The Torch, a 52-story supertall rising along Eighth Avenue between West 45th and West 46th Streets, has reached the halfway point in its climb toward a 1,029-foot pinnacle. The hotel portion of the tower is nearly topped out, with nearly all floors formed across the lower half of the building and facade installation now underway.
The project, developed by Extell and designed by ODA with SLCE Architects serving as architect of record, is expected to top out at its full height sometime in 2027 and reach construction completion in the latter half of 2028, according to New York YIMBY. The tower sits on the border of Times Square and Hell's Kitchen and will span 885,902 square feet once finished, including an 825-room hotel, lower-level retail, a pool deck for hotel guests, a VIP lounge, and a restaurant spread across two upper floors.
A Site Seven Years and $186 Million in the Making
Getting to this point took Extell more than seven years and at least $186 million to assemble the eleven tax lots beneath the tower, according to Commercial Observer. That included a July 2021 deal paying $31 million for the lots at 738-740 Eighth Avenue and a separate $51 million payment to the Shubert Organization for air rights above the neighboring Imperial Theatre. As part of that air-rights agreement, Extell accepted an operational covenant requiring construction to pause whenever live performances are underway at the Imperial, a noise-mitigation necessity given the theater's location right on the site's border along West 45th Street.
The tower wasn't always meant to be a supertall hotel. Extell originally filed plans in June 2020 for a far more modest 10-story, 164-foot office building on the site, per PincusCo. The developer shifted course in 2021, pivoting to the hotel tower after holdout property owners along Eighth Avenue made a large office floorplate unworkable and forced the design to build around existing structures at the corner.
Timing Helped Dodge a Zoning Crackdown
That 2021 pivot also happened to line up with a narrow escape from a new layer of city regulation. New York City passed restrictions in late 2021 requiring special City Council approval for new hotel construction, but the law grandfathered in projects that had already filed permits or met certain large-site subdistrict criteria. Because the Department of Buildings had approved Extell's initial building permits in January 2022, and the site qualified under Theater Subdistrict land-area rules, the project avoided the special permit process entirely, according to The Real Deal.
The Torch's Drop Ride Sparked a Fight, Then Got the Green Light
The tower's most talked-about feature has been its planned observation deck, which was designed to incorporate an Intamin-built drop ride mounted within transparent tubes reaching 300 feet tall. The plan drew formal objections from the Committee for Environmentally Sound Development and other civic groups, who argued the ride amounted to bringing Coney Island to Midtown, per the outlet's later report. The Department of Buildings ultimately deemed the attraction permitted as-of-right, and the Times Square Alliance backed the project, with Community Board 5 reviewing the objections before construction resumed.
Since that dispute, the upper levels have been visibly simplified between the first concept and the illustration now shown on the construction board, though ODA has not released updated renderings reflecting those changes. The exterior staircase tied to the observatory appears to be retained in the simplified design, based on the current zoning diagram, and the tower's stem now carries a more squared-off look in that same diagram compared to earlier concepts. ODA modeled the building's 500-foot spiraling glass crown after the flame of the Statue of Liberty's torch, a concept detailed in an ODA monograph published by Rizzoli, as reported by Dezeen.
A 15-Month Pause, Then Back Under Construction
Work on the tower stalled for roughly 15 months starting around March 2024 before officially resuming on Eighth Avenue in June 2025 following permit renewals, Dezeen reported, noting that the delay pushed the project's overall completion target to 2028. Once work restarted, the vertical transportation contract went to TEI Group, which was awarded the job in April 2025 to install 30 elevator units, including 28 high-speed elevators, for general contractor Suffolk Construction. Three of those elevators are capable of traveling at 2,000 feet per minute over a 900-foot run, according to the company, while RNC Industries has been managing the concrete superstructure.
The renewed construction push has also come with fresh capital. Extell secured $1.2 billion in preferred equity financing from an undisclosed hedge fund partner in September 2025 to support nine major New York City projects, including 740 Eighth Avenue and the developer's separate Upper West Side Disney campus redevelopment, according to Marketproof. Regulatory filings with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange confirmed the liquidity injection.
Once complete, The Torch will enter a crowded field of elevated Manhattan tourist draws, competing for ticket revenue against observation decks like Edge at Hudson Yards, Summit One Vanderbilt, Top of the Rock, and One World Observatory, Dezeen noted. Developers across the city have increasingly leaned on unusual entertainment additions, like drop rides, to squeeze more value out of observation-deck attractions as that market grows more competitive.
