The long-touted Midtown skyscraper being developed through a partnership that includes billionaire Ken Griffin is scheduled to kick off its public review next month, according to an application filed with the Department of City Planning Wednesday.
The proposed tower at 350 Park Ave. would stand 62 stories and span 1.8 million square feet. It would replace aging office stock with new and competitive spaces.
Three existing buildings that make up the planned development site — a 30-story office tower at 350 Park Ave., a 23-story office building at 40 E. 52nd St. and a 5-story office building at 39 E. 51st St. — will be demolished to make way for the 62-story all-electric skyscraper that has long been in the works from Vornado Realty Trust, the development firm Rudin and hedge fund magnate Griffin.
Griffin’s firms, Citadel and Citadel Securities, would be the tower’s anchor tenants, occupying at least 850,000 square feet, documents show.
The Greater East Midtown rezoning, which was approved by the City Council in 2017 to encourage the development of modern office buildings, can be thanked in part for the origins of the project. Mayor Eric Adams celebrated its finally moving forward last April after years of anticipation. It’s also able to get off the ground thanks to the air rights sold by two nearby landmarked churches, St. Patrick’s Cathedral and St. Bartholomew’s, which will receive a combined $150 million in return.
The massive Midtown rezoning would also include more than 16,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, likely to be occupied by food service establishments, according to the documents, and a roughly 12,500-square-foot public concourse that would be designed to enhance the Park Avenue corridor with additional seating, greenery and safer pedestrian crossings between East 46th and East 57th streets.
Construction is slated to break ground in spring 2026, after the roughly seven-month review process, requiring a number of public hearings and analysis from the Department of City Planning, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, the local community board, the City Council and finally the mayor, concludes. If approved, construction is expected to be completed by 2032.
