Perhaps one of the most striking images of Hurricane Sandy’s havoc was the crane boom dangling precariously 1,000 feet above Gary Barnett’s One57 site, which forced a weeklong area evacuation. Now, six months after the incident, construction workers will begin to raise a replacement crane to the top of the luxury residential site, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Installing the new crane’s 150-foot-long-boom will require the street to be closed and three nearby buildings to be evacuated for a day. Trailer trucks are slated to arrive at the site — located between Sixth and Seventh avenues – today, and pieces of The New Crane Will Be Hoisted Into Place.
Next week, the new boom will be assembled horizontally on 57th Street, which would require the nearby Alwyn Court and Briarcliff apartment buildings to be evacuated.
Most construction work at One57 carried on without a crane in place, representatives from Extell Development and builder Lend Lease Co. told the Journal, but a new crane was needed to install a window-washing device and create a funnel-like top to the building.
Extell insisted that the accident did not hurt sales, saying that 70 percent of the building was in contract, with two deals signed for $90 million or more. [WSJ] — Hiten Samtani