Riverside South, Manhattan
Riverside South is an urban development project in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, United States. Developed by the businessman and later U.S. president Donald Trump in collaboration with a group of Asian investors, the largely residential complex is on of land along the Hudson River between 59th Street and 72nd Street. The $3 billion project, which replaced a New York Central Railroad yard known as the 60th Street Yard, includes multiple residential towers and an extension of Riverside Park.
There were several proposals for the site in the late 20th century. These included the Litho City plan in the 1960s, Trump's 1970s plan, and the Lincoln West plan of the early 1980s. The current proposal stems from Trump's late-1980s proposal for Television City. Television City was originally designed to include 16 apartment buildings, of studio space, of office space, ancillary retail space, and of park land, mostly on the roof of a vast shopping mall. Trump later abandoned his plan and adopted a substantially reduced proposal put forward by a coalition of civic groups. Trump sold Riverside South to investors from Hong Kong and mainland China, which built seven structures starting in 1997. In 2005, the investors sold the remaining unfinished portions to the Carlyle Group and the Extell Development Company, which developed three more buildings. In turn, Extell sold off some of the southernmost plots in the 2010s; these sites became Waterline Square.
60th Street Rail Yard
Before Riverside South was developed, the site was a rail freight yard owned by the New York Central Railroad, located between 59th and 72nd streets. By 1849 an embankment near West End Avenue, with a span over a tidal lagoon, carried the Hudson River Railroad, later part of New York Central. At the time, much of the current site of Riverside South was still under water. By 1880, what had been river was transformed by landfill into the New York Central Railroad's vast 60th Street Yard. Within the 60th Street Yard, a set of piers extended into the Hudson River, where barges carried railcars across the river to New Jersey. The piers protruded at a 55-degree angle and each contained tracks.In the 1930s, New York City parks commissioner Robert Moses covered New York Central's rail track north of 72nd Street as part of the West Side Improvement, which also moved rail lines below grade south of 60th Street. The Moses project was bigger than Hoover Dam and created the Henry Hudson Parkway. The adjacent Riverside Park was expanded to the Hudson River.
Until the 1970s, the rail yard area was generally industrial. The area was home to a printing plant for The New York Times between 1959 and 1975, as well as ABC television studios. At the same time, public housing extended to West End Avenue, and the Lincoln Towers redevelopment project extended to the rail yard boundary along Freedom Place. New York Central merged with the Pennsylvania Railroad to form Penn Central in 1968 as the rail lines were suffering severe financial difficulties. The railroad went bankrupt in 1970, and its assets were sold off in federal court.
Early redevelopment plans
In the late 20th century, there had been several proposals to develop structures over the rail yard. These included the Litho City plan in 1965 and various plans by New York City's Educational Construction Fund in the late 1960s. In his book New York 2000, Robert A. M. Stern described the site as "one of the city's most coveted and contested parcels of open land". The site was hard to develop in part because it did not have roads or utilities, and because any potential redevelopment would have had to be built over the train yard. With Penn Central's bankruptcy in 1975, the ground level became available as well, increasing the potential for development. This led to the businessman Donald Trump's late 1970s plans; the Lincoln West plan of the early 1980s; and Trump's Television City plan of the late 1980s.1960s plans
In 1961, the railroad proposed a partnership with the Amalgamated Lithographers Union to build Litho City, a mixed-use development over the tracks. There would be six 47-story buildings and three 41-story buildings, all designed by Kelly & Gruzen. The development would have included 200 artists' studios that faced north; the rest of the units would be structured as rental apartments or housing cooperatives. Sources variously cited Litho City as being built to accommodate 12,500 or 25,000 people. The New York City Planning Commission deferred action on the Litho City proposal for a year while it reviewed Litho City's effects on traffic in the neighborhood, and the consulting firm of Day & Zimmerman warned that the development might worsen traffic. Nonetheless, the union's president Edward Swayduck and the city's traffic commissioner Henry A. Barnes both endorsed the Litho City plan.The CPC designated the West Side rail yard as an urban renewal site in October 1962, allowing the plans for Litho City to proceed. Shortly afterward, the Amalgamated Lithographers Union announced plans for a $15 million dormitory in the development, which would house 1,000 foreign students. Plans also called for a promenade linking to Lincoln Center, in addition to a park on the Hudson River shoreline. A scale model of Litho City was unveiled at Grand Central Terminal in 1963. By then, the project was being planned as a high-income development, rather than a middle-income development; the cost of Litho City was estimated at $175 million. There were to be 6,000 apartments, and a new street, running parallel to the yard between 66th and 70th streets, was also proposed. Moses also planned to build an exit from the West Side Highway to Litho City, prompting objections that the street grid could not handle the additional traffic.
