Many of you may have noticed ongoing demonstrations on Roosevelt Island and might have wondered about the reasons behind them. Here’s some context: six of Riverwalk’s nine buildings have already been built with few if any affordable housing units available to the general public. Three Riverwalk buildings are remaining to be built which should include the affordable housing mandate of at least 40% required by the Roosevelt Island General Development Plan. After all these years, construction has finally begun on Riverwalk 7, the first of these with the potential for affordable housing. However, protesters are raising concerns that this construction is being completed by workers who are not being paid a living wage, health benefits, disability benefits, or retirement benefits and who may not have the apprenticeship training and years of on the job experience that they need for construction to be safer for both themselves and the residents of Roosevelt Island.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Petition to Demand Hudson Related Hire Companies with Safer Safety Records on Roosevelt Island
Friday, April 5, 2013
Building unions labor for traction
Despite pick up in construction activity, developers still have edge in negotiations
BY DANIEL GEIGER
In another sign of a rebound in the housing market, the Zeckendorf brothers announced in December that they will build a 44-story, $500 million condominium tower across from the United Nations. Predictably, given the location and the siblings' track record as arguably the most successful ultra-high-end residential developers in the city, the units are expected to fetch tens of millions of dollars apiece.
What is surprising, though, is that those apartments will be built using a special package of work-rule and wage concessions from construction unions that is expected to shave as much as 20% off labor costs—a savings of millions of dollars.
Such agreements became common during the recession. Their continued use as the market recovers, especially by developers of some of the city's priciest projects, marks a departure from past recoveries, when labor costs typically have bounced back with a vengeance to drive construction costs to new highs. This time around, early indications are that the old, notoriously volatile pattern may be changing—a shift that most observers credit to the striking rise of nonunion contractors in recent years.
"A [developer] today has options," said Louis Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers Association, a group that represents union contractors.
Instead of simply "take it or leave it," these days developers of all but the very largest of projects can opt to hire nonunion contractors, or use that option as a threat to negotiate lucrative concessions from unionized ones.
Among the current rising crop of gold-plated condos whose developers have negotiated such special project labor agreements, or PLAs, are the TriBeCa tower at 56 Leonard St., the 16-story high-end condo at 150 Charles St. in the Village, and 432 Park Ave., the city's tallest residential building, an 89-story, $1 billion project.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Platform Construction Animation
The start of major construction by Brookfield Office Properties on the deck over an Amtrak rail yard is a milestone — and not just for Manhattan West, Brookfield’s $4.5 billion development between Ninth and Dyer avenues.
The platform launch is a crucial breakthrough for the entire Hudson Yards District. Below is a contruction animation of how the platform will be built.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
It’s the roaring 30s: Projects bring new life to far West Side
By STEVE CUOZZO
The start of major construction by Brookfield Office Properties on the deck over an Amtrak rail yard is a milestone — and not just for Manhattan West, Brookfield’s $4.5 billion development between Ninth and Dyer avenues.
The platform launch — first reported on nypost.com yesterday and to be formally announced today — is a crucial breakthrough for the entire Hudson Yards District.
It might be years before the area is built to anything like its full potential. But Mayor Bloomberg can take pride in having promoted and nurtured the creation of a new commercial zone west of Ninth Avenue that would have seemed a pipe dream a few years ago.
By the time he leaves office next year, each of the district’s major development sites — Manhattan West and Related Cos.’ much larger Hudson Yards — will have one major component in full-bore construction.
Brookfield’s 120,000 square-foot deck — an extraordinary investment for a project that doesn’t yet have any buildings — will span the train yard 65 feet below street level in an irregular rectangle bounded by Ninth and Dyer avenues and West 31st and 33rd streets.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
New York City officials, developers to break ground on $15 billion mini-city Hudson Yards
Tuesday's groundbreaking ends years of deal-making between developers and the MTA, which owns the rail yard and will lease the development rights for 99 years for more than $1 billion.
To read more click here
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Hudson Yards Shovel-Ready
By STEVE CUOZZO
In a critical breakthrough for Hudson Yards, the MTA board is expected tomorrow to let Related Companies start $50 million of preliminary work on its Coach headquarters tower before the developer closes on its 99-year lease of the 26-acre site from the agency.
