Date: 4/10/24 
Departure time: 1:15 p.m. 
Return time: 5:15 p.m. 
Price: $100 

LaGuardia Airport’s new Terminal B is the top-to-bottom transformation of one of the nation’s highest-profile terminals. Tour the facility–airside and landside–with members of the operations and design team to learn how they transformed the terminal while remaining fully operational and minimizing inconvenience to customers or communities surrounding LaGuardia’s uniquely small geographic footprint.  

The bold design celebrates arrivals and departures with equal emphasis, challenging the industry practice of reserving the most monumental spaces for departures. The transparent, fluid design conveys a strong civic presence in a city known for its remarkable architecture. Its verticality, scale, and sense of the new echo the monumentality of the city itself. In the spirit of transportation centers like New York’s Grand Central Terminal, the new Terminal B ushers in an ambitious new era of mobility, travel, and public celebration. 

As the world’s first airport to earn LEED v4 Gold certification, learn how Terminal B has helped pioneer sustainability measures for civil infrastructure projects. The project also offered historic community benefits, including more than $910 million in contracts to minority- and women-owned business enterprises and hundreds of permanent jobs for area residents. The new terminal showcases commissioned and site-specific art installations curated by the Public Art Fund in partnership with LaGuardia Gateway Partners, the terminal developer and operator. 

Date: 4/10/24 
Departure time: 8:30 a.m. 
Return time: 12:00 p.m. 
Price: $100  
Transportation: Public transit 

Start by riding through Central Park, exiting at 110th Street/Central Park North. Ride past the Lincoln Correctional Facility site (RFP in process) up Frederick Douglas Boulevard through an area of high gentrification, including the Harlem Tavern. Go east past famous jazz club Minton’s up to 125th Street. Ride down Harlem’s “Main Street,” 125th Street, to see the iconic Apollo Theater and new developments at the Victory Theater. See the influx of national retailers along 125th and hear about the evolution of the area from the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone. Continue north to Strivers’ Row and the Abyssinian Baptist Church. End the ride at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and a visit to its gift shop. 

Date: 4/10/24 
Departure time: 8:00 a.m. 
Return time: 1:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Public transit 

Running for 1.3 miles along the Brooklyn side of the East River, Brooklyn Bridge Park has been a significant agent for transformation for the historic DUMBO neighborhood, iconic for its 19^th-century industrial architecture. Join us for a walking tour of the DUMBO waterfront, where we will explore the park’s unique resilience and sustainability efforts to create the best waterfront possible, becoming a case study for the new Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines. We will also visit several exciting adaptive reuse projects, that have taken long-abandoned 19^th-century waterfront warehouses and transformed them into vibrant cultural and commercial spaces for the community. 

Date: 4/9/24 
Departure time: 8:00 a.m. 
Return time: 1:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Bus 

New Rochelle is seeing the largest economic development initiative in its history, driven by the MTA’s Penn Station Access Project, which is extending connections to Penn Station and significantly reducing travel times into Manhattan. When the project is complete, New Rochelle will become the only city in southern Westchester to offer direct access to both the East and West sides of Manhattan. Soon to become such a rich transit-oriented location, New Rochelle will realize an unprecedented 9.2 million square feet of new residential development in its downtown area that is prioritizing the repair of urban renewal mistakes and addressing long-standing issues of equity. Beginning with the New Rochelle historic train station, which will soon see its own reimagining, we will visit several new residential developments and the new public park that is knitting together previously separated communities. 

Date: 4/11/24 
Departure time: 8:00 a.m. 
Return time: 1:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Bus 

Coney Island, America’s most storied amusement resort, is experiencing an enormous effort to renew and reinvigorate its vibrant and diverse beachfront community following major rezoning. What was once a vast expanse of unending entertainment at the turn of the 20th century, comprising the triad of Steeplechase Park, Luna Park, and Dreamland, Coney Island quickly became reduced to large patches of parking lots, falling from the premier entertainment destination of the world to an isolated neighborhood. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, with New Yorkers working on hybrid schedules between their home and a Manhattan office, people have been seeking more hospitable outlying neighborhoods with direct transit access for when they need it. This has resulted in a massive expansion in mixed-income housing developments for the community and renewed interest in Coney Island as an entertainment destination. In our tour we will visit a selection of these new residential projects along Surf Avenue, as well as the newly revived entertainment sites of Coney Island. 

