Dive Brief:
- AECOM subsidiary Tishman Construction has been selected as construction manager for the 58-story, $1 billion mixed use One Vanderbilt high-rise next to Grand Central Station in New York City, according to Commercial Property Executive.
- The skyscraper will feature 1.6 million square feet of "Class A" commercial space, a public transit hall and a 14,000-square-foot public plaza.
- SL Green Realty Corp. developers said the new tower, scheduled for completion in 2020, is designed to "fit seamlessly into the skyline" alongside the Chrysler Building and will be LEED Gold-certified.
Dive Insight:
Developers will also spend approximately $220 million on Grand Central transit hub improvements as part of construction. This project marks Tishman's involvement in the two tallest building in New York City — the 1,401-foot One Vanderbilt and the 1,776-foot One World Trade Center.
New York City is experiencing a "boom level" of construction, and a recent New York Building Congress report found that 2015's activity alone generated $61 billion in economic benefit for the city, an increase of 7% from 2014. The NYBC also determined that city construction activity in 2015 generated more than 300,000 direct construction and related jobs, with an average salary of $84,000.
After researching 2015 New York City building permits, The Real Deal determined that Tishman completed the most construction in 2015 of any contractor — building three times the square footage of its nearest competitor. The company secured building permits for eight projects, which amounted to 8,242,865 square feet and 270 stories, including the 30 Hudson Yards tower.
The massive amount of commercial space included in One Vanderbilt also falls in line with another NYBC report from August 2015 that found more office space was being built in New York City than at any time in the last 25 years. By 2016, 19 new buildings with a total of 9.7 million square feet of office space are scheduled for completion. Taking the pace of construction into consideration, New York City is set to increase its office space by 30 million square feet by 2020.