The big and shiny Helmut Jahn hotel/condo combo at 50 West Street is back from the dead and getting ready to rise just south of the World Trade Center site. The plan from West Street Development LLC, 65 stories growing 714 feet into the downtown sky above the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, first came to light back in 2008, but it skidded to a stop along with the economy. Now a permit for the new building has been issued to the architect of record, Gruzen Samton Architects. But this is still Helmut's baby and his design, described by some as a ginormous silver sex toy, can be seen on the Murphy Jahn website, where it's tagged as the "Time Equities Tower." But don't let the mundane name fool you.
In the DOB's files the Schedule A shows that a 139-room hotel will cover floors 4 to 13. Up above, from floors 14 to 63, will be 301 condo units with a super-duplex on two upper floors. Way up high on Floor 65, where views should be phenomenal, a lounge will top it all off. This tower, peaking at 714', will rival neighbors all around, nearly three times as tall as the 33-story Visionaire across West Street and topping the 56-story W Downtown a couple of blocks north. As for more immediate surroundings, Helmut's hi-rise will totally eclipse the neighbor to the north, a brown pile of condos at 33 Rector Street. If things move ahead as planned, 50 West should be ready for residents at just about the same time that Anna Wintour and her Conde Nast crew move into their new WTC digs sometime in 2014.
UPDATE: Reps for Time Equities tell us 50 West is still in "pre-development" and that the DOB filing was "an administrative change...taken in response to [contractor] HRH's decision to pursue Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation."
· Time Equities Tower [Murphy Jahn website]
· 50 West Street coverage [Curbed]
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