Related Cos restarts west side Manhattan project

Sept 29 (Reuters) - Property developer Related Cos said on Tuesday it had restarted work on a 1.2 million-square-foot development in midtown Manhattan that had been stalled by the economic downturn.

The block-sized project on 440 West 42nd St. between 10th and Dyer avenues, will comprise 163 units of affordable housing, market-rate rental units, for-sale residences, a hotel, non-profit theaters and retail spaces.

Related said it had worked with unions, contractors, trades, architects and engineers to reduce costs. The project will create more than 700 construction jobs, the company said.

The New York State Housing Finance Agency and a lending consortium are providing the financing.

"This development was unique in that the foundation work had been completed and the financing was in place, but it offers valuable lessons that can be applied to future projects on how we can reduce the price of construction here in New York," Bruce Beal Jr., executive vice president of Related Cos, said in a statement.

Cost savings were achieved through a combination of efforts including a project labor agreement and by a thorough review of every aspect of the job including redesign and re-engineering of the development, the company said.

Weak demand and tight financing have stalled several New York projects, such as Boston Properties Inc's planned 1-million-square foot skyscraper on West 55th Street. (Reporting by Ilaina Jonas; Editing by Ted Kerr)

In a national survey at the turn of the millennium both journalists and the public ranked the dropping of the atomic bomb and the end of the Second World War as the top news stories of the twentieth-century. The advent of nuclear weapons, made possible by the Manhattan Project, not only helped bring an end to the Second World War — it ushered in the atomic age and determined how the next war, the Cold War, would be fought.

The United States Department of Energy Office of History and Heritage Resources, with the assistance of a graduate fellow, has been developing an interactive web site on the Manhattan Project. When completed, The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History will total some 120,000 words and over 200 pages and 500 images, including photographs, maps, and drawings. The site is being implemented incrementally, with the “Events of the Manhattan Project” and “Resources Relating to the Manhattan Project” sections the first part to go online. Click on the Events or Resources buttons to the left for a listing of currently available pages.

The remaining sections are scheduled to go online in the near future. Click on the buttons to the left for listings of the projected web pages under each heading.