midtown East, a structure statement showing the impressive of tower must have.
I thought the pinnacle was 1500′ and the roof was 1400′
That’s how we get things done, says the Mayor. To give a developer the right to build 1,401 feet into the air for a promise of $220 million for mass transit is a bad deal. It will take that amount and more just to handle the increase in commuters contributed by the new building. The World Trade train station cost $4 billion, and the Fulton Center station $1.4 billion. Then, the Mayor said that the upper floor tenants won’t be allowed to move in until the transit is in place. The building has 58 floors, so which ones are considered the upper, floors 54 – 58? The building is scheduled to be compleated in 2020, de Blasio won’t even be the Mayor then. Who is going to remember and monitor this agreement? Once again ,a bad deal that we the residents of the city will wind up paying for.
Wow, a very impressive building! Similarly, I can only imagine what the rent per square foot will be!