8 Spruce Street - Beekman Tower - by Frank Gehry

[sfenn1117]

From this website: http://www.lowermanhattan.info/news/...rade_50023.asp

Comes this info:


"The first school to be constructed on privately-owned land, it will be located on the property adjacent to NYU Downtown Hospital bound by Beekman, William, and Spruce Streets. The site is currently occupied by a parking lot. Construction is expected to begin in February 2006 and should be completed by September 2008."


"The mixed-use building on Beekman Street will fill aproximately one million square feet and is expected to cost $570 million to build. In addition to the new school -- which will have its own entrance -- the building will house two levels of below-grade parking, ground floor retail space, an ambulatory care facility for the NYU hospital, market-rate rental apartments and residential condominium units, and 13,000 square feet of open public space in a plaza to the west of the building. "




I really hope this is true. Construction within 7 months. Can't believe there's still no renderings. If it weren't for a school being part of the project there would be no news coming out of it.

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by sfenn1117

I really hope this is true. Construction within 7 months. Can't believe there's still no renderings. If it weren't for a school being part of the project there would be no news coming out of it.

Maybe Gehry's too preoccupied with the Brooklyn development. We know he's not working on the WTC cultural center. But for a tower that will start construction in a matter of months, there must be something....

[NoyokA]

I emailed Ratner's firm and they told me that "The project is currently being designed and we are starting the design development phase."

Gehry is taking his sweet time designing this building, which is a very good thing, he’s a perfectionist and when he is finished and everything is released it will be one hell of a building. I would rather wait for a building that will be a landmark for years to come. Needless to say there are not yet any renderings or a height.

[Alonzo-ny]

If it looks at least as good as his proposal for the ny times hq ill be happy. He said it would be curvy which sounds like his nytime proposal but what isnt curvy with gehry?!

[BrooklynRider]

Originally Posted by alonzo-ny

...but what isnt curvy with gehry?!

See Atlantic Yards.

[NoyokA]

Originally Posted by BrooklynRider

See Atlantic Yards.

I bet we'll see curve yet, the designs are only preliminary, hence there boxy forms.

[pianoman11686]

From http://cityrealty.com:

Rattner/Gehry Lower Manhattan tower to start construction in January 20-JUL-05

Construction of the 75-story mixed-use tower on a parking lot just south of Pace University and just west of the NYU Downtown Hospital near City Hall is expected to start in January, according to Mark Donnenfeld, the chairman of the Seaport committee of Community Board 1.

The committee was given a presentation last night by Andrew Herman of the Department of Transportation of the planned reconstruction of Beekman Street, which is the southern boundary of the tower, which is being developed by Forest City Rattner and designed by Frank Gehry.

Rattner and Gehry have also teamed up for a massive project in Brooklyn that will create a new arena for the New York Nets as well as a phalanx of angled, tall office and residential towers, a plan that was recently heralded on the front page of The New York Times as creating a new skyline for Brooklyn. Forest City Rattner is the developer of a new headquarters under construction on Eighth Avenue at 40th Street for The New York Times. The Rattner/Gehry plan for Brooklyn was soon followed by a competing and smaller proposal for much of the same site from Extell Management.

The Rattner/Gehry design for the new tower to the south of the Manhattan entrance and exit to the Brooklyn Bridge has not yet been shown publicly or even shown to Community Board 1.

Mr. Donnenfeld said that the 75-story tower will be placed on the west end of the site with a 13,000-square-foot plaza at the east end. The tower will contain a new, 600-student6 public school as well as expansion facilities for the hospital. Originally, it was also intended to contain expansion facilities for Pace University, but that institution withdrew from the plan last year. The tower will also contain a mix of several hundred rental and condominium apartments, but not details have been released.

Apart from the planned Freedom Tower at the former World Trade Center site not far away, this tower is one of the most anticipated designs in the city along with Santiago Calatrava’s planned tower at 80 South Street for Frank Sciame. Gehry’s design for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, has been widely hailed as one of the most important designs of the last century and it catapulted him to the top of the list of the world’s most influential architects. He designed a somewhat similar design for the same museum for a site south of the South Street Seaport along the East River but the museum abandoned the project recently because of funding concerns. Gehry also had submitted a design for the new tower for The New York Times, but he subsequently withdrew from that project, so this tower will be his first major project to be built in Manhattan.

In a September 5, 2004 article in The New York Times, architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote that Gehry’s design for this tower “is conceived as a series of undulating glass panels that hang down over the building’s structural frame like flowing drapery,” adding that “The curtain-like surfaces split apart at various points, then peel open at the top to create an almost classical crown.”

The rebuilding of Beekman Street and its sidewalks is expected to take about 18 months, according to Mr. Herman, but Mr. Donnenfeld said that such a schedule would be “total hell” and “not acceptable,” given the simultaneous start of construction of the Rattner/Gehry tower and the fact that several of the surrounding buildings are residential and landmarks.

The new school is not expected to open before 2008.

[NoyokA]

Originally Posted by cityrealty

Apart from the planned Freedom Tower at the former World Trade Center site not far away, this tower is one of the most anticipated designs in the city along with Santiago Calatrava’s planned tower at 80 South Street for Frank Sciame.

I'm glad they acknowledged that.

And I'm so happy that construction is not that far off.

[sfenn1117]

YES! So anxious to see the renderings. Still no word on height. Cityspire is 75 stories and 814 feet I think, but this tower should be MUCH better and I have a feeling will be MUCH higher. IMO it's gotta be at least 900 feet and close to 1,000. It better be a beauty because it's going to OWN the spotlight when people walk (or drive) across the Brooklyn Bridge.

[londonlawyer]

Is Cityspire actually 75 stories? Trump World Tower claims to be 90, but I think that it's a lot less.

[NoyokA]

Originally Posted by sfenn1117

YES! So anxious to see the renderings. Still no word on height. Cityspire is 75 stories and 814 feet I think, but this tower should be MUCH better and I have a feeling will be MUCH higher. IMO it's gotta be at least 900 feet and close to 1,000. It better be a beauty because it's going to OWN the spotlight when people walk (or drive) across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Cityspire is 75 storeys and 814 feet. Bloomberg according to Pelli's papers is 856 feet and 54 storeys. This building will probably be anywhere from 850 to 1000 feet tall.

[sfenn1117]

I only mentioned Cityspire b/c it has exactly the same number of stories as this one. 850-1,000 feet is a good estimate, basically what I said (at least 900, close to 1,000).

Can't believe the Community Board hasn't even seen it yet, must still be in design phase.

[Alonzo-ny]

I cant believe construction will start in january and we havent seen any god damn renderings yet, hopefully we wont be seeing what the building will look like for the first time when it actually getting constructed! that would be kind of cool though, not knowing what a building will look like til its actually there! the anticipation would be to much though!!

[NYatKNIGHT]

^Especially with a Gehry tower - it would be hard to know whether it was finished or not!

[Alonzo-ny]

In all seriousness though i think thats what we're going to be subjected to. I mean is this just gehry believing his own hype and deciding he'll keep everybody more excited about this tower than they would be to get press coverage?? I mean would we all be anticipating it so much if we had renderings a year ago??