HUDSON YARDS IN MANHATTEN

The High Line park comes to an abrupt end on the west side of Manhattan, as a chain link fence keeps anyone from stumbling into a massive train yard that handles much of the island’s commuter rail traffic.

Within a few years, that fence will be gone and an entire city block will have been built atop the 26-acre rail yard. Literally on top – the trains will continue to run on the same tracks they are on today, but a $1.5-billion platform will keep them out of sight.

Five thousand apartments will sprout from the newly-built artificial land mass, along with a million square feet of retail space and six million square feet of office space– the same amount that can be found in all of Saskatchewan. That’s three office towers, nine residential buildings and dozens of stores. There are also plans for a school, a cultural centre and 12 acres of open park space.

The $15-billion project is ambitious even by New York standards, and will result in an entirely new neighbourhood on what had been considered a fully built-out island. But in the meantime, much of the site is surrounded by wooden hoarding bearing the name of Canada’s largest real estate developer– Oxford Properties.

The project is the company’s bold step into the United States. And for the hundreds of thousands of pensioners and workers who rely on the company to generate solid returns to fund their retirement – Oxford is the real estate arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System and owns and manages $17-billion of buildings – the stakes couldn’t be any higher.

The last time the city saw such a transformation was more than 100 years ago, when Park Avenue and Grand Central Station were covered with the platform that is now crossed by millions of people a year without a second thought. If all goes according to plan, the hidden tracks below Hudson Yards will also be forgotten by the time the first residents move in.

“What we are doing here is building a new neighbourhood on the island of Manhattan,” said Blake Hutcheson, the chief executive officer of Oxford Properties. “You don’t do that every day.”

While the cost of building a New York flagship may be daunting, the company won’t be shelling out $15-billion in cash. Mr. Hutcheson estimated the two partners (Oxford and its partner Related) may need to invest up to $1.5-billion to get things going, but once work begins on the condos, the site will actually start generating cash.

While the broader U.S. housing market is weak, Manhattan has been insulated from the worst of the carnage. And even though the neighbourhood is considered out of the way, a new subway line will connect Hudson Yards to Grand Central station by 2013 – two years before any of the residential towers are built.