Madison Avenue tower reopens with leafy oasis under glass canopy

The workplace tower at 550 Madison Ave. has been remodeled into an open-air, city backyard that sits beneath a 70-foot-high glass cover.
Barret Doherty

Midtown strollers would possibly blink after they go 550 Madison Ave., the landmarked workplace tower that’s been redesigned and repositioned by the Olayan Group.

The tower’s block-long public arcade between East fifty fifth and 56th streets, closed for a number of years, reopened final week twice as giant as its gloomy enclosed predecessor and remodeled by impressed landscaping.

The open-air, half-acre city backyard designed by Snohetta sits beneath a 70-foot-high glass cover. As if taking cues from the Excessive Line or Little Island, it boasts 48 bushes, 200 shrubs, 6,300 bulb crops, “10,000 herbaceous understory crops,” plus three meals kiosks and plenty of seats. Sinuous curves and assorted elevations soften the arcade’s rectilinear proportions.

The 41-story tower is 50% leased to workplace tenants reminiscent of Chubb, Hermes, and Corsair Capital.

Kastle

A New York Occasions story about bother within the office-tower world final week cited the Kastle Again-to-Work Barometer’s wildly incomplete estimate of under-50% bodily workplace occupancy in New York Metropolis.

The article did embrace Invoice Rudin’s rebuttal that his buildings have been 65% occupied. However it missed the bigger image that we’ve reported: Kastle counts entry swipes solely at buildings that use its safety providers. Their pattern consists of few of the most important actual property empires which personal or handle a lot of the finest buildings. They’re disproportionately dwelling to monetary and legislation companies which have extra folks at their desks than different kinds of corporations.

Kastle doesn’t depend heads at properties of SL Inexperienced, Vornado, Boston Properties, Brookfield, Rockefeller Group, Associated Firms, Tishman Speyer, Silverstein Properties and Rudin Administration; nor bank-owned headquarters towers reminiscent of JP Morgan Chase’s 383 Madison Ave.; nor One World Commerce Heart, One Vanderbilt or the Empire State Constructing.

With so many big holes in its survey, why do the media proceed to quote Kastle’s knowledge as gospel?