1 · Why It Belongs Here
The Equinox Hotel exists because Related owned both the land and the brand: the company was part of the 2006 acquisition of Equinox, and the world's first Equinox hotel opened inside its own estate. A landlord that invents a hotel brand rather than leasing to one is precisely what this group records.
2 · The Rail Yard
The site is a working MTA rail yard. Building on it required decking the tracks first — the physical fact that made the project so expensive and so late in arriving on Manhattan's far West Side.
3 · December 2012
Ground was broken on 4 December 2012, after the city rezoned the west side in 2005 and extended the 7 subway line to the site.
4 · March 2019 — The Eastern Yard
The first phase opened in March 2019: 10, 15, 30, 50 and 55 Hudson Yards, The Shops, The Shed and Heatherwick's staircase.
5 · August 2019 — Equinox Hotel
The 212-room Equinox Hotel opened in August 2019 across floors 24 to 38 of 35 Hudson Yards, occupying some 237,000 square feet, with an Equinox Club and Spa below. It opened months before the pandemic closed the city.
6 · Wellness as the Brand
The hotel was positioned around sleep, recovery and training rather than dining or ceremony — the first serious attempt to make a fitness brand the organising idea of a luxury hotel.
7 · 35 Hudson Yards
The tower was capitalised at US$2 billion in July 2016, with a US$1.2 billion debt financing led by the Children's Investment Fund. Architecture by David Childs and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; residences above the hotel from the 53rd floor.
8 · 2025 — The Hotel Changes Hands
In November 2025 Related and Oxford sold floors 1 to 38 of 35 Hudson Yards, including the hotel, to Japan's Mori Trust for US$541 million. The estate's only hotel is therefore no longer owned by the estate — a distinction the register keeps visible.
9 · Two Mori Houses
There is an accident of names worth stating plainly: Mori Trust and Mori Building are separate companies descended from the same Tokyo family. Roppongi Hills belongs to Mori Building; the Hudson Yards hotel now belongs to Mori Trust.
10 · The Public Subsidy Question
The development rests on a city bond issue that paid for the 7 line extension and on tax incentives created with the 2005 rezoning, which critics have called the largest tax giveaway in the city's history. An estate of this scale is never purely private, and the register does not pretend otherwise.
11 · What the Model Does Not Solve
Scale did not produce hospitality depth: one hotel for twenty-eight acres, and the retail has struggled to hold the luxury tenants it was designed for. The Vessel closed to visitors after a series of deaths and reopened only with barriers. A district can be completed and still not become a place.
12 · Editorial Note
LHL records Hudson Yards as a mixed-use estate. Equinox Hotel New York carries its own code as a house; this entry records the developers, and the 2025 sale that separated the hotel from the estate that built it.