Extell Bid for Yards Three Times Greater than FCR's

At least someone’s paying attention! A reader alerted us to yesterday’s Times article reporting that Extell Development’s bid for the railyards is in fact $150 million–three times the amount Bruce Ratner submitted. The MTA board is supposed to decide the winner at its monthly meeting on Wednesday. Turns out, though, that both bids are shy of the value determined in a recent appraisal commissioned by the MTA. The contest is over the rights to an 8.4-acre parcel known as Vanderbilt Yards, a potentially valuable site opposite Atlantic Terminal, the city’s third-largest transportation hub, with 10 subway lines and a station for the Long Island Rail Road. The railyard now forms a waterless moat between the surrounding neighborhoods, but, according to the Times, the residential project proposed for the site could form a vibrant bridge between the communities. Only time will tell.
Rival Bid Tops Ratner’s [NY Times]