Hudson Yards’ sky-high neighborhood

Megadevelopment will sit on a platform made with 25,000 tons of steel

From left: rendering of Hudson Yards and current West Side Rail Yard
From left: rendering of Hudson Yards and current West Side Rail Yard

Before it can build the country’s largest private development, the Related Companies must construct a platform above an active rail yard to do it.

The platform for Hudson Yards, on which a minimum of three skyscrapers would eventually sit, will be supported by 300 caissons, or concrete-filled columns extending up to 80 feet into the bedrock, Gizmodo reported.

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More structural features are being positioned in a space West Side Yard’s engineers left in the 1980s in anticipation of further development. Where the rails converge into a narrow line under an adjacent building, Related will erect steel trusses across the yard.

It will take 25,000 tons of steel and 14,000 cubic yards of concrete to build the platform, which will ultimately weigh in at more than 35,000 tons — more than double what the Brooklyn Bridge weighs, according to Gizmodo.

The finished project would have 17 million square feet of commercial and residential space, a public school and 14 acres of public land, Gizmodo reported. [Gizmodo]Angela Hunt