Last October, construction was making quick progress at the World Trade Center Transit Hub, dubbed the Oculus, and the structure is now receiving its finishing touches. Platform B of the PATH’s WTC station has now opened to the public, and Platform C is currently being reconstructed. According to Curbed, glass installation for the structure’s skylight is also underway.
While the proposed park off the Meatpacking District, dubbed Pier55, waits for the Army Corps of Engineers and State Department’s approval, the project’s landscape architecture firm Mathews Nielsen has made small tweaks to the design. The park’s highest elevation has been lowered to 62 feet, according to Curbed, and vegetation will be very diverse. An amphitheater will be located near the back, and federal funds have been allotted for the park’s 13th Street pedestrian bridge. Construction is expected to begin in 2016.
New York City’s infrastructure crisis stems from many issues, but one of the biggest problems in maintaining and expanding the city’s arteries are construction costs, which have ballooned into a stratosphere of unknown numbers and complete non-transparency on the part of city agencies. But now YIMBY has obtained data showing that salaries are up to 177% higher for unionized employees of contractors performing public works projects and building service work for government agencies than the prevailing wages of their respective private industry counterparts.
Plans for protecting Manhattan against floods are inching forward. Curbed reports the first phase of the Dryline, a landscaped park area along the waterfront stretching from West 23rd Street (in West Chelsea) to Montgomery Street (on the Lower East Side), are in the surveying phase. The Dryline would eventually continue into Midtown on both sides and is estimated to cost $1 billion.
The Hudson Yards project has taken decades to get off the ground, but construction is well underway on the site’s first few buildings, with the superstructure for 10 Hudson Yards already making an impact on the skyline. While the Eastern railyards will be impressive in their own right, the Western railyards are a bit further down the development pipeline, but Related has created a new set of conceptual towers that illustrate their potential, posted in an update to the Hudson Yards website.
