Panel: West Side Projects Will Continue

NEW YORK CITY-A trio of mega-projects intended to transform Manhattan’s Penn Station/Hudson Yards area will move ahead despite current uncertainties, representatives from the projects’ developers told a CoreNet Global New York audience on Friday.”Historically, development of the city is moving west,” said Anthony Mannarino, managing director of New York development at Tishman Speyer, which was named the winning bidder for the Hudson Yards project last Wednesday.

With the combination of Hudson Yards, Brookfield Properties’ Midtown West project and the Moynihan Station development, “You would see a district emerge” based on transit-oriented density, said Vishaan Chakrabarti, president of Moynihan Station Venture, a joint venture of Related Cos. and Vornado Realty Trust. The three projects are in close proximity to one another.

Mannarino and Chakrabarti expressed confidence that their multibillion-dollar projects would reach fruition, notwithstanding obstacles such as the resignation of Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Cablevision’s plan to renovate the existing Madison Square Garden rather than move the arena across Eighth Avenue to Moynihan Station West. Another potential roadblock is the upheaval in the financial services industry: the office components of both Tishman Speyer’s Hudson Yards project and Brookfield’s Midtown West would seek to accommodate the need for large trading floors. “This too will pass,” said Mannarino, adding that the three projects were intended to attract a variety of tenant classes.