Park Avenue supertall tower anchored by Ken Griffins Citadel begins long road to joining NYC skyline
The clock starts ticking Monday to win city approval for Midtown’s most ambitious development project — a 1.8 million square-foot,1,600-foot tall tower at 350 Park Avenue, to be developed by a formidable triumvirate of public and private wealth.The seven-month public review process known as ULURP begins on March 17 for the team’s request for a relatively small increase in floor-to-area ratio, or FAR, which is a measure of a building’s size relative to the size of the land on which it stands, above what current East Midtown zoning allows.Unlike dreams for some other supertall commercial towers that might or might not get built, 350 Park appears to be a sure thing.It’s a a joint venture of publicly-traded Vornado Realty Trust, which owns the existing, unattractive Midcentury building at 350 Park Ave.; privately-held Rudin, which owns adjacent and equally unattractive 40 E.
52nd St.; and mega-billionaire investor Ken Griffin.Citadel and Citadel Securities, separate companies that Griffin leads, will be the skyscraper’s anchor tenants with at least 850,000 square feet.If city approval is granted, the partners can start demolition of the old structures when Citadel employees temporarily move out of the old 350 Park next year.The cloudbuster will start to rise with or without any additional tenants.
Vornado executive vice-president for development and real estate Barry Langer said, “The magic formula to get a tower off ground is to have an anchor tenant and equity partners, which we have in the form of ourselves, Rudin and Ken Griffin,” he said.The total estimated development cost is $4.5 billion, Langer said.The environmentally sensitive, “wellness”-attuned, all-electric tower designed by Foster + Partners will be Park Avenue’s tallest ever, dwarfing the new JPMorgan Chase headquarters by more than 200 feet.Several steps are needed to increase the permissible FAR on the 53,000 square-foot lot from the current 15 to 25.
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