If you’ve ever lost in Jenga by knocking down a tower after moving one block, you might appreciate what developers have accomplished at TSX Broadway, a hotel and entertainment complex in Times Square.
The developer of the 46-story building has managed to dislodge the lower floors and lift them 30 feet without anything plunging to the ground.
And what is exalted is not just an old part. It is the Palace Theater, a house for Broadway shows designed by the architectural firm Kirchhoff & Rose in the Beaux-Arts style. The theatre, which weighs 14 million pounds, is a listed building, meaning the structure, from the stage to the balcony, had to be moved without suffering a single tear in the delicate plasterwork that adorns ceilings, arches and benches.
“It was a great feeling to see it happen,” said Anthony J. Mazzo, the president of Urban Foundation/Engineering, which did the heavy lifting using a system of jacks and telescoping beams he invented 30 years ago for a warehouse roof project in Queens. “I feel like it has worked like clockwork,” he added.
Even in a city known for its outrageous building performance, the project was fraught with risks, from possible damage to the ornate interior to the possibility of the entire theater falling to the ground. But it was a critical part of a $2.5 billion transformation of the building, which will include a 661-room hotel and outdoor stage overlooking Times Square next year.
Since 1913, the 1,700-seat palace has occupied most of the ground floor on West 47th Street and Broadway, drawing hundreds of visitors eight times a week to see musicals such as “Annie,” “Sunset Boulevard,” and “West Side Story.” . But offering only live theater suffocated an even greater source of income: the tens of millions of tourists who roam Times Square in a typical year, eager to spend money in stores.
Annual retail rents in Times Square, nearly $2,000 per square foot, are typically among the highest in the country. The pandemic depressed the area, which attracted only 35,000 visitors a day on weekends in the spring of 2020. But two years later, that number has risen to 300,000, according to the Times Square Alliance, a coalition working to improve and promote the district.
To tap into some of that potential revenue, L&L Holding, the lead developer of the TSX project, has made arrangements with the theater’s owner, the Nederlander Organization, to elevate the palace and fill the void with three floors of new retail space, part of 10 floors of retail in the tower. The theater will have a new entrance on West 47th, as well as a new lobby, marquee and backstage.
“It was critical for us to elevate the theater to create the space, but also to unlock the theater’s potential, with all the things that would help it become a modern building,” said David Orowitz, a L&L director.
Urban Foundation had a roadmap to follow. In 1998, it rolled the Beaux-Arts Empire Theater on West 42nd Street 170 feet west as part of a plan by developer Forest City Ratner to make way for retail stores. Today the building is the AMC Empire cinema with 25 screens and a twinkling tent.
But at 7.4 million pounds, the empire was half the weight of the palace. In addition, the tracks used to move the empire were in fact sunk into the ground below, meaning the building only had to rise a few inches, said Mr. Mazzo, who was also the engineer on that project.
Anyone who has ever changed a car tire using a strategically placed jack or frame rack may be familiar with how the palace made its upward journey.
A crew of three dozen workers first reinforced the theater by adding a six-foot-thick concrete layer around the rim of the base, then sinking 34 columns 30 feet into the Manhattan bedrock below. They fit snugly into the columns, like hands in gloves, and smaller beams that could move up and down like parts of a telescope. Under the collars on each beam were placed four hydraulic jacks that resembled large paint cans with arms reaching upwards.
When the jackets were put on, they pushed up the collars, and the theater with them. After the arms of the jacks were raised just two inches, the workers stopped the elevator, set the theater at its new height, adjusted and fastened the collars with large bolts, repositioned the jacks, and restarted the whole process.
In March, when the palace was 5 meters higher, the elevator project was paused to allow workers to build new floors in the newly made space, which also helped support the theater.
Throughout the process, a handful of people huddled in a plywood cabin with their eyes on monitors installed in the theater. A slight tilt of less than half a degree somehow would have been enough for a hard stop, said Robert Israel, an L&L executive vice president who worked on the TSX project.
The delicate nature of lifting a 7,000-ton theater becomes even more complicated. Many aspects of the TSX project have overlapped since work started in 2019, including the demolition of the old Doubletree Hotel above the theater and construction of its replacement, the pouring of a new foundation and the addition of 51,000 square feet. signage on the outside of the building.
Also, zoning codes have changed since the tower was added in the late 1980s, which could have meant a significant reduction in square footage for the finished product. But under New York’s current zoning law, if a quarter of the floor space is left in place, a renovation project can keep its original square footage.
In order for TSX Broadway to maintain its size—about 500,000 square feet—L&L had to retain many of the existing concrete slabs from the 16th floor, essentially leaving them suspended in the air while construction around them took place in another Jenga- like performance.
“This is by far the most complex project I’ve ever undertaken, which L&L has undertaken,” said Mr. Israel as he stood in a dim, cool room below the palace, with construction notes scribbled in spray paint that theatergoers will never see. to see.
The theater reached its final peak on April 5, a feat that was celebrated a month later with a media event attended by city officials, L&L executives and Broadway producers.
One of Broadway’s oldest theaters, the palace had undergone changes before. In 1926, the owner installed an “electric piano in the lobby to compete with the popular nearby Roxy,” according to the 1987 New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission report that led to conservation status for much of the theater’s interior. But the lobby, which was revamped in the 1930s, 1960s, and again in the 1980s, never gained landmark status and was demolished as part of the TSX overhaul.
Acting primarily as a cinema for RKO Pictures before the mid-20th century, the palace was also home to acts such as Harry Houdini, Diana Ross and Judy Garland, who completed a 19-week period in 1951 and ’52. The Dutchman family bought the theater in 1965 and gave it a $500,000 makeover, after which it began hosting Broadway musicals, beginning with the premiere of Neil Simon’s “Sweet Charity.”
As the theater prepares to welcome visitors again, it is seen as a proxy for the revival of Times Square and New York.
“We were symbolic of the pause in the pandemic and we are symbolic of the determination of the recovery,” said Tom Harris, the president of the Times Square Alliance.
