As reported in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, the administration’s proposed redesign of the Tenth Avenue stop would entail building a station with two entrances and two separate platforms, one for eastbound trains and one for those continuing west to the line’s new terminus at Eleventh Avenue. This would allow the station to be built after the rest of the extension is completed, assuming that funds become available.

Completion of the tunneling portion of the 7 line extension, which involved a pair of 1,000-ton tunnel boring machines, occurs a few weeks after another milestone in the redevelopment of Manhattan’s Far West Side. In late May, Related Cos.—originally chosen in 2008 to develop the Hudson Yards project—announced that it had signed a binding contract on a 99-year lease with the MTA for the 26-acre site. It came to the agreement with a new general partner, Oxford Properties Group, the real estate investment and development arm of Canadian pension fund OMERS, the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System.

The new agreement, approved by the MTA’s board this past spring, delays closing on the project until certain triggers are reached in the city’s real estate market. Related will not be obligated to close on the deal, and start paying its 99-year lease, until Midtown’s office availability rate declines to 11%, apartment sale prices reach an average $1,200 per square foot and the AIA Architectural Billings Index hits 50.

Currently, the availability rate in Midtown is 13.7%, according to CB Richard Ellis, while Prudential Douglas Elliman puts the average apartment price at $1,051 per square foot. Work on the Hudson Yards project, which will also include construction of elevated platforms over the Eastern and Western Rail Yards that are in daily use by the MTA’s Long Island Rail Road, is expected to begin after the 7 extension is done.