Date: 4/9/24 
Departure time: 8:15 a.m. 
Return time: 12:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Public transit 

Essex Crossing represents a true partnership between public and private interests. L+M, BFC Development Partners, and Taconic Investment Partners, along with Grand Street Settlement, were awarded the sites after a competitive RFP process in 2013. The entire project, located in the Lower East Side, is projected to be over 1.9 million square feet; seven of nine parcels are developed, and the last two parcels are expected to be completed by 2024. Once completed, the $1.5 billion project will include 1,079 units of residential rental and for-sale housing (of which over 50 percent will be permanently affordable to a wide range of incomes), over 700,000 square feet of commercial space, 350,000 square feet of office space, 100,000 square feet of community and cultural facility space, and 100,000 square feet of exterior and interior green space, including a new public park.  

Key commercial users include NYU Langone Ambulatory Care Center, Trader Joe’s, Target, The Gutter NYC bowling, Regal Cinemas, a new and expanded Essex Street Market and The Market Line. Key community facility uses include a new senior center run by Grand St. Settlement, Henry Street Settlement’s Workforce Development Center, an early childhood education center operated by the Chinese American Planning Council, and the International Center of Photography. 

Date: 4/9/24 
Departure time: 8:00 a.m. 
Return time: 1:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Bus 

The waterfront in the long-established Greenpoint neighborhood has been a functioning lumberyard and industrial center for over 100 years. In the past 20 years, it has been transformed into an extension of the Greenpoint neighborhood. Park Tower Group is developing the master plan for Greenpoint Landing which, when complete, will include about 5,500 apartments (both market-rate and permanently affordable units), a sprawling waterfront park designed by James Corner Field Operations, and numerous local retail opportunities. Along with Brookfield Properties, Park Tower Group completed a 745-unit luxury residential complex, Eagle + West, in 2022. Designed by world-renowned architecture firm OMA, the pair of towers and low-rise building feature a 42,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art amenities package and contribute more than 30,000-square-feet of new public space to the city. Eagle + West is the latest set of buildings to open in the 22-acre, Greenpoint Landing master-planned development. The firms opened the One Blue Slip site in 2018, Two Blue Slip in 2020, and The Bellslip in May 2022. 

Date: 4/10/24 
Departure time: 8:15 a.m. 
Return time: 12:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Walking 

Before the pandemic, Midtown East was rezoned to modernize the area’s aging building stock, which catalyzed 6.5 million square feet of new office development over the next two decades. Join us to tour some of the new and active office developments on and surrounding Park Avenue resulting from this rezoning effort.  

This walking tour will begin at 1.75 million-square-foot One Vanderbilt, the tallest office tower in Midtown (standing at 1,401 feet tall) designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox and developed by SL Green and Hines, it opened in September 2020. The project included a $220 million package of public open space and transit infrastructure improvements that will help ease congestion and overcrowding on subway platforms, improve circulation in and around the terminal, and create new, direct pathways to the regional railroads. 

The tour will continue to Project Commodore, an approved 85-story skyscraper at 175 Park Avenue, designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill and developed by RXR and TF Cornerstone. The 1,575-foot-tall mixed-use tower will replace the Hyatt Grand Central New York hotel and yield 2.1 million square feet of class A office space, 500 Hyatt hotel rooms, and 10,000 square feet of retail once completed. The development will also include a 25,000-square-foot elevated public plaza surrounding the tower and abutting the adjacent Grand Central Terminal.  

The tour will also highlight the Company at 335 Madison Avenue (Milstein Properties, SHoP Architects), a 350,000-square-foot vertical tech campus with an extensive amenity program, before continuing to 343 Madison (BXP, currently under construction), a 49-story, 750,000-square-foot office tower. The tour will conclude at 425 Park Avenue, a 670,000-square-foot office tower designed by Foster + Partners and redeveloped by L&L Holding and GreenOak Real Estate, completed in October 2022. 

Date: 4/10/24 
Departure time: 8:15 a.m. 
Return time: 12:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Public transit 

The Metropolitan Transit Authority has made sweeping investments across all three transit systems: commuter rail, subway, and national rail platforms. This tour by rail will begin at Grand Central Station to explore East Side Access, the MTA’s largest capital project, costing $11.1 billion and completed in 2023. The finished project provides Long Island Rail Road riders with 40 miles of new tracks, a new terminal beneath Grand Central, and the modernization of the busiest intersection of passenger train lines in North America.  

