Luanna Garcia: you have a view of the entire city line, basically of the entire downtown. It's quite beautiful, honestly, to just sit out here and just enjoy the sun,

Brian Narration: I am standing next to some of the newest additions to that cityline, Manhattan West in New York City’s Hudson Yards neighborhood.

Last episode, you heard from architects and engineers about how it took decades of planning and years of building to create this new living, working, and shopping space on top of what used to be a pit overlooking the busiest train tracks in North America.

Brian: so you literally made new land and those tracks, which transport thousands upon thousands of people an hour, they're still there

Preetam: they're still there

Brian: and they never stopped.

Preetam: They're still functional.

Brian: They ran the entire time.

Preetam: Yup.

I’m Brian Maughan, chief marketing officer with Fidelity National Financial, and this is Built – The podcast where you’ll meet creative leaders in the commercial real estate industry and hear how they do what they do.

And in this case, they created 7 million square feet of new space in New York City. But a beautiful development is nothing without people using it. Now that Manhattan West is built, will people come, and will they stay?

ACT I – PLAZA & FIRST FLOORS

Preetam: I always felt that among the arts, architecture is the most challenging one because if a painter makes a mistake, he can take some colors and change the painting. If you do a sculpture and you make a mistake, you can take a chisel and make modifications,

Brian Narration: Preetam Biswas is Structural Engineering Principal at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill or SOM, the lead architectural, urban planning and engineering firm behind Manhattan West.

Preetam: But a building is built and the only thing you can do is to grow trees, to cover your mistakes.

You spend years designing. And when the first piece of steel arrives on site, I still remember the steel was coming in on truck across the George Washington bridge.

And they would only come in at late at night. We had our team members waiting on this side of the bridge for the first truck that's gonna bring in the big piece.

Brian Narration: That first piece of steel for the building called One Manhattan West was placed in 2016. And, Manhattan West as a development has officially been open since September 2021, when hip-hop artists The Roots and Questlove performed for the occasion.

The development includes a new hotel, two revitalized older office buildings, a new residential tower, a plaza, and two brand new office towers. Those are One and Two Manhattan West. And boy are they tall. Which creates a challenge – after years of designing and building, you want people to come to the space.

Kim: You also have to make it scale wise, feel comfortable for the human to occupy. And a challenge was how do you create that huge development in a way that is, successful for the people at street level, is successful as a development.

Brian Narration: This is Kim Van Holsbeke, design principal at SOM.

KIM: And in that dialogue of redefining what this place could and should be, we covered over Dyer Avenue, we expanded the public space and we really allowed this development to connect on multiple locations and multiple ways, to the adjacent streets, to adjacent urban fabric.

Brian Narration: From the neighboring Hudson Yards Development to the West, visitors can stroll along tree-lined sidewalks and breezeways that connect to the Manhattan West plaza and its buildings. The development is wheelchair accessible and will also connect to the High Line, a popular 1.5-mile public park created on top of the former West Side Elevated railway. The High Line allows visitors to use former transportation infrastructure for exercise and fresh air, sort of like the outdoor spaces here at Manhattan West, which are above underground train tracks. 

Jamie: I like that there's a lot of places to sit outside. I like that there's a lot of surrounding businesses that I can go to on my break

Aaron: I do like the sort of eclectic components here, you know, there's stone benches, there's wood benches, there's chairs, you know, although you have these like massive buildings things relate to the human scale.

Brian Narration: And from the east, pathways connect Manhattan West to the transit hubs Moynihan Train Hall and then Penn Station.

Brian Narration: The project’s landscape architect was James Corner Field Operations, the same company that led the design and construction of the High Line.

Torontonians: we like this patio, how it's, uh, like a grocery store seating, but it doesn't feel like that at all. It still feels like a nice open space elevated.

Torontonians: Yeah. There's no like cars and garbage around here.

Torontonians: Yes. And it's peaceful.

Brian Narration: Peaceful is a unique word to hear about a spot in New York City, especially from a tourist. Locals seem to like the outdoor spaces, too…

Luanna Garcia: You could see the Highline from here, they're tall buildings. They added like plants to make it more comfortable for the guests that come to sit outside.

Kim: You can basically meander as a pedestrian, as a commuter, as a visitor, through a series of very different and very unique public spaces.

Brian Narration:  As with any place designed for living, work, and entertainment, we don’t want people to just meander through, we want them to stay, too. Brookfield is very intentional about their placemaking strategy.

Callie: What do our tenants want? What does the neighborhood want? We think about every single detail incredibly carefully. And it's not about making the last dollar. It's about making a site that people wanna come to.

Brian Narration: This is Callie Haines, an executive at Brookfield Properties, the developer of Manhattan West.

Callie has been involved one way or another with Manhattan West throughout her 17-year tenure at Brookfield. We talked while enjoying the skyline from the 53rd floor of ONE Manhattan West. On the other side of the plaza is the redeveloped FIVE Manhattan West, that former Elephant’s Foot Building you heard about last episode. It has some powerful tenants.

