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.

All roads lead to Journal Square! Always considered the “heart of Jersey City,” Journal Square has had a rich history of serving the entire city and county. The Square provides a great opportunity to secure the city’s economic future and create one of the truly great central business districts (CBDs) in the country. Beginning in early 2007 and culminating in summer 2010, the Journal Square vision plan came to life. The visionings effort was a true public/private effort, with local residents, businesspeople, anchor institutions such as Hudson County Community College/Saint Peters, and city officials working together over a three-year period to bring the plan to fruition. Adopted by the City Council in June 2010, the plan was honed at more than 30 community meetings, some large and some small, to get it right. The Journal Square plan, now the 2060 plan, has proved to be a remarkable success for the city’s CBD.

The plan, built around smart growth principles, now encompasses approximately 233 acres in the heart of the city. From the beginning, the 2060 Plan was embraced by the broad array of stakeholders that were deeply involved in the long process. The commitment to the plan can be seen not just in the award-winning Journal Squared Towers, but also with the wide range of mixed-use towers built or under construction in the Square. The heart of the 2060 plan was always about the smart transit-oriented development and transportation network that leads to the Square. The private sector had done its job by quickly sensing the potential of the Square and moving redevelopment forward at an unheard-of pace.

The plan is now in its 30th year and many of the original goals of the plan have been realized. The development of world-class, mixed-use towers has progressed at unprecedented speed. Moreover, the current development of both the historic Loews Theater and the Centre Pompidou is bringing arts and entertainment back to the Journal Square CBD. The Journal Square 2060 plan has clearly demonstrated that a shared redevelopment vision of the community and private and public sectors can lead to meaningful community renewal. 

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.

Essex Crossing represents a true partnership between public and private interests. L+M, BFC Development Partners, Taconic Investment Partners, and The Prusik Group, 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.

In 2022, Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul unveiled plans for Science Park and Research Campus (SPARC) Kips Bay, a state-of-the-art jobs and education hub in New York City. SPARC will transform Hunter College’s Brookdale Campus with an ambulatory care center, health care training simulation centers, an NYC Public Schools high school with health and science focus, and more. Driven by historic investment from the city and state, SPARC Kips Bay will make New York a global leader in creating and attracting accessible jobs in life sciences, health care, and public health by creating a pipeline from local public schools to careers in these growing and essential fields. New York City’s health care sector employs over 750,000 New Yorkers, and the metropolitan area’s life sciences sector is a rapidly growing industry with nearly 150,000 additional jobs in recent years. The city estimates the campus’s new commercial lab space will create about 2,000 quality jobs and attract new companies and startups, leading to additional good-paying jobs in the health care and life sciences fields.

During this walking tour, participants will have the opportunity to tour the Brookdale campus, visit a working laboratory, and learn more about the next stages of the SPARC project and how the city and state are working together to support the life sciences industry in New York City.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard is a center of urban manufacturing and innovation. A one-of-a-kind ecosystem with a legacy dating back to the early 1800s, the Yard has played a pivotal role in shaping American history, from its origins as a naval shipyard to its transformation into a dynamic, mission-driven industrial park. The Yard is a nationally acclaimed model of the viability and positive impact of modern, urban industrial development, employing more than 11,000 people and generating over $2.5 billion per year in economic impact for the city. Building on the Yard’s history as the economic heart of Brooklyn, the 300-acre waterfront asset houses more than 500 business and offers a critical pathway to the middle class for many New Yorkers.

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.

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. 

The Sunset Park waterfront, once one of the busiest shipping ports in the country, today serves as a major industrial, manufacturing, and employment hub in NYC. The area’s continued prominence as a manufacturing center is due in part to the large footprint of publicly owned industrial campuses dedicated to preserving and growing the area’s manufacturing legacy. The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) manages more than 200 acres of this area including the Brooklyn Army Terminal (BAT), Made in New York Campus at Bush Terminal, and the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal. The Brooklyn Army Terminal was built in 1918 by Cass Gilbert and was originally used as an American military supply and troop deployment facility. Today, BAT is New York City’s premier affordable hub for innovative industrial businesses and entrepreneurs, serving more than 100 businesses and 4,000 employees. BAT is being positioned as a future home for climate innovators and industrial businesses developing and fabricating technologies that support climate solutions. The Made in New York Campus at Bush Terminal is undergoing an investment of more than $265 million to reposition this historic shipping yard as a creative industrial hub with events facilities and public waterfront open space. Along with Industry City, a privately owned and operated creative industrial hub in Sunset Park, these campuses born out of the same historic shipping ports are being reimagined as modern industrial facilities supporting a vast workforce.

