The 70s called and they want their building back. The concrete fortress, which has fully risen at the southwest corner of Ninth Avenue and 42nd Street, would strike fear in any post-war commie-block. When we first saw the renderings in 2013 we were expecting the worst, and yet the new reveal has still managed to disappoint us. Standing 28-stories, 341-feet-tall, 400 West 42nd Street was designed by SLCE Architects and presents the public with a raw concrete exterior, a mundane array of transparent windows and rows of exhaust grilles above a sterile glass-fronted base.
The 170,000-square-foot development was spawned by Friedman Group and the Landis Group and is also known as 577 Ninth Avenue or 400 Times Square. Financed, in part, through EB-5 funding, investors were initially lured in with a more interesting “Tetris-like” design penned by Handel Architects. However, likely due to budgetary limitations and the still recovering economy in 2009, Handel's design was shelved.
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After the small "mom and pop" businesses shuttered, the parcel sat fallow for several years until construction began in 2014. In 2015, the project made headlines when construction worker Angel Muñoz, a 27-year-old worker from Ecuador, fell to his death down an elevator shaft.
The site is located just steps from Times Square and the Disney-fied, 42nd Street, Prior to construction, the block was quintessentially-New York of yesteryear, and held a collection of small, downtrodden businesses, including a popular meat market. In their place will open a “pod-styled” hotel containing 527 micro-sized suites, averaging less than 250 square feet each. The five uppermost floors, 23-27, will accommodate 45 apartments. A Real Deal story from last spring revealed that Richard Born and Ira Drukier’s BD Hotels will lease that set of units to rent out as furnished apartments.
Having now reached full height, the construction of its interiors are in full swing. The development is set to open sometime next year and its small hotel rooms are expected to fetch roughly $225 per night. How fitting that a tower built for pod people (alien tourists) would provide such a de-humanizing design. At street level, two floors of retail with full-length glass storefronts will occupy 17,000 square feet. RKF is handling the retail leasing.
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