[August 2023]
1 minute speech
Title : Why New York’s Billionaires’ Row Is Half Empty
Link : https://youtu.be/Wehsz38P74g
1. Summary
The video discusses Billionaires’ Row in New York City, a stretch of luxury homes for the super-rich. These super slender skyscrapers are a symbol of wealth and engineering feats. Despite their grandeur, many units remain empty, serving as secondary residences or investments. These buildings are fueled by tax breaks and regulatory loopholes. The housing crisis, wealth gap, and unequal taxation are challenges posed by this phenomenon. The impact of these structures reflects the city's evolving narrative, from historical landmarks to modern symbols of wealth.
2. Script
This is Billionaires’ Row. You've probably seen these buildings on social media. They're a stretch of homes in New York City that only the world's richest people can afford to live in.
Billionaires’ Row here in New York City set off a super slender skyscraper revolution. Today, those towers are an astounding display of wealth, prestige and engineering firsts. But they're also kind of empty.
Back on the ground, finding an apartment for us non-billionaires is well, take it from a New Yorker. New York City housing is a scam. It is a scam, scam, scam, scam scam. Whew.
Three years ago this very week, we released a video called The Rise and Rise of New York's Billionaires’ Row. But now we want to look at its legacy. How did it come about? Why are so many of those apartments still sitting empty? And what does all that mean for the world of wealth and construction and the city itself?
Midtown Manhattan, it is here that one of the first skyscrapers was built. New York is about building the tallest building and then coming back and building a taller building. There is only one Billionaires’ Row in the world, and it's in New York City and it's on 57th Street, and it's all for profit.
Beverly Hills has its mega mansions, but when it comes to sheer stratospheric cost, New York City really may have them beat. It is an oversupply in the sky. You actually look down on the Empire State Building. Worth it. It is a safety deposit in the sky for some of the richest people in the world.
Some of the buildings on Billionaires' Row are quite beautiful and amazing constructs. But we're at a moment in society where there's a widespread great reckoning with the abuses of power and the concentrations of wealth. We are the 99%, we are the 99%, we are the 99%.
Just south of Central Park sit some of the most exclusive homes anywhere in the world. There are no official gates to Billionaires’ Row, but the name refers to a handful of buildings on and around West 57th Street.
Nestled alongside iconic New York landmarks like Carnegie Hall, the Russian Tea Room and the Plaza Hotel, you'll also find 432 Park Avenue, 53W53, 111W57, One57 and Central Park Tower. A little further out you have 220 Central Park South, 520 Park Avenue and 252 East 57th Street.
Now, it wouldn't be a B1M video if we didn't look at the engineering of these incredible, mind bendingly slender towers. Skyscrapers have been getting progressively taller and thinner for years. But Billionaire's Row has given rise to a whole new breed of skyscraper entirely, the super slender residential tower.
In Manhattan space comes at a premium, which means if you want to build big, you've got to build up. To develop the small sites they'd secured with buildings tall enough to offer Central Park views, developers on Billionaire's Row spent years acquiring the air rights for the properties around their lots. That meant they could combine those new air rights to build their property taller and ensure those nearby buildings couldn't block their newly built views of Central Park. It's kind of like piecing together a very expensive puzzle.
New York's building code considers a building slender if it has a width to height ratio of 1:7. But the towers over on Billionaires’ Row go far beyond that. One57 was the first of the bunch to complete in 2014, with a ratio of 1:8. Then came 432 Park Avenue with a ratio of 1:15. From there, 53 West 53rd, 111 West 57th Street and Central Park Tower all joined the ranks of super slender skyscrapers on Manhattan’s skyline.
Today, the thinnest of the bunch is 111 West 57th Street. The 85 storey building is officially the world's thinnest skyscraper. It's just 18 meters wide, but rises to 435 meters in height. That's a width to height ratio of 1:24. Put it next to the Empire State Building or One World Trade Center, and you start to get an idea of just how astoundingly thin these new super slender buildings really are.
But building so slender comes with its own unique structural challenges. Stiffening the structure is the key to maintaining stability. The materials have to be strong enough to keep the building steady, and concrete is often used to construct the core of the building. And of course, when you're 400 meters in the air, you have to think about the wind.
To keep the building from swaying too much, 111 West 57th Street has an 800 ton tuned mass damper or giant swinging weight at the top, which works almost like a shock absorber in a car. Skyscrapers are always going to move a bit, but the goal is to make it so the people inside don't notice.
The engineering behind these buildings is truly remarkable. But the story of Billionaires’ Row isn't just about the buildings. It's about the people who live there, or more accurately, the people who don't.
Many of the apartments on Billionaires’ Row are bought as investments or pieds-à-terre, which means they're often empty. The owners might only stay there a few weeks a year, or not at all. It's a phenomenon that's been dubbed "lights out London" in the UK, where wealthy investors buy up property and then leave it empty.
In New York, it's created a strange situation where some of the most expensive real estate in the world sits vacant. It's a stark contrast to the city's ongoing housing crisis, where thousands of New Yorkers are struggling to find affordable places to live.
The story of Billionaires’ Row is a tale of two cities. On one hand, it's a testament to human ingenuity and the drive to build ever taller and more impressive structures. On the other, it's a symbol of the vast wealth inequality that exists not just in New York, but around the world.
The future of Billionaires’ Row remains uncertain. As the world grapples with the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, the market for ultra-luxury real estate may shift. But for now, these towers stand as a reminder of the power and privilege of the world's elite.