Join a walking tour of spaces significant to the Stonewall Uprising in 1969 and the LGBTQ+ movement Stonewall inspired. This tour will visit the historic Stonewall Inn, Washington Square Park, AIDS Memorial, Gay Liberation Monument, Oscar Wilde Bookshop, Gay Street, and the start of the First Pride March.

For over one hundred years, the Greenpoint waterfront in Brooklyn was a functioning lumberyard and industrial center. In 2005 the Greenpoint-Williamsburg Waterfront Rezoning connected the waterfront to the long-establish Greenpoint neighborhood, including acres of publicly accessible open space and waterfront promenades. One of the largest development sites along the waterfront is Greenpoint Landing – a 22-acre site situated along a half-mile of East River waterfront being master-planned and developed by Park Tower Group. When complete, Greenpoint Landing will include about 5,500 apartments (including much-needed affordable units), a sprawling waterfront park designed by Field Operations, a new school, and numerous local retail opportunities. In a joint venture, Park Tower Group and Brookfield Properties developed a total of 2,000 units across four development sites, including One Blue Slip (2018), Two Blue Slip (2020) and The BellSlip (2022), all designed by Handel Architects and Eagle & West (2022) designed by OMA. Park Tower Group joint ventured with L&M Development Partners on three stand-alone affordable buildings - 33 Eagle, 5 Blue Slip and 7 Bell Slip – all designed by Handel Architects, and with Rockefeller Group on The Dupont, designed by GKV Architects, which is the latest building to be constructed at Greenpoint Landing. This past summer, Park Tower Group unveiled their 374-unit fully affordable building at 35 Commercial Street, also designed by Handel Architects.

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 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 399 Park Avenue, a 1,800,000-square-foot office tower developed by Boston Properties.

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.

Beginning in the 19th century, New York’s Morningside Heights attracted important institutions that have since grown into large campuses, dominating the character of the neighborhood. These institutions are constrained by space with no obvious land for development. In response, many of these institutions have uncovered new opportunities by partnering with for-profit development teams to simultaneously revitalize the historic urban fabric and respond to the city’s ever-growing demand for housing. This has been achieved by introducing a new, denser building typology—tall, modern apartment towers—into the neighborhood. This tour will examine how a range of development groups and their design teams have leveraged the historic urban underpinnings of Morningside Heights to create new projects that demonstrate the value of vertical placemaking within the neighborhood.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

Long Island City (LIC) is New York City’s fastest growing neighborhood. The city is engaged in multiple efforts to support the neighborhood’s long-term transformation into a mixed-use district. The Hunter’s Point South project is transforming the Long Island City waterfront with improved infrastructure, an 11-acre waterfront park, and 5,000 total residential units, including 3,000 affordable housing units. In 2018, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) completed the waterfront park, featuring a green stormwater infrastructure, bicycle and pedestrian pathways, adult fitness equipment, a playground, and an art installation. In fall 2023, the city kicked off the One LIC neighborhood planning study, focusing on LIC’s northern Waterfront and the industrial business zone (IBZ) located between the Waterfront and Court Square. This project seeks to leverage city-owned sites for affordable housing, promote equitable economic development, add waterfront open space, and improve circulation around the neighborhood.

This tour will begin at Hunter’s Point South Park, move north along the LIC waterfront to Anable Basin, and conclude at the IBZ. 

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.

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.

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.

Visit groundbreaking resilience-focused projects in Rockaway, Queens. The Arverne East project is a master-planned development transforming a 116-acre oceanfront site, composed of a 35-acre publicly accessible nature preserve, mixed-income housing of various tenure, diverse neighborhood retail, parking, and infrastructure. This project also includes a boutique hotel, recreation spaces, an urban farm, and both short- and long-term uses to encourage economic development, cultural programs, and community health and wellness. Arverne East will also include a district geothermal ambient loop, which will tie into individual building systems for increased efficiency and reduced consumption in heating, cooling, and domestic hot water.