Callie: It is now 100% leased to the Amazons and the JP Morgans of the world. And that really lent credibility to the west side as a destination for brand name corporate tenants.

Callie: And so coming to a beautiful office building. Fantastic. Great. But what else can they do there? They need to eat a great lunch. We got the F and B. They wanna take care of themselves. So we have wellness on site. They wanna be entertained. So we have arts Brookfield come in and do programming on a weekly basis.

Brian Narration: For example, every Wednesday during the holidays, there’s a free concert in the lobby of One Manhattan West. Each week features a different style, from contemporary klezmer to Americana.

Callie: Especially as we're coming out of this COVID world tenants want their employees to have a diversity of experiences.

Everything from an ice rink to an opera show, to an art show, like we had a doggy Halloween parade thing.

Brian: yoga in the courtyard

Callie: Yoga in the courtyard.

Brian Narration: Shops are wellness-based too, like Peloton and the NHL Store, where there’s also an outdoor ice rink in the wintertime.

Daniel: I just went inside the NHL store, just bought some merchandise and then just strolling around because I have a bit of time. It's nice to see the empire state building a couple cafes…very clean, nice venues. So it's really good.

Brian Narration: Available food options are for residents and workers alike. Those who live at Manhattan West’s Eugene tower can shop at Whole Foods Market in FIVE Manhattan West. And those who want to go out to eat, have many options: Mediterranean, Japanese, Spanish, burgers, you name it –  Food is abundant around here. But to lessen waste, Brookfield partnered with Rethink Food, a non-profit organization created to address hunger.

Callie: You know, at the end of the day, every restaurant with every great intention always has food left over, right?, and so Rethink’s concept is there's a lot of food left over and there are a lot of people that need food, so let's bring those two things together.

So we partnered with them here and all of our restaurants. we have great operators. We have Danny Meyer, we've got quality branded, we've got Whole Foods. The citizens food market, by Sam Nasserian.

And so what they do is at the end of the day, they donate their food. Rethink comes and picks it up. They have a central kitchen and then they put together meals, based on the leftover food. and our goal is from the Manhattan West site alone to provide at least 50,000 meals this year to those in need.

And so it's just a great way to give back to the community with what we have, and the restaurants are doing a bang-out business, so they have a lot to be able to give back.

Brian Narration: The architects and engineers give back in their own way too, by being intentional about how massive developments like these can affect the environment.

Preetam: Sustainability really has a couple of different aspects.

Brian Narration: SOM’s Preetam Biswas again.

Preetam: One is how much energy you use on a daily basis, to use the building, right? For its functionality, that is known as operational carbon. The other aspect is known as embodied carbon, which means how much carbon went into constructing that building.

So how much material went into it? Efficient building with the least amount of material is not just something that we need to do so that we can save money but it is as important to save materials because there's only finite amount of material.

Brian Narration: For ONE Manhattan West, they found the largest, high strength structural steel columns in the world at the time.

Preetam: Which meant that a lot of the columns in the lower levels would not required to be built up using multiple plates, welding it together, making those columns that would be time consuming.

Instead, we could use these high strength, bigger shapes and get them to do the same work. Because at the end of the day, as less amount of elements that you can put in, and make the construction simpler, you're eventually going to get a better product.

Brian Narration: And the innovative uses of material goes beyond columns. The lobby walls of One and Two Manhattan West are made out of 42-foot-high glass.

Preetam: These were the tallest single piece of glass that could be manufactured at that time. And we used that tallest piece so that we do not get clunky connections and the lobby glass wall becomes as transparent because there is no other building anywhere in the world, which is a 72 story building, which doesn't have any structural column at the base on the outside of the building, there isn't, so architecturally let's celebrate it. Let's make the glass wall as transparent as possible.

Brian Narration: And while structurally One Manhattan West is 72 stories tall, you may hear Brookfield describe it as 67 stories; the higher number includes floors not usable for tenants.  And in charge of putting all these pieces together, was Tishman Construction, a division of global infrastructure firm AECOM. They worked with the architects and developers to find efficient ways to erect the structures.

Preetam: you know, our steel for this particular building is twice as strong as the steel that was used in the Empire State Building. The concrete that we’ve used is almost three times as strong as a concrete that was used in building Hoover Dam.

Brian Narration: Also different than the Hoover Dam: you don’t have to drive here.

Preetam: The one thing about Manhattan West, which is also very important is its location. It is going to utilize least amount energy to get people to it because it's right where all of the hub of transportation is. We are not expecting people to drive to these buildings, that in itself is a sustainability milestone.

Kim: Early on together with Brookfield, the LEED gold was a minimum standard and LEED was at that point a way of understanding how we build our buildings in a responsible manner.

Brian Narration: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, standardizes a worldwide green building rating system. A project must adhere to requirements covering the use of carbon, energy, water, waste, transportation, and materials, plus they must address health and indoor environmental quality in order to gain LEED certification. Here again is SOM’s Kim Van Holsbeke.

Kim: … and that was the framework we of worked around in our material choice, in our performance and enclosure on our systems. The element of wellness, the access to outdoor space was already embedded in our projects. We had terraces at the top of the retail that were accessible.

