In case you still had any lingering doubts about plans for a new skyscraper at 350 Park Ave.:
Banker Steel, based in Lynchburg, Va., is fabricating 50,000 tons of structural steel for the tower. It isn’t something you can just set aside for a rainy day.
Demolition of older buildings on Park Avenue and East 52nd Street is underway for the 62-story, 1469-foot tall cloudbuster to be completed in 2032. The development team consists of Citadel founder Ken Griffin, Vornado Realty Trust and the Rudin organization.
Two of Griffin’s companies, Citadel and Citadel Securities, are the anchor tenants with about half of the $4.5 billion tower’s 1.8 million square feet. Foster + Partners is the architect of record.
Vornado chairman Steven Roth said on the firm’s second-quarter earnings call earlier this month that work is proceeding on schedule and he expects the joint-venture partnership deal to close in September. Roth noted he had a $3.3 billion construction loan “ready to go.”
Questions were raised about Griffin’s commitment after Mayor Zohran Mamdani took a cheap shot at him in April over Griffin’s ownership of a $200 million condo. Some observers suspected it was a deliberate step by Mamdani to chase Griffin out of town and sabotage the tower project.
But Griffin and his partners sensibly shrugged off the insult.