Hudson Yards: Building a 28-Acre Neighborhood Over Active Train Tracks

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Hudson Yards, on Manhattan's far West Side between 30th and 41st Streets, is described as the largest private real estate development in United States history. For decades the area defeated planners: William Zeckendorf's 1950s expansion, a U.S. Steel housing scheme, Mayor Robert F. Wagner's 1963 plan and a young Donald Trump's convention center pitch for the Penn Central yard all failed, and the Javits Center, finished in 1986, sat in a transit desert. Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff's stadium for the 2012 Olympic bid was defeated in June 2005, which finally freed the West Side Yard for rezoning. Tishman Speyer won the air rights bid in 2008 for $1 billion, then lost the deal in the financial crash, and Related Companies and Oxford Properties took over the 99-year lease.

The developers spent $400 million on a platform built over the Long Island Rail Road storage yard while trains kept running, with supertall columns plunging past it into Manhattan schist bedrock. The city paid for infrastructure through tax increment financing bonds, the developers tapped the EB-5 visa program, and the No. 7 subway extension opened in September 2015. Phase 1 opened in March 2019 with 30 Hudson Yards at 1,337 feet, a seven-story mall and Thomas Heatherwick's Vessel. Critics were harsh: The Guardian's Oliver Wainwright called it a $25 billion architectural fiasco and Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times called it Manhattan's slickest gated community. In May 2020 the Financial Times described it as a ghost town.

• The luxury brand Coach was both an anchor tenant and a lender on a $475 million construction loan in 2013.
• 10 Hudson Yards cantilevers over a spur of the High Line, which was extended to wrap around the development.
• Next door, Brookfield built Manhattan West by sliding prefabricated concrete segments over the Penn Station tracks at night.
• Food critic Ryan Sutton called it the worst place to eat fancy food in New York, and Thomas Keller's restaurant there closed during COVID-19.
• The development opened without a firehouse, prompting complaints from the FDNY union.