The Hudson River Park Trust unveiled detailed plans for the $210 million renovation of Pier 57, off West 15th Street, DNAinfo reported. The plan includes 375,000 square feet of space devoted to a two-floor public marketplace, a two-acre rooftop open space and a 115-slip marina designed by Handel Architects, Lot-Ek and others. The project is being developed by Youngwoo & Associates, which first earned the contract in July 2009 and hatched the current plan for the site a month later (note: correction appended). [more]

A 20,000-square-foot corner at 400 Park Avenue South at 28th Street, which can support a 420,000-square-foot project, is going on the market via Studley. The site was assembled by developers A & R Kalimian, who were granted approval from the New York City Department of Planning for a “daring” design by French architect Christian de Portzamparc and Handel Architects. It was a favorite project of City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, according to the New York Post.

After clearing most of the site, the developers have now opted to sell. [more]

200 West, at 200 West 72nd Street

There are few corners of Manhattan as ill-served by architecture as the northwest and southwest corners of Broadway and 72nd Street. In the 1990s it saw the emergence of the Alexandria, a well-intentioned exercise in classical contextualism which, through a combination of weak design and poor construction values, resulted in a pallid eyesore at what should have been the focal point of the Upper West Side. As for 200 West which has just sprung up across the street at 200 West 72nd Street (with an alternate address of 2075 Broadway), the best that can be said is that, if anything, it makes the Alexandria look almost good by comparison. Its mongrelized aesthetic, devised by Handel Architects, is basically art deco in the heavily geometric and vaguely Chrysler-esque flanges that make up the staggered set-backs, starting around the 14th floor. But such adornments do little to enliven or relieve the sense of value engineering and general tedium of this 19-story development, undertaken by the Gotham Organization. The rest is a boxy mass that rises out of nowhere, curving, in true art deco fashion, round the corner where Broadway turns into 72nd Street. More

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