Hudson Landing Would Build 1,127 Homes Above Manhattan’s Coal-Tar Legacy

The asphalt lot opposite the Intrepid Museum looks like leftover Manhattan: 14 bus-sized parking spaces occupying a full blockfront beside the West Side Highway. Underground, however, is an industrial inheritance more than a century old.

The state-owned parcel formed part of the West 45th Street Gas Works, a manufactured-gas plant that operated from the late 1870s until 1913. Now a development team wants to transform it into Hudson Landing, a roughly $1 billion complex containing two connected towers and 1,127 homes.

That proposal begins not with a foundation, but with contaminated ground.

Where it is

621 West 45th Street, New York, NY 10036

When Manhattan made its own gas

Before electricity became ubiquitous, and long before natural gas arrived through interstate pipelines, cities produced fuel locally. Plants heated coal and other feedstocks, then cooled and purified the resulting gas before piping it to streetlights, homes and businesses.

Coal tar condensed during that process. The dense, oily material could collect inside gas holders, pipes and underground separation structures. Cracks and spills allowed it to enter surrounding soil, while groundwater that contacted the tar could pick up compounds including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

At West 45th Street, the gas works once extended across portions of two Manhattan blocks and the adjacent waterfront. Most plant buildings were removed after operations ended in 1913, although a large gas holder remained in use until 1965. Later road and pier projects reshaped the site; the present development parcel eventually became parking for Intrepid Museum visitors.

Pavement concealed the problem but did not eliminate it. Sampling during the 1990s found contaminants in soil and groundwater, and subsequent investigations identified coal tar associated with former gas holders and a purifying house. In July 2018, Con Edison, the successor to the plant’s former operator, entered into a consent order with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation covering investigation and remediation.

A building site with conditions attached

Empire State Development formally sought redevelopment proposals for the 50,584-square-foot parcel in February 2025. The state required housing, active ground-floor uses and at least 25 percent permanently affordable apartments, while preserving parking and pedestrian access required by an existing agreement with the Intrepid Museum.

The Hudson Landing proposal, unveiled publicly in July 2026, comes from Gotham Organization, Fisher Brothers and MURAL Real Estate Group, with architecture by FXCollaborative. Its reported 1.3 million square feet would include 1,127 residences, including 338 permanently affordable homes. Of the total, 108 would be condominiums, with 28 income-restricted ownership units.

Plans also call for an approximately 22,000-square-foot Intrepid Concourse with a visitor center, STEM education space and café. A roughly 9,800-square-foot public park would connect to the museum’s existing pedestrian bridge across Twelfth Avenue.

These figures describe a proposal, not a finished or guaranteed project. Height and floor counts had not been disclosed when the renderings appeared, and redevelopment remains subject to state disposition, environmental review and cleanup requirements.

What cleaning the ground entails

The state selected a remedy for this portion of the former gas works in July 2021. Its central measures include removing and disposing of shallow soil, then treating deeper contaminated material through in-situ solidification.

That treatment mixes subsurface soil with binding agents, creating a hardened mass designed to immobilize contamination rather than excavating every affected layer. Planning documents describe shallow excavation to depths of up to five feet, with solidification extending deeper than 30 feet in some areas and reaching bedrock where required. A protective cover, groundwater monitoring and long-term site-management controls would follow.

The development team has also committed to seeking entry into New York’s Brownfield Cleanup Program. Construction must be coordinated with Con Edison’s continuing obligations under the DEC consent order, and the state’s original request for proposals placed due diligence and project-related remediation responsibilities on the selected developer.

Hudson Landing therefore illustrates a recurring New York bargain. Scarce land can be recovered for housing, public space and cultural uses, but the true development site extends far below the property line, into forgotten tanks, altered groundwater and the chemical residue of the city that existed before the skyline was electrified.

Sources

• Empire State Development: Request for Proposals for 621 West 45th Street
• New York State DEC: West 45th Street Gas Works site-history report
• New York State DEC: 2021 cleanup decision for the former West 45th Street Gas Works
• New York State DEC: Remedial design work plan
• New York State DEC: How manufactured-gas-plant contamination behaves underground
• New York YIMBY: Hudson Landing proposal and renderings