Grace Plaza, long an unfriendly expanse of treeless travertine tucked behind the Grace Building at Sixth Avenue and West 43rd Street, has just emerged with a make-over, complete with added seating and greenery, not to mention views of the fritted Bank of America Tower to the west. The re-do from Moed de Armas & Shannon Architects could get the 1970s Gordon Bunshaft design removed from the Projects for Public Spaces Hall of Shame, where it's noted as "a big, barren slab of a place ... so inhospitable to people that it came to be populated largely by drug dealers." Now that its "bum plaza" days are done, Grace Plaza will be home to a 140-seat outdoor cafe, part of the vast new outpost for ever-expanding STK steakhouse empire. There's nothing like sizzling meat and mixed drinks to erase those drug deals and construction calamities from memory.
· Projects - Public Space - Grace Building [Moed de Armas & Shannon Architects]
· Hall of Shame - Grace Plaza Headline [Project for Public Spaces]
· BREAKING CurbedWire: Construction Accident at B of A Tower [Curbed]
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