The tour will continue to take the No. 7 subway line extension to Hudson Yards. The extension, built to facilitate West Side development, stretches 1.5 miles southwest from its previous terminus at Times Square, at Seventh Avenue and 41st Street, to one new station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue. The city and the MTA reached an agreement for the funding and construction of the No. 7 line extension in September 2006 with construction commencing in late 2007. Revenue (passenger) service began in September 2015. 

We will then walk to Moynihan Train Hall where the tour will conclude. Moynihan Train Hall is an expansion of Pennsylvania Station, the main intercity and commuter rail station in New York City, into the city’s former main post office building, the James A. Farley Building, serving 17 of the station’s 21 tracks for Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road passengers. The 486,000 square foot complex was built to alleviate congestion in Penn Station, and the $1.6 billion renovation restored the Farley Building, including a retail space, a 320-seat waiting area for ticket-holding passengers, and public restrooms. Moynihan Train Hall facilitates the redevelopment of the larger Penn District. 

Date: 4/9/24 
Departure time: 8:00 a.m. 
Return time: 12:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Public transit 

Experience the revitalization of the South Bronx through affordable housing mechanisms and affordable housing at scale in the Mott Haven district with developer L&M.  

East 162nd Street Court provides 126 mixed-income rental apartments in a new 12-story building. Thirty-seven units are reserved for formerly homeless families in need of supportive services. L+M and B&B Supportive collaborated with Palladia and Services for the Underserved to provide family supportive services pursuant to a contract with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Services include case management for mental health and substance abuse problems as well as educational and workforce services. The new building includes a separate office space devoted to the provision of these services, a community room, and laundry facilities. The remaining units in the building are reserved for families that earn 60 percent and 80 percent of area median income. 

Bronx Point represents a transformative mixed-use development of approximately 530,000-square-feet that will bring affordable housing, educational community facilities, dynamic retail uses, and engaging new open space along the Harlem River waterfront in the South Bronx. It includes 542 units of permanently affordable housing, educational spaces for youth operated by Bronx Works and Billion Oyster Project, and retail opportunities. The Universal Hip Hop Museum will be a new cultural destination that celebrates the global hip hop culture. 

Date: 4/9/24 
Departure time: 8:15 a.m. 
Return time: 1:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Public transit 

In the two decades since the federal government turned over control of Governors Island to New York City, city officials have sought an innovative way to use the 172-acre patch of land with stunning views of Lower Manhattan. The city chose a consortium led by Stony Brook University to transform one of the island’s last big chunks of developable land into a 400,000-square-foot hub called the New York Climate Exchange. The campus, which will focus on researching climate solutions and training for green jobs, is expected to open in 2028. 

Date: 4/10/24 
Departure time: 8:00 a.m. 
Return time: 12:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Public transit 

With the Borden Complex, its latest state-of-the-art, multi-story, multi-tenant development, Innovo Property Group is shifting the paradigm for a new generation of users seeking space in dense metropolitan markets. The Borden Complex is a five-story, 900,000-square-foot, class A mixed-use development in Long Island City designed by KSS Architects. After its completion, expected in spring 2024, the project will be home to a 680,000-square-foot last mile distribution facility, designed for shipping to much of New York City. In addition, the space will be the home of Borden Studios, a 194,000-square-foot film and television production facility that includes sound stages, as well as office space for production crews and project executives. 

Date: 4/10/24 
Departure time: 8:15 a.m. 
Return time: 12:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Public transit 

Until recently, the new Hudson Yards district was simply an open swath of space peering down upon the open Amtrak and New Jersey Transit railways below. Over the course of 30-plus years, a plan was devised to build over the rail yards and create a new Manhattan neighborhood, like the creation of the Park Avenue corridor in the late 1900s. What has grown out of multiple rezoning plans and creative development teams in tandem with city and state support is an incredibly vibrant new mixed-use neighborhood dominated by developments led by the Related Group (Hudson Yards) and Brookfield Properties (Manhattan West). Located adjacent to Pennsylvania Station and the newly redeveloped Moynihan Train Hall, these developments are easily accessible and set to become the newest hub for commerce and live/work/play. The final piece of the puzzle, connecting the sites to the elevated High Line public park, was completed earlier this year. This tour will explore the history of the Hudson Yards as a whole, the engineering and development challenges of building over the railways, and the overall thesis for its success.   