In exchange, Related will give up its right to defer closing until three citywide economic “triggers” have been met. The company founded by Stephen M. Ross also will commit for the first time to a firm closing date: June 1, 2013, although both Related and the MTA say it will likely occur sooner and possibly by this Dec. 31.
The agreement is anything but a technicality. Despite a recent blizzard of coverage touting the rail-yard project as an epochal achievement for Mayor Bloomberg, Related has yet to start building the Coach tower more than a year after a photo-op at which Ross, Bloomberg and Coach CEO Lew Frankfort said construction would start by this past summer.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Stars align for Related, Coach, Hudson Yards
Developer reportedly strikes $400 million financing deal that will fund a West Side skyscraper to house headquarters for luxury goods purveyor Coach Inc.
By Daniel Geiger
The Related Cos. reached a preliminary agreement in recent days to receive about $400 million in construction financing for a new office tower it is planning to build on the West Side rail yards, according to sources.
The lenders including Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., the sources said. The loan is seen as the last hurdle in beginning the 1.7 million-square-foot skyscraper, which is projected to cost about $1.2 billion and will kick off development at the 26-acre rail yards site known as Hudson Yards. Related is planning to build about $15 billion of mixed-use development there over the next decade.
Related, led by its chairman, Steve Ross, who is personally overseeing the site with another top Related executive, Jay Cross, has been in talks for months with luxury accessories company Coach Inc. to anchor the new tower in a 740,000-square-foot deal in which Coach would acquire its space as a condominium interest for roughly $500 million.
Coach's half-billion-dollar contribution to the project was why Related and its equity partners in the building, Oxford Properties and an unnamed United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund, need only $400 million in financing to break ground on the building, which will sit at the corner of 10th Avenue and West 30th Street.
Related has scrambled to begin the building after Coach placed a year-end ultimatum on the developer, according to a source with knowledge of the various players. Now,
Related is said to be talking to other tenants to take hundreds of thousands of square feet of space in the office tower, including the cosmetics company L'Oreal and German technology giant SAP.
"It's all about the tenants: How do you build on spec without a tenant like Coach in hand?" said Ronald Sernau, a real estate attorney at law firm Proskauer Rose who is not directly involved at the site. "It certainly sounds like the stars are finally aligned, Related has the financing and the tenant."
The building, for which an address has not yet been finalized, will sit on a section of the rail yards at grade level. The rest of the large site requires a costly platform to be constructed as a foundation over the working train yard below for the billions of dollars of office, residential, retail and public space Related is planning to build there.
A spokeswoman at Related would not comment, nor would a spokesman at Bank of America. JPMorgan could not be reached for comment. Coach did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Nearly all unions climb aboard Hudson Yards labor-cost deal
Related Cos. hammers out worker pact that should get first half of megaproject rolling
By Daniel Massey
After months of tense negotiations, the Related Cos. and the city's construction unions have agreed in principle to a series of cost-saving measures that will help push the $15 billion Hudson Yards project forward and ensure that it is built with union labor.
Some four dozen unions covering more than a dozen trades agreed to cut wage and benefit packages and change work rules in order to grab a piece of a massive construction project that could keep their members working for at least 10 years. The overall deal, known as a project labor agreement, is not yet final, but last week, District Council of Carpenters delegates voted to approve a 10% wage and benefit reduction for work on Hudson Yards, the last of the participating unions to agree to help Related control costs.
In the homestretch
Monday, August 6, 2012
Hudson Yards: NYC's urban town within a city
By VERENA DOBNIK
New York lost the 2012 Olympics, but the city's bid for the summer games spurred another, visionary venture: building up the largest undeveloped parcel in Manhattan.
While London got the games, New York was left with the best opportunity for development remaining in town.
On Manhattan's West Side, the old Hudson rail storage yards are surrounded by potholed roads, warehouses, low-rent brownstones, cheap delis and strip clubs. Crowds waiting for discount buses line 10th Avenue. And homeless New Yorkers camp out in desolate lots strewn with garbage.
