Silverstein may scrap plans for 1,000-foot Far West Side tower

Developer now mulling plans for two smaller towers at 514 11th Avenue

514 11th Avenue, a previous rendering and Larry Silverstein
514 11th Avenue, a previous rendering and Larry Silverstein

Are two towers better than one? That’s a question Silverstein Properties is asking with regard to its latest development on the Far West Side.

Larry Silverstein’s [TRDataCustom] firm may scrap plans for a single, 1,000-foot tower at 514 11th Avenue. Instead, the developer would develop the site in two stages — first, build a 600,000-square-foot condominium tower, and then construct a roughly 1 million-square-foot commercial office tower.

Although Silverstein hasn’t made a final decision, the firm tapped CetraRuddy to design the condo portion of the plan, Crain’s reported.

Silverstein paid $115 million for the site, a former Mercedes-Benz dealership, in 2015.  That year, the developer made a deal with the city to rezone the site’s commercial portion and build a 1.8 million-square-foot residential project with 30 percent of the units reserved for affordable housing. Later, Silverstein put the site on the market briefly.

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At the time, he said he was not looking to sell because of the city’s aggressive affordable housing requirements.

Under this newly-floated plan, a rezoning would not be required. After building a residential component, Silverstein could capitalize on the growing office market in Hudson Yards, where BlackRock, Time Warner and others are or will be headquartered.

The two-phase project is a similar approach to the one Silverstein took at Silver Towers, a two-tier, 1,300-unit rental complex at 620 West 42nd Street that was completed in 2009. [Crain’s]E.B. Solomont