Related Companies plans to build a 1,200-foot-tall skyscraper on Madison Avenue, Related CEO Jeff Blau told Realty Check.
Cloudbuster, which would include luxury condominiums, shops and possibly a hotel, is planned to be built at 625 Madison Ave., including the adjacent 39 E. 58th.Number St., the former location of restaurant Lavo.
Related’s desire to build a new building has been reported before, but its sheer size was not previously known.
Blau said Related recently completed the purchase of the land for $632 million from SL Green Corp. The deal was announced by SL Green in December, but the closing has not yet been posted on the city’s finance department website.
Blau said the new skyscraper could be built “all by right of way,” which apparently means it wouldn’t require zoning changes or city land-use review.
Blau spoke to The Post after Related’s founder and chairman, Stephen M. Ross, stepped down last week in a historic, but not entirely unexpected, move to start a new development company in South Florida.
Blue may be in a politically tough position as Related tackles the daunting task of getting state approval for a casino license for Hudson Yards, but he describes it as essentially a “red tape.” Ross, 84, all but moved to West Palm Beach several years ago. Since then, Related has been run by Blue, a good friend of Ross’s, along with company president Bruce Beale Jr. and chief operating officer Kenneth Wong.
Blue clarified that the new Florida company, called Related Roth, is a “completely separate entity” from Related Companies.
He had not yet shared images of the 625 Madison plans.
“Demolition work will begin over the next nine months,” he said.
“I spent the first 15 years of my life with Stephen in that building,” Blau recalls. The building was once Ronald Perelman’s Revlon headquarters and the location of his first Reality Check column, “I interviewed Ross in 1999 as demolition was underway at the New York Coliseum at Columbus Circle, the future home of Related’s Time Warner Center.”
Of course, the most ambitious item in Related’s Big Apple plans is its proposal to build a 3 million-square-foot Wynn-branded casino resort on the undeveloped west side of Hudson Yards.
Blue couldn’t contain his enthusiasm about Related’s $12 billion plan to eventually build out the entire west yard.
“It definitely can’t get any bigger,” Blau said. As first reported by The Washington Post last summer, the resort high-rise will include a 250,000-square-foot casino, a 1,700-room hotel and 20 restaurants.
Plans for the Western Yards also include a 2 million-square-foot office tower, a 1 million-square-foot apartment tower with 324 units of affordable housing, a new public school and a roughly six-acre public park (“bigger than Bryant Park,” Blau said).
But that will be up to the New York State Gaming Site Commission, which is expected to select a winning proposal from among a dozen for New York City casino licenses by the end of 2025.
State officials are eager to see Related’s entire 26-acre Hudson Yards site completed, but other proposed casino ties also promise significant benefits for nearby residents.
SL Green, for example, is touting its dream of a Caesars-branded casino at 1515 Broadway as necessary to halt Times Square’s recent decline. The Solovyov Group/Mohegan near the United Nations and Steve Cohen/Hard Rock International near Citi Field also have their own selling points.
A formal proposal isn’t scheduled to be introduced until June 2025. State lawmakers want to move up the deadline to next month, but Gov. Kathy Hawkle has yet to sign the bill.
“We wish the submission had been made sooner. We want to get it out there and work with the community to address any concerns. But obviously we’ll do what’s necessary,” Blau said.
He downplayed recent opposition from Friends of the High Line over the height of the platform on which the casino/hotel tower would stand, saying Related has met with the group 10 times in the past year to revise the design.
Related is also busy with major projects with Essence Development, including a new housing complex in Willets Point, Queens, and NYCHA’s Fulton Elliott Chelsea Houses in West Chelsea. The latter will create 3,000 new affordable apartments as part of a plan to “make sure no one is displaced,” Blau said.
Related owns about $60 billion worth of real estate across the U.S. Although New Yorkers think of the company primarily as a large-scale office developer, it’s also the country’s largest private owner of affordable housing.