The plans for Litho City were formally dropped in January 1966 due to disputes over the air rights; the railroad had terminated the union's lease of the site two months prior. In the late 1960s, there were various proposals by the city's Educational Construction Fund for mixed residential and school projects, also partly on landfill. This development would have included several athletic fields and between 6,000 and 12,000 apartments. In the early 1970s, Robert Moses proposed relocating the highway between 59th and 72nd streets inland to facilitate an extension of Riverside Park, but he failed to convince the state Department of Transportation. The state rejected that proposal because of the presumed negative effect on development opportunities and because it would violate the Blumenthal Amendment, which prohibited any highway construction that would alter Riverside Park.
First Trump proposal and sale
In July 1974, Trump Enterprises Inc., a company controlled by Trump, offered to buy an option on the 60th Street Yard and the 30th Street Yard for a combined $100 million. Trump did not make a down payment. Penn Central, which at the time was under trusteeship due to its insolvency, petitioned its trustees to approve the sale. Though both of the yards were still being used by freight trains, the only structures on the sites were storage buildings and train tracks. Following a private meeting with Trump, his father Fred, and Mayor Abraham Beame, Penn Central's trustees gave the option to Trump because he "seemed best positioned to get rezoning and government financing". A U.S. federal court approved Penn Central's sale of the option to Trump in March 1975.Initially, Trump wanted to build up to 20,000 housing units on the site. At the time, he had never completed a major real-estate development before. Local politicians including U.S. Representative Bella Abzug expressed concerns about the fact that the 60th Street redevelopment would cater mostly to middle- and upper-class families. Trump presented plans for the development to local residents in April 1976. As part of the proposal, designed by Gruzen & Partners, the site would be divided into three residential clusters with at least four buildings each; about 40 percent of the development would be open space, and there would be one or two schools and a central shopping mall. Trump's plan called for the West Side Highway to be relocated inward to provide more space near the river, which the Department of City Planning endorsed in concept. There would have been 14,500 apartments on the site, funded with federal subsidies. Manhattan Community Board 7, representing the neighborhood that included the rail yard, opposed the plan. The state had previously examined the idea of moving the highway inland, but had rejected it, in part because of the presumed negative effect on potential development. Trump apparently never got far enough with his plan to persuade them otherwise.
Trump's proposal was dependent on public financing that never materialized. He tried various architectural schemes and twice downsized his plans for the yards. In May 1979, Trump exercised his option on the site, agreeing to buy the yard for $28 million. Had Trump finalized the acquisition, he would have been required to make payments over 18–30 months, after which he could take title to the site. However, Trump never finalized his purchase, and his father's longtime friend Abe Hirschfeld agreed to take over the option instead. By then, the city government was contemplating building a freight yard for piggyback trains on the site. Penn Central signed a sale contract in March 1980, agreeing to sell Hirschfeld and his son Elie the site for $28 million. Under the terms of the contract, the Hirschfelds made a $400,000 down payment and were required to spend $700,000 on planning over the next year. Trump later said that his decision to let his option expire was "the toughest business decision in my life."