Beach Green Dunes II is a model for resilient, green, affordable housing development, delivering 127 affordable homes to one of the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods. Like Arvene East, this building’s design and construction uses Passive House principles, a cutting-edge sustainable building method, to increase the building’s energy efficiency. Beach Green Dunes II is a perfect example for how cities and developers can build cutting-edge sustainable design to deliver affordable housing in communities grappling with severe storms, tidal flooding, and rising sea levels.

Beach Green Dunes III is currently vacant land owned by the city of New York and is being developed by L+M Development Partners in conjunction with Triangle Equities and The Bluestone Organization. This project will contain residential space, commercial/retail space, and community facility space, as well as an open space transit plaza. Beach Green Dunes III will also be a Passive House–certified building and participate in the city’s Housing Development Corporation’s and Department of Housing Preservation & Development’s Extremely Low and Low Income (ELLA) housing program.

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.

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.

This tour will also visit the Lower Manhattan Coastal Resilience Project. Lower Manhattan is at the core of New York City’s transportation system, economy, and civic life. Millions of people travel through this area by rail, bus, car, and ferry every day, and the residential population has increased by 170 percent in the last two decades. By the 2040s, Lower Manhattan’s shoreline will begin to experience frequent tidal flooding from seal level rise, impacting streets, sidewalks, buildings, and critical infrastructure. Failure to act now will render much of this area unusable, leading to the loss of Lower Manhattan as we know it today. The Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency (LMCR) Project is an integrated coastal protection initiative to reduce flood risk from coastal storms and sea level rise. The city, state, and federal government have committed over $1.7 billion in capital investments for climate adaptation projects.

The Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Plan will complete this comprehensive flood defense strategy by providing protection along the one-mile stretch of waterfront between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Battery. The plan features a multilevel waterfront that extends into the East River and will provide protection against both sea level rise and severe storms. This plan reflects a shared City-community vision to protect the area from climate change, while providing new universally accessible public open spaces, resilient ferry terminals and piers, and space for habitat restoration. When implemented, the Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Plan is expected to prevent $11 billion in economic losses to the city and region.

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!

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 a cornerstone of the Hudson Square portfolio, 555 Greenwich + 345 Hudson. 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 follow with a tour of 550 Washington, the 1.3 million-square-foot home to Google's headquarters designed by COOKFOX, and end at historic Pier 57. Originally constructed in 1952, the newly restored mixed-use pier features Little Island, an award-winning public park and urban oasis, a waterfront food market, ample indoor/outdoor community spaces, and an interactive gallery and classroom focused on wildlife and waterways.

Explore the high-rise building boom that’s transformed New York City’s skyline in recent years. This tour will visit high-rises along Central Park West, Central Park South, and Park Avenue that have set records for some of the most expensive home sales in U.S. history but have also set the stage for the supertalls that have joined New York’s skyline in recent years.

Hunts Point is home to over 12,600 residents, a thriving industrial business zone (IBZ), and the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center (FDC)—one of the largest wholesale distribution centers in the world and the single largest geographic cluster of food sources for the city (measured by annual distribution volume in pounds to NYC customers). The FDC is composed of over 155 public and private wholesalers, distributors, and manufacturers, including the Hunts Point Terminal Produce Market, the Hunts Point Cooperative Meat Market, and the New Fulton Fish Market. It is estimated that 4.5 billion pounds of food is distributed through the Hunts Point FDC annually, with roughly 50 percent going to NYC and 50 percent going outside the city. Together, the FDC directly employs 8,500 people. In all, 12 percent of all food distributed to NYC comes from the Hunts Point FDC. Forty nine percent of the customers at the FDC are independent restaurants and cafes, 20 percent are bodegas, 18 percent are supermarkets, and 13 percent are food markets.

This tour will include stops at the businesses within the FDC and will give participants a better understanding of this crucial piece of city infrastructure, and how it supports the city’s food economy. Additional stops will include the Peninsula, the former Spofford Juvenile Detention Facility that is currently being redeveloped into a mixed-use project with affordable housing, open space, and manufacturing uses.