Date: 4/11/24 
Departure time: 8:15 a.m. 
Return time: 1:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Public transit 

The 2004 rezoning of Downtown Brooklyn acted as a catalyst for the neighborhood’s remarkable revitalization, igniting a wave of transformative residential projects that have dramatically reshaped the area. Noteworthy among these developments is CityPoint, a dynamic mixed-use project featuring, a 68-story residential tower, a retail complex, and a popular food hall. In addition, Pacific Park, a vast 22-acre downtown redevelopment, has emerged as a vibrant community, boasting an impressive 6 million square feet of residential space, the iconic Barclays Center, as well as retail and office spaces, along with eight acres of green space. Among the exciting transformations, the Alloy Block is redefining Flatbush Avenue by redeveloping existing and new buildings to encompass educational, residential, and office spaces. Furthermore, Brookfield’s visionary efforts are shaping Brooklyn Commons into an alluring destination for creative office users. These remarkable redevelopments are situated at the heart of the BAM cultural district, surrounded by esteemed museums, vibrant dance centers, captivating galleries, renowned music venues, theaters, artists’ studios, media arts organizations, enticing restaurants, and inviting public plazas.   

Date: 4/9/24 
Departure time: 8:30 a.m. 
Return time: 2:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Public transit 

Lower Manhattan has undergone a renaissance in the years since September 11, 2001. In a nearly flawless example of public/private partnership, the World Trade Center site was redeveloped not only to honor and remember the victims of 9/11, but also to create an even stronger central core for Lower Manhattan. Existing properties also underwent transformations, from the repositioning of the stoic World Financial Center to the vibrant mixed-use Brookfield Place as well as the multiple office to residential conversions.  Led by key players in the transformations from Silverstein Properties and Brookfield Properties, this tour will explore the history of Lower Manhattan in its many incarnations and will delve into what the future will hold in the post-pandemic environment. 

Date: 4/11/24 
Departure time: 8:00 a.m. 
Return time: 1:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Bus 

The East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) Project is a coastal protection initiative jointly funded by the city of New York and the federal government, aimed at reducing flood risk from coastal storms and sea-level rise on Manhattan’s East Side from East 25th Street to Montgomery Street. ESCR is a one-of-a-kind, forward-thinking resilience project being constructed in a dense urban environment with complex below- and above-ground infrastructure. The 2.4-mile flood protection project is intended to build physical, social, and economic resilience, strengthening the city’s coastline while improving waterfront open space and accessibility.  

The boundaries of this project correspond with the natural “pinch-points” in the 100-year floodplain: areas where the land is higher along the coastline, making it easier to close the system off from water entering from the north and south. The project design integrates flood protection into the community fabric while improving waterfront access and public open space.  

The ESCR Project is the first step in the city’s plan for a more extensive coastal protection system around Lower Manhattan. This project is the result of years of planning and collaboration among city, state, and federal agencies, elected officials, and the local community, which has been enabled by a $338 million federal grant to fund design and construction, with the remainder of the project's $1.45 billion total cost funded by the city of New York. The city has worked with community partners and residents to identify the best ways to meet the many challenges caused by the climate crisis, including sea level rise and more frequent, intense storms.  

This tour will introduce people to portions of the project that are already completed and phases under construction in a “hard hat” tour led by DDC and the design team. Construction on the project began fall 2020 and will continue through 2026. 

Date: 4/11/24 
Departure time: 8:00 a.m. 
Return time: 1:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Bus 

The Gowanus neighborhood has historically been best known for the toxic sludge-filled canal that runs through its center. Sandwiched between three quintessential brownstone neighborhoods–Park Slope and Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill–this 82-block swath of Brooklyn has until recently been home to a gritty mix of industrial uses, with a dash of off-beat bars and barbeque joints. After a decade-long zoning overhaul that came into effect in 2022, Gowanus is now in the middle of a dramatic transformation. A vibrant mixed-use neighborhood is emerging that eventually will include over 8,200 new apartments, including 3,000 affordable units, 500,000 square feet of commercial and maker space, and a verdant esplanade that lines both sides of a cleaned-up canal.  

This walking tour will include several mixed-use, mixed-income multifamily projects in various stages of completion; a world-class anchor arts facility; an exemplar piece of green infrastructure; and the emerging public realm that ties it all together. The tour will be enriched with informal presentations by the planners, policymakers, developers, and designers who are making it all happen. 

Date: 4/9/24 
Departure time: 8:30 a.m. 
Return time: 12:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Public transit 

Hudson River Park extends in and along four miles of Manhattan’s shoreline from about Chambers Street to West 59th Street and includes dozens of recreational and revenue-generating piers.  Participants will walk along the water’s edge from Tribeca to the Meatpacking District, exploring many of the diverse, award-winning open spaces that have been created by the Hudson River Park Trust over the last 25 years, including the Pier 26 Tide Deck, the Tribeca Boardwalk, the Gansevoort Peninsula, and Little Island.  The tour will end at historic Pier 57, a mixed-use, adaptive reuse project created in partnership with RXR and Google.   