But the area, also home to the global headquarters of The Associated Press, has seen progress in the seven years since New York lost its bid to host the Olympics.
On a hot summer day, passers-by catch a glimpse of a deep man-made hole in the ground - the core of a subway line extension to the area from Times Square. More than a dozen residential towers have been built near the Hudson River, along with several hotels. And both residents and tourists are flocking to the hugely popular High Line, an elevated rail line transformed into a grassy walkway.
This October, developers of the ambitious Hudson Yards project expect to break ground on a skyscraper where the Olympic stadium could have been.
Monday, June 4, 2012
It's all Related
Trio dominates development in NYC.
“IF THE CITY DOES WELL, WE ALL DO WELL,̶: said Related Cos. CEO Stephen Ross, depicted here with partners Jeff Blau (left, in illustration) and Bruce Beal Jr. (right).
By Daniel Massy
When Jeff Blau started at The Related Cos. in 1989, the first task Chief Executive Stephen Ross gave the 21-year-old was to buy up auto shops in Willets Point, Queens. Related built stores for Kmart, and the retailer wanted one in the area. Nothing came of it, but 23 years later, Related is about to gain control of Willets Point in a high-stakes gamble to salvage the city's most complicated real estate development project.
To understand why Related triumphed over three other bidders there is to understand why it has become the leading developer in a city notoriously difficult to build in: Related thrives on that complexity. It is better at navigating the obstacles—from bargaining with unions to compromising with city officials—and more willing to take risks than its rivals. It thinks in decades, not quarters.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Extell’s One Hudson Yards is set to soar
By STEVE CUOZZO
Extell chief Gary Barnett is reviving a long-dormant, $ 1-billion Far West Side development project — and he’s brashly named it “One Hudson Yards” even though it’s technically not part of the rail yards site.
Extell just tapped Jones Lang LaSalle to find tenants for the 56-story, 1.7 million square office tower to rise on the east blockfront of 11th Avenue between W. 33rd and 34th streets. The project was first announced in 2009, when Barnett was to partner with Israel Green in what was then called the World Product Center. But plans for the arresting, Kohn Pedersen Fox-designed tower went on hold. Extell and Green parted ways and the site is today an empty lot.
Now, Barnett’s again itching to build. “We believe we have the best location in the area, on terra firma [rather than above a rail yard]. We’re right at the new No. 7 line subway station, at the foot of a new park and across from the Javits Convention Center,” he said.
Barnett won’t start construction without pre-leasing half the tower — “at the rents we’re going to charge, it would be suicidal,” he said. Asked what the rents might be, he said with a laugh, “Between $50 and $100 a square foot.”
Related Cos. is the designated developer of the Hudson Yards rail site bounded by 10th and 12th avenues and West 30th-33rd streets. Extell’s site is just north of it in what city officials call the “Hudson Yards area.”
Ironworkers bend on wages
By DANIEL MASSEY
The ironworkers' union—desperate to regain market share from surging nonunion construction, and afraid of missing out on lucrative work at Hudson Yards and the Tappan Zee Bridge—has agreed to an unprecedented wage and benefit rollback. It's already shaking up development in the city.
Members of Metallic Lathers and Reinforcing Ironworkers Local 46 voted earlier this month to cut their overall compensation by 15%, or by about $14 an hour, and to work-rule changes that could slash total project costs by up to 25%..
The 1,500-member union relinquished a 4% raise this year and cut next year's scheduled 4% increase to 2%. Wages and benefits will now total $79 an hour instead of the $93 the union had previously won in -negotiations..
In addition, the union members agreed to allow on job sites a higher percentage of apprentices, who earn less than half the standard pay, and to expand the workday to eight hours from seven.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
The Powers of New York
(John's note: this article was in Sundays paper and features Steven Ross as one of the power players in New York City real estate. )
Influence in New York is now wielded by a larger and more diverse array of people. As part of a special issue of Metropolitan, here’s a look at who is at the top and who may be on the way, as identified by the reporters of The New York Times.
