Brookfield Office Properties intends to get a leg up on competitor the Related Companies by using bridge-building technology to cover a 65-foot railroad trench at the site of its new Manhattan West development, Bloomberg News reported. Construction at the site requires covering tracks that shuttle about 100,000 people each weekday into and out of Pennsylvania Station.

The technology has never previously been used with a building project, and would save two years of labor and cut costs for a platform in half to about $300 million, Brookfield told Bloomberg.

Brookfield is competing for tenants with Related’s Hudson Yards, among other new office properties slated for completion mid-decade…. [more]

Brookfield Office Properties, owners of about 18 million square feet of office space in the New York area, could complete its massive development site between Ninth and Dyer avenues and 31st and 33rd streets, dubbed “Manhattan West,” by 2017, CEO Ric Clark told the New York Times in a Q & A. The plan calls for four buildings, two of which are 2 million square feet each and span the north and south sides of the project, with another 1 million-square-foot building occupying the southwest corner. The fourth, a smaller building whose square footage is still undetermined, will be used for retail or office space. Construction is slated to begin on the project in January, and the first of the two biggest buildings could be ready for occupancy by late 2015, Clark said…. [more]

While for the first time since 2000 Manhattan will see an entire year go by without the opening of a significant new office tower, the borough is gearing up for a surge in new office construction mid-decade, according to recent analysis by the New York Building Congress, released yesterday.

Manhattan added about 20 million square feet of new office space between 2001 and 2010, a modest offering by historical standards. Nearly 4 million square feet of new office space was created annually in the 1970s and 1980s.

“It is remarkable how little office space was actually added in Manhattan during the recent building boom,” said Richard Anderson, president of the Building Congress. — Katherine Clarke… [more]

The Salvation Army’s Greater New York division is closing down at least
six adolescent housing facilities, Crain’s New York Business reported.
Among the sites that will be closed are Manhattan West, on West 127th
Street, and Glover, on East 162nd Street, both to close in September.
Ninety-eight full- and part-time staffers will lose their jobs. The
Salvation Army is shutting the facilities because it does not expect to
get enough city funding, according to a source close to the agency. The
approximately 72 teenagers who live in the six facilities will be
transferred to other homes. … [more]