Vornado

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Over the summer, we wrote about the Swanke Hayden Connell-designed Harlem Tower, developed by Vornado, which will seek a LEED Silver rating. The project will be Harlem’s first new commercial office building since 1973 and stand at the corner of 125th Street and Park Avenue, adjacent to a number of subway lines and the Metro North commuter rail station. A couple of weeks ago, in an effort to push the project forward, Vornado agreed with Major League Baseball’s new cable television network on a lease that will take up approximately one fifth of the 600,000-square-foot, 21-story tower, including the second and third floors which would serve as network studio space, and the top two floors for executive offices.

In a major turnaround from its seedy Fun City days, Eighth Avenue has made a major case that it’s Manhattan’s greenest thoroughfare. Though the strip has retained much of the gritty flavor that makes it a favorite among tourists and unwitting theatergoers, new green towers from the New York Times and Hearst, plus the speculative LEED Silver 11 Times Square, are all contributing to change its character between the low 40s and high 50s. On Friday, the strip took another green step forward when Governor Spitzer and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced plans for the long-rumored development of air rights above the Port Authority Bus Terminal at Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street.

Vornado Realty Trust and Ruben Cos. will develop a 1.3 million-square-foot green office tower above the north wing of the Bus Terminal (image above). The developers will lease the air rights from the Port Authority, and the agency will use those funds to upgrade the Bus Terminal facility with 60,000 square feet of retail and 18 new bus gates in order to boost passenger capacity by 18 percent during peak rush hours. Once the Port Authority’s Board of Commissioners approves the plan, construction could commence as early as 2009 and wrap up by 2013. The agency expects that the 99-year lease with Vornado and Ruben will fetch it close to $500 million for the planned improvements.

The terms of the agreement also require the developers to earn Gold under USGBC’s LEED for Core and Shell (“LEED-CS”) rating system.