NYC TO BUILD BIGGEST REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT WITH A CITY BUILT ON STILTS OVER HUDSON RAIL YARDS

HUDSON RAIL YARD

The biggest real estate development in U.S. history will not be built on land, but float above the streets of Manhattan on a technically advanced network of steel beams, concrete, and tunnels.

In its gigantic scale, the Hudson Yards exceeds even the Freedom Tower and Brooklyn’s Barclays Center as a symbol of the real estate revival in New York City.

For all of its fame, here’s what’s not well appreciated: the Hudson Yards is a city being built not on land, but on elevated platforms. It will sit on a gigantic roof fully covering one of the world’s busiest railroad yards, and the trains will keep running, uninterrupted, below the new mini-metropolis just as they have for decades.

Building this city on stilts is the most challenging engineering project in the annals of Manhattan real estate since the construction of Grand Central Terminal at the dawn of the 20^th century, and one of the most advanced in all of U.S. commercial real estate development.

The challenge consists of erecting a rooftop with underpinnings so sturdy that it can support a city of immense height, weight, and for an urban center, acreage.

The Hudson Yards, a joint project of the Related Companies, founded by storied Manhattan developer Stephen Ross, and Oxford Properties Group of Canada, covers 28 acres on Manhattan’s far West Side. It occupies most of area between 30^th and 34^rd Streets, and extends from 10^th Avenue two blocks to the West Side Highway that hugs the Hudson River.

When fully completed sometime around 2024, the Hudson Yards, including nearby buildings developed by Related, will comprise 20 million square feet of offices, apartments, and retail outlets, a U.S. record for a single development. A $2.4 billion extension of the number 7 subway line, connecting the Hudson Yards to Times Square and 17 of the City’s 21 subway lines, will start ferrying passengers in early 2015.

The feat of extending a platform over a buzzing rail hub, as a foundation for stacking some of New York’s tallest towers, is on full display in the first phase of the project in the Eastern Rail Yards.

The Eastern Yards cover the half of the Hudson Yards between 10^th and 11^th Avenues and is expected to be completed in 2018. Six skyscrapers, clustered around parks and public squares, will rise from the Eastern Yards.