The Torch is officially halfway up. Extell Development's 52-story hotel and entertainment tower has now reached the midpoint of its 1,029-foot climb over Times Square, and the first panels of the curtain wall are now going on below the crane.
The site is 740 Eighth Avenue, the blockfront between West 45th and West 46th Streets, where Hell's Kitchen runs into the theater crowds. Extell Development Company is building it as a new attraction for the busiest corner of Manhattan, with ODA Architecture designing the tower.
The Torch will hold 825 keys across roughly 885,902 square feet, with entertainment and retail alongside the rooms. With the hotel floors nearly topped out, the build now moves into its back half. Completion is estimated for 2028, though Extell has not announced an opening date.
Crowning the tower is a public open-air observation deck, ringed by spiraling outdoor staircases and cantilevered glass boxes that let you look straight down at the street below. And threaded through the tower's slender stem is an Intamin-designed drop ride, a 90-second plunge through 300-foot transparent tubes that riders can see the city through the whole way down. It is a genuinely new kind of thing for New York, part hotel, part observatory, part amusement ride, aimed squarely at the millions who pour through Times Square every year.
The 2028 target puts The Torch in a two-hotel race around Times Square. A few blocks away, RIU Hotels & Resorts' 1710 Broadway is also under construction, a 54-story, 668-key hotel targeting 2027. RIU gets there first. The Torch arrives larger, 825 keys to 668.
Both are rising in a busy season for the skyline. 520 Fifth Avenue finished construction above Bryant Park in August, and 550 West 21st Street topped out in West Chelsea in July. Ahead of The Torch on the calendar, David Chipperfield Architects' Rolex HQ is due to open in Midtown in November 2026, the same season the Flatiron Building reopens as residences.
The Extell and ODA pairing extends well past Manhattan. The two are also building the Four Seasons Resort and Residences Deer Valley in Park City, Utah, while in New York, ODA's Malabar Residences in Midtown East, a 28-story, 145-unit building, closed financing in June 2026. Extell's own pipeline includes 80 West 67th Street in Lincoln Square, an 86-story, 430-residence tower designed by Stephen B. Jacobs Group.