Date: 4/11/24 
Departure time: 8:15 a.m. 
Return time: 12:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Public transit 

Join us for a special tour of one of New York City’s most dynamic neighborhoods, Hudson Square. The district, at the nexus of NYC’s premier retail and residential neighborhoods, is rich in history but is also leading the way in terms of sustainable design and thoughtful and contextual architecture that is appealing to some of the world’s largest and most innovative office tenants, including Google, Horizon Media, Publicis Groupe and Squarespace. Trinity Church Wall Street, steward of the neighborhood since the early 1700s, helped usher in a residential rezoning that has allowed the neighborhood to flourish, and, in partnership with Norges Bank and Hines, Trinity Church has repositioned their more than 6 million-square-foot portfolio of purpose-built printing house buildings to cater to modern office needs in a class A manner.  

The group will tour the two cornerstones of the Hudson Square portfolio, 555 Greenwich + 345 Hudson and 75 Varick. 555 Greenwich is a 270,000-square-foot ground-up development designed by COOKFOX Architects that is the completion of the adjacent property, 345 Hudson (built in 1931), to create a 1.2 million-square-foot interconnected campus. 555 Greenwich represents the next generation of high-performing buildings and will exceed NYC’s 2030 climate targets for office buildings by over 45 percent and align with New York State 2050 carbon-neutral targets. 345 Hudson is one of three commercial buildings selected to participate in the Empire Building Challenge’s low-carbon public/private design partnership. We will end the tour at the southern end of Hudson Square at 75 Varick, which features downtown’s most expansive rooftop amenity. 

Date: 4/11/24 
Departure time: 8:15 a.m. 
Return time: 12:00 p.m. 
Price: $100
Transportation: Public transit 

In 2011, Cornell Tech emerged as the winner of a global contest—Mayor Bloomberg’s Applied Sciences NYC Initiative—that was designed to dramatically expand the city’s capacity in the applied sciences sector to maintain the city’s global competitiveness and create jobs. The winning bid by Cornell Tech, a partnership between Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, proposed the development of a 2-million-square-foot innovative science campus on Roosevelt Island, which will serve more than 2,000 graduate students and hundreds of faculty and staff upon its completion. By 2017, the $1 billion, 850,000-square-foot first phase opened, boasting a net-zero academic building, a striking co-location office building, a 40,000-square-foot conference center, a 224-room hotel and a residential tower with 350 apartments in the largest Passive House tower in the world at the time of its opening. The campus embodies New York’s commitment to technology’s growing impact in New York City. Discover Cornell Tech: NYC’s thriving innovation hub! 

Date: 4/10/24
Departure time: 8:00 a.m. 
Return time: 1:00 p.m. 
Price: $100 
Transportation: Bus 

In 1968, Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation purchased the derelict Sheffield Farms Milk Bottling Plant on Fulton Street in the heart of Bed-Stuy, then home to the nation’s largest African American community. Through a rehabilitation completed in 1972, the site became Restoration Plaza, a 300,000-square-foot commercial plaza that is home to Restoration’s headquarters, the historic Billie Holiday Theatre (BHT), the Skylight Gallery, and scores of local businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies, including a post office; local branches of JP Morgan Chase, Carver Federal Savings Bank, and Citibank; Super Foodtown; a school; and stores. Each year, hundreds of thousands of residents pass through the plaza, known as the unofficial town hall of Brooklyn, whether on their way to visit Restoration’s Center for Personal Financial Health, view a play at the BHT, or attend a community event hosted in the amphitheater.  

At its inception, Restoration Plaza was a landmark example of community development and adaptive reuse. Now, more than 50 years later, Restoration is once again advancing a bold new vision: reimaging the plaza as the Restoration Innovation Campus. The new campus will be a dramatically expanded, modern, multipurpose site that enables Restoration to meet the needs of the community today. It will include new public space, an expanded cultural center, and two commercial buildings for partners committed to disrupting the racial wealth gap.  

The plaza stands as a testament to the history and vibrancy of Central Brooklyn. This tour will showcase Restoration’s impact on the community, serving as a landlord, developer, service provider, cultural center, and community anchor for over five decades. It will also point to how the existing space is set to be reinvented for a new era.