Hudson Yards Effect

Like the High Line Effect that flattened west Chelsea, and the Marc Jacobs Effect that ruined western Bleecker Street, we're now seeing the Hudson Yards Effect decimate 10th Avenue in the 30s.

All along the Hudson Yards, buildings are coming down, or getting grabbed up by developers who aim to upscale. Into empty lots and parking lots are going new condos and hotels. Even the Brutalist 450 West 33rd is getting a facelift. In a city where everything must glitter, silvery cool, this brown beast just won't do.



It will be clad in pleated glass and incorporated into Brookfield's "Manhattan West" development, that massive hall of mirrors.



A couple blocks up, two little tenement buildings remain--440 and 442 Tenth Avenue. The buildings were bought by the Silverstone Property Group in 2012. Tenants reached out to Curbed to complain about the subsequent conditions--no gas, no hot water, holes in the ceilings.

Are there any rent-regulated tenants left? Apartments in the two buildings are now renovated and renting ($2500 for a studio) to anyone who won't mind the noise of construction on both sides.



On the north end of the block is rising a $20 million 17-story hotel--owned by a company calling itself Tenth Avenue YYY, LLC.

(Why, why, why?)



On the south side, a towering Marriott Hotel is coming. This one's costing $180 million and will have 385 rooms.

It's big and it's bland, just like they like it.



Across the avenue, another pair of tenements stand, surviving for now. But they look vulnerable out there. One houses a Penske truck rental place, the other is home to Taxi Parts, Inc.


This stretch of 10th Avenue, from the 20s through the 30s, used to belong to taxi drivers. It gave them gas stations, flat-fix shops, mechanics, medallion brokers, cheap food, and places like this shop, where you can find everything from tail lights to mud flaps.



Over the past decade, we've watched it all vanish. First destroyed by High Line development, and now by the Hudson Yards. Of course, we know the two are connected, one Bloombergian scheme rolled into the other. The whole west side, from below Gansevoort and into the 40s, is being paved in glass.

Soon, it will gobble up the carriage horsemen of the west 30s. (Read here for an in-depth look at what remains of that world.) Along with what remains of the old city a few blocks south, a parcel that Bloomberg's planning department targeted.

Take a walk up 10th and witness a neighborhood vanishing before your eyes.