New york developments start to rebound

When the development firm Hines began exploring plans for a state-of-the-art, ground-up office tower overlooking Bryant Park in April 2009, the notion seemed far-fetched at best, given the economic mood.

After all, Lehman Brothers had collapsed seven months earlier and Bernard L. Madoff had just pleaded guilty to federal felony charges in his vast financial Ponzi scheme. By the end of 2009, construction had frozen at development sites all across Manhattan.

But in the nearly 30 months since those discussions, Hines’s plan to build a 28-story, glass-and-stainless steel tower at 1045 Avenue of the Americas has withstood many of the obstacles that have thwarted other real estate developers.

“In no point in the last 30 years across all the cycle changes have we ever not been active,” said Tommy Craig, a senior vice president and head of Hines’s regional office in New York. “Resilience is one of the defining virtues of our firm.”

Source: NYTimes.com