Hudson Yards opens, remaking Manhattan's Far West Side
The largest private real estate development in US history welcomed its first visitors, complete with luxury shops, towers and a climbable sculpture.
Hudson Yards, the largest private real estate development in American history, opened to the public on Friday, transforming a once-barren stretch of Manhattan's Far West Side into a gleaming district of soaring towers, luxury shops and a public square anchored by a honeycomb-like climbable sculpture.
Built on a platform over an active rail yard at a cost of some $25 billion, the project added office skyscrapers, residences, a shopping mall and a cultural centre to a neighbourhood that had long been an afterthought. Its centrepiece, a towering copper-coloured structure of interlocking staircases called the Vessel, quickly became a magnet for visitors and selfies.
Developers and city officials cast Hudson Yards as a symbol of New York's ambition and economic strength, a modern district risen from railyards and connected to the new 7 train extension and the elevated High Line park.
But the project also drew sharp criticism. Detractors derided it as a glossy playground for the wealthy, built with the help of hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies and tax breaks, that did little for ordinary New Yorkers. The luxury mall and high-end restaurants, they argued, reflected a city increasingly shaped for the rich.
Whatever the verdict, Hudson Yards reshaped the skyline and the map of Manhattan, a vast bet on the future of a neighbourhood that had been overlooked for generations.