Presented By

Project Location: New York, New York
Public Sector Partners: Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) and Moynihan Station Development Corporation (MSDC).
Public Sector Development Advisors: Henningson, Durham, & Richardson, Engineering and Architecture, P.C. (HDR) in association with Washington Square Partners (WSP) and Economic Research Associates (ERA), John Milner Architects, Inc. (JMA) and Michelle Robinson, AIA (Michelle Robinson Architecture)
Client Contact Name: Michael Royce, President, MSDC
Private Sector Partners: Not yet selected
HDR Contact Name: Raffaela Dunne, raffaela.dunne@hdrinc.com

PROJECT SUMMARY
Use: ESDC will be purchasing the James A. Farley Post Office Building from the United States Postal Service with the intent of potentially redeveloping approximately 750,000 square feet for private mixed-use development, 300,000 square feet for a train station, 100,000 square feet for transit oriented retail and 250,000 square feet to remain for USPS retail and office. Uses considered for the 750,000 square feet include big box retail, trade show/mart, and boutique hotel or office space. In addition, the project includes up to 1,000,000 square feet of development air rights under current zoning. Uses considered for the development rights include a convention center hotel, convention center hotel with condominium floors, office, and residential.

Size: 1,400,000 SF plus 1,000,000 SF of development air rights.

Estimated Project Cost: $750,000,000 to $1,200,000,000 based on recent estimate

ESDC together with its Development Advisors, are formally soliciting interest from the development community for the redevelopment of the James A. Farley Post Office including the development of the Moynihan Train Station. The pre-development work included a market assessment and demand analysis to independently determine market demand for uses including hotel, office, retail and residential; developer outreach to test market results and ensure that the uses studied are of interest to and are viable in the opinion of the development community; coordination with other interested New York City and State agencies including Department of City Planning, New York City Economic Development Corporation and the State Historic Preservation Office; developing three preferred reuse scenarios for the James A. Farley Post Office Building; establishing the financial feasibility of the reuse scenarios; and development and issuance of a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) and participation in the pre-qualification meeting. Future tasks include Qualification statement review and selection of three to five of the most qualified development teams; developing and issuing the Request for Proposals (RFP); Proposal evaluation and selection of the preferred development team.

The RFQ includes three development options for which the developers are requested to provide vision statements: 1) a building design as developed by a design team led by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM); 2) the base 1.4 million square foot building with a design that would qualify for historic tax credits; 3) and the base building with the current SOM design and use of up to 1 million square feet of development rights. In addition to their vision statements, development teams are asked to describe any issues or fatal flaws with any of the three development options described. Responses to the RFQ were due August 27, 2004 and six development team qualification statements were received. The RFP will be issued in October 2004.