Bloomberg Tower

Rank #6
Cost: $450 million

Despite its size and prominence, the 54-story, 1.3 million-sq.-ft. mixed-use development at 731 Lexington Ave. in New York was finished without much noise or fanfare.

It will serve of the new headquarters for Bloomberg LP, the company started and owned by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. As anchor tenant for the project, the company will have nearly 4,000 employees, customer training and state-of-the-art broadcast facilities. It will contain 900,000 sq. ft. of office space, two floors of retail shops and 100 luxury condominiums.

The Home Depot U.S.A. Inc. will open a store that will be operated as a pedestrian-oriented "urban neighborhood" store, with a product assortment geared specifically for the Manhattan neighborhoods it will serve. The store's entrance will be on Third Avenue leading to a 73,000-sq.-ft. store on the lower level. Clothing retailer Hennes & Mauritz (H & M) will operate a 27,000-sq.-ft. store.

The development will encompass a full city block between Lexington and Third avenues and 58th and 59th streets. It consists of a concrete residential tower on top of a steel office and retail podium.

It features two towers. One tower has a slender lateral system and a tuned mass damper, and another shorter tower is separated by a unique seven-story atrium.

The low and mid-rise commercial component of the project is framed entirely in steel, up to the 30th floor. This steel frame then supports a cast-in-place flat-plate structure rising above the 30th floor for the project's residential component

Two outrigger floors with a system of belt trusses positioned at the mechanical levels, together with a braced core and shear wall with many unique features, provide the needed stability.

The second outrigger level also serves as the transfer floor, where all concrete columns and walls of the high-rise frame above transfer onto the steel core and columns of the frame below, via a series of plate girders, transfer trusses and belt trusses. A tuned mass damper is housed at roof level, to control tenant comfort criteria.

The project was developed by Vornado Realty Trust. Bovis Lend Lease LMB Inc. was the general contractor on the job; Cesar Pelli & Associates, the design architect; SLCE, architect-of-record; and Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers, structural engineers.

Construction began in 2001 and the building is expected to be fully occupied by early 2005.

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