Proposed 15 Penn Plaza
The City Council Land Use Committee voted today in favor of Vornado’s roughly 1,200-foot, Pelli Clarke Pelli-designed 15 Penn Plaza, despite protests from Empire State Building owner Anthony Malkin that it would mar the city’s skyline, ArchPaper reported. More important than the skyline argument at the hearing was the issue of who would build 15 Penn Plaza. Before today’s vote, Vornado offered a last-minute plan, calling for at least 15 percent of the construction work to be done by women- and minority-owned business enterprises. Though the council members voted 19-1 for the project, there were still some objections over the fact that the council does not use its limited leverage over such projects to extract more concessions early on regarding who is doing the construction, rather than at the very end, when it is too late to have an impact on the project. [ArchPaper]