And then the last element that changed was carbon, while LEED already pushed us to certain levels of, green power, efficient energy; the carbon and the climate change, especially over the last five years, became really critical across the world, as an emergency.

Brian Narration: So Brookfield made use of their own Brookfield Renewable, a publicly traded power platform that includes hydropower facilities and wind farms in New York State. One Manhattan West is Brookfield’s first building – within their New York portfolio – that is 100% powered by renewable energy. Two Manhattan West will be next in line to achieve fully renewable power.

Callie Haines says this effort is part of Brookfield’s commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 across their portfolio. Energy consumption data will be available to both tenants and Brookfield.

Callie: we've also partnered with a company called ClearTrace that can actually prove out that all of our power is coming from this renewable source, and also can track and trace how much power we're using when we're using it and then help us work on more efficient utilization.

Brian Narration: They also use WillowTwin’s ‘smart building’ technology that tracks – anonymously – over 40,000 data points. Some of those include heat, ventilation, and A/C systems, to create a ‘digital twin’ of the building available to Brookfield.

Callie: Every single light that's on or off, uh, we can track occupancy. You can track temperature; if a fan unit starts to go down, you get an alert. And so it allows us to operate our buildings much more efficiently, because of this unique tool.

Brian Narration: Brookfield is also thinking about natural elements that increase sustainability. Stormwater is collected from the buildings, stored, and reused in the development’s irrigation system to water plants in the plaza. Native species like the American Elm, and Red Maple were chosen because they need less water than other species.

And in the spirit of supporting plants and their pollinators, Brookfield has topped the development with a different kind of population: Honey bees! That’s right, honey bees are kept on the rooftops providing a supply of honey every year.

Brian Narration: Back outside at street level, people are still enjoying the day.

Heather: It's nice to have some outdoor space in Manhattan and, you know, you can actually see the sky. It’s not all covered by skyscrapers.

Kevin: one of the things that's nice is when the sun hits the glass, it really warms the area up. So that's kind of nice just to kind of sit out, and, there's enough markets around here to get good food to eat. There's enough things around here to see.

Brian Narration: And roughly sixty feet below us, under the glass office buildings and the pedestrian plaza, the train tracks are still as busy as ever.

Preetam: Yep. they were there all the time and they're still doing the exact same work bringing in people. And now, when these people come out of Penn station, they have all of these offices that they can walk to just within one block.

Preetam: So the entire area, which used to be a place that nobody wanted to be is all of a sudden one of the premium real estate space in Manhattan. So between Manhattan West and its neighbors, the Hudson Yards, you've created a whole new neighborhood with millions of square foot. So it spurred a huge amount of real estate.

Brian Narration: It took billions of dollars and decades of work to build Manhattan West. And this development, well, it shifted New York City’s skyline and impacted the people who made it happen.

Kim: I definitely never thought that I was gonna be part of it redefining a piece of Manhattan. so that's, you know, the surprises and excitements of life, like you never know where it takes you and opportunities come in front of you that you have to seize and make the best of.

Brian Narration: When you’re looking at a development or building, remember that it was made by a team of people with vision and experience, but ideally also with respect for the past.

Preetam: don't stop dreaming because you cannot achieve something that you do not dream of. We are only a small spec in a large spectrum of time. We have to ensure that we pay, due respects to people who have come before us. People who have mentored our growth, and that in the quest of designing buildings, we also have to help imparting some of the knowledge that you have learned onto the future generation

Callie: I'll echo what my father always told me, which is “Start from the bottom up”. So yeah, my first job was counting bricks. I learned so much on that job. If you're really passionate about something starting from the bottom up, and just trying to learn as much as you possibly can.

Callie: Working with a great group of people and enjoying the people that you work with goes a long way too.

Kim: It's really a collaboration effort and thinking, planning, landscape, architecture, how all the pieces really come together. I feel it has been a, an honor to be able to help define, collaboratively with a large group of people, a new piece of Manhattan.

Brian Narration: We hope you enjoyed our in-depth exploration of Manhattan West as much as we did making it. To see photos of our visit, head to www.builtpodcast.com.

Thanks to our guests, and also to Georgi Petrov at SOM, and also to Luanna Garcia, Jamie Goodson, Aaron Dussair, Milah and Charlie from Toronto, Daniel Barthold, Heather Kirkland, Kevin James and everyone who spoke to us around Manhattan West.

We have more great interviews with colleagues in commercial real estate coming your way…we’ll be back with our next episode in two weeks. Catch up on previous episodes of Built and meet more of the people behind structures from wind farms to warehouses, wherever you get your podcasts.

Built is a co-production of Fidelity National Financial, PRX Productions, and Goat Rodeo. From FNF, our project is run by Annie Bardelas. This episode of Built was produced by Sandra Lopez-Monsalve and Genevieve Sponsler. Additional support from Megan Nodolski. Audio mastering by Rebecca Seidel.

The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.

I’m Brian Maughan.

Every story is unique, every property is individual, but we’re all part of this BUILT world.