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| Steven M. Ross |
It is unclear if he will win, but it is hard to bet against him. Mr. Ross and his partners at Related built the $1.7 billion Time Warner Center — twin 80-story towers at Columbus Circle with shops, a hotel and luxury apartments — after a 16-year battle over the site, and he is trying to revive the long-stalled transformation of the James A. Farley Post Office into Moynihan Station. In his latest scheme, he has offered to build Borough of Manhattan Community College a larger campus inside the post office in exchange for the school’s land downtown.
In fact, Related is juggling six projects in the city right now, including the first phase of Hunters Point South, the largest affordable-housing complex built in New York since the 1970s. On the weekends, Mr. Ross has been trying to turn the Miami Dolphins, the N.F.L. franchise he bought for $1.1 billion, into a championship team.
Permits Climb As Developers Up Their Bets
By LAURA KUSISTO
Manhattan is starting to shake off its construction doldrums and could see the first flurry of building activity since the recession, according to the city's Department of Buildings.
"We are bullish that big building is coming back to New York City," the buildings commissioner, Robert LiMandri, said in an interview.
Manhattan new-building permits issued so far this year are still below 2008 levels, when 42 permits were issued in the first four months of the year.
But the latest spike in permits reflects developers' growing confidence in certain sectors, especially demand for rental housing and hotels, even while demand for office space lags.
Some developers receiving permits this year have been able to get loans already and, in some cases, have already broken ground. They include the Brodsky Organization on a new condo on 79th Street and Barone Management on two Gene Kaufman-designed hotels in Hudson Square.
"It certainly seems like there's more cranes in the air today. I actually know the answer and there are," Mr. LiMandri said.
Much of the latest activity is concentrated in the Hudson Yards area and Harlem—two areas that were poised for change during the previous boom but were also hit hard when the economy collapsed in 2008.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Mobbed up? Not us says union leader on eve of crucial membership vote
By Al Barbarino
The leader of a breakaway construction union said this week he wants to “set the record straight” before a group of dock builders vote on who they want to represent them.
Angelo R. Bisceglie, Jr., founding president of Amalgamated Carpenters and Joiners Union, slammed allegations by the New York City District Council of Carpenters that his union’s leadership is affiliated with the mob, calling claims that he has ties to the Genovese and Colombo crime families “ridiculous.”
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| Bisceglie. |
“Give me a break,” Bisceglie told Real Estate Weekly in an exclusive interview. “Contrary to what the District Council is spinning out there, we are not a mobbed-up union at all. They have me labeled as this mob attorney, which is total crap, and I want to set the record straight.”
Bisceglie said the move to break away from the union followed the decision last summer by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters to merge the Dock Builders Local 1456 with the so-called Timbermen of Local 1536 to create a new local, 1556.
The merger came much to the chagrin of contractors who had relied on a high-skilled workforce at the Local 1456, Bisceglie said.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Stephen Ross: The Billionaire Who Is Rebuilding New York
This story appears in the 2012 Billionaires issue of Forbes magazine, dated March 26, as a feature entitled “The Last Master Builder.”
Staring across Manhattan’s last untamed strip, the rows of sleek silver commuter trains sliding along the island’s only active rail yard, the Related Companies’ Stephen Ross points to the future. There, flanking the wildly successful High Line elevated park, is where the 56-story South Tower will go. And over there, on the other side of 33rd Street, where massive cranes bisect the sky, will be the new subway entrance.
CONTINUE READING...
Monday, January 16, 2012
Related's new contractor shakes up construction industry
Hiring an outsider to build up Hudson Yards increases competition, which drives down costs.
By Daniel Massey
Deeply dissatisfied with the two dozen agreements negotiated over the summer between unions and contractors, and desperate to bring down the costs of its massive Hudson Yards project, the Related Cos. has made a move certain to shake the foundation of the city's construction industry.
The powerhouse developer last week brought construction giant Tutor Perini Corp. in from California to be the contractor on its $4 billion, 15-year Hudson Yards undertaking, Crain's has learned.
The key to Related's decision: Tutor Perini owns various subcontractors and can do a wide array of construction work—including excavation, concrete forming and placement, steel erection, electrical and mechanical services and plumbing—on its own. By bringing a new player into a notoriously closed-off market, Related increases competition, which should lower prices.
