06-NOV-09

Construction is advancing on condominium apartment building at 52 Laight Street

Construction is proceeding on a new, 8-story, residential condominium building at 52 Laight Street in TriBeCa that will have five full-floor units and two duplex penthouses.

Kengo Watanabe of Laurel Capital Inc., is the developer and German Longoria of Sueelen DeFrancis Architecture and Interiors of Scarsdale, New York, is the architect.

The site was formerly occupied by two garages.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the design in 2006. It noted that the proposed red-brick and limestone building with a wood storefront initially had been designed with "a more liberal use of cast stone, fiberglass spandrel panels and limestone banding."

The commission found that the existing buildings were not "architecturally notable in themselves" and had been altered over time and did not contribute to the special architectural character of the streetscape or the historic district.

It also found that that "the height of the primary facade of the new building will relate well to the other buildings in the streetscape; that the floor to ceiling heights of the new building will be proportional to those found on the adjacent buildings, and will support a relationship between the new building and its neighbors; that the facade of the new building will be composed in a traditional arrangement of base, shaft and termination which is characteristic of multi-story buildings in this historic district; that the details and fenestration of the facade, including cast stone intermediate cornices, and paired two-over-two wood windows, and brick paneled spandrels is in keeping with rhythm and pattern of primary facades of buildings of this size and scale found throughout the historic district; that the materials and finishes used for the facade will be harmonious with the materials of the streetscape and are consistent with the materials and the color palette found on many buildings within the Tribeca North Historic District; that the use of brick cladding and simple punched window openings on the lot line elevation will evoke the scale, materials and articulation of historic lot line facades; that the use of limestone and wood infill at the commercial base, with limited lighting and signage, is simple and understated, and is in keeping with utilitarian buildings found in the historic district; that the limited visibility of the top floor set back, visible only at an oblique angle from the west is consistent with the profiles of many buildings with rooftop bulkheads in the historic district; and that the proposed loggia, incorporating arched masonry opening and railings, while not typical of buildings in the historic district, will allow for the facade to achieve a height complimentary to the street wall and will maintain a well revolved fenestration pattern."

06-NOV-09

Dia Foundation announces it is returning to Chelsea

The Dia Art Foundation has decided to return to its original site in Chelsea and construct new exhibition space at a property it owned at 545 West 22nd Street.

In a press release today, Philippe Vergne, its director, said that "In keeping with the organization's historical commitment to in-depth support of ambitious projects, the space will provide a New York City location for commissioned artworks. It will also house exhibitions; long-term installations; public programs including readings, lectures, and symposia; and performances."

"With the new site," he continued, "Dia will again serve as an institutional anchor for the contemporary-art neighborhood that it pioneered in the late 1980s and that is now home to a rich mix of art galleries, theaters, public spaces, and diverse nonprofit organizations." "We want to build a 'dream house' for artists," he said.

Dia has strong roots in Chelsea, beginning in the 1970s, when it provided Robert Whitman with a building, now The Kitchen, to use as a studio and performance space. From 1986 to 2004, Dia Center for the Arts, which led the radical transformation of Chelsea from a declining warehouse district into an international destination for contemporary art, operated at 548 West 22nd Street. Dia's Manhattan-based programs have been highly respected for their depth, influence, and innovation.

Dia had closed its space at 545 West 22nd Street in 2004, which needed renovation and was determined then to be inadequate for its programming.

"Early planning for the building has begun, and the architecture and scale of the edifice - which will provide a utilitarian space designed for the experience of art - are being determined. The project represents the first time in its 35-year history that Dia has elected to construct a new building, rather than to re-use an existing one," the release said.

A nonprofit institution founded in 1974, Dia Art Foundation is renowned for initiating, supporting, presenting, and preserving art projects including Robert Smithson's famed "Spiral Jetty" and Water De Maria's "The Lightning Field."

An article by Carol Vogel in The New York Times quoted Nathalie de Gunzburg, the chairperson of Dia, that "it's keeping our roots yet at the same time trying to evolve." She said that after exploring for new locations from the Bowery to Harlem, the foundation's board decided that the answer was "right in front of us."

The foundation planned to open a museum at the entrance to the High Line, the abandoned elevated railway line that has now become a public park, the article noted, adding that its board "scrapped that project in 2006 after losing its longtime director, Michael Govan, who left to oversee the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and its board chairman and biggest benefactor, Leonard Riggio. (The Whitney Museum of American Art is now planning a satellite space at that downtown site.)"

The article said that the foundation's next director, Jeffrey Weiss, tried to find a new site but resigned after nine months and it quoted its new director, Philippe Vergne, as stating that the return to West 22nd Street was "the most logical solution." The article added that "Mr. Vergne said Dia had no plans to hire a star architect or hold a formal design competition." "'No bling,' Mr. Vergne said, 'rather a utilitarian envelope for art, a place where we can bring living artists back into the fold,'" the article said.

The foundation was very influential in the transformation of Chelsea into a center of art galleries when it moved there from SoHo in 1986. It has a permanent art collection in Beacon, New York in a museum that was formerly an abandoned 1929 box factory.

The foundation also maintains art installations in SoHo, New Mexico and Bridgehampton, New York and in 2007 entered a collaboration with the Hispanic Society of America at its facility on Broadway and 155th Street.

05-NOV-09

SCLE designs two new Harlem rental buildings

Two red-masonry rental apartment buildings are being erected in Harlem and designed by SCLE Architects.

They are the Balton at 311 West 127th Street, a 12-story building with some setbacks, and the 8-story Douglass Park at 300 West 128th Street.

The former is named in honor of Charles "Ibo" Balton, the director of the Manhattan Planning Office of the New York City Housing and Preservation Department, which is erecting the two developments.

Mr. Balton died in 2007.

The Balton, shown at the left, will have 156 rental units and the Douglass Park will have 70 rental units.

Ground was broken last week for the Balton and construction will begin next year on the Douglass Park.

05-NOV-09

Six civic organizations file brief challenging hardship ruling on O'Toole Building

Six leading preservation organizations filed a brief as amici curiae with the New York Supreme Court last night in a case challenging the hardship ruling by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission authorizing the planned demolition of the Edward and Theresa O'Toole Medical Services Building on the west side of Seventh Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets by St. Vincent's Hospital.

The hospital wants to build a new hospital on the site and then let the Rudin Family redevelop its properties on the east side of Seventh Avenue between 11th and 12th Streets residentially.

The six organizations are the Municipal Art Society of New York, the New York Landmarks Conservancy, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Preservation League of New York State, the Greenwich Village society for Historic Preservation, the Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts and the Brooklyn Heights Association.

The case has been brought by the Protect the Village Historic District, Historic Districts Council, DOCOMOMO New York-Tristate, the Historic Neighborhood Enhancement Alliance, Landmark West!, The Cambridge Owners Corp., the 174 West 12th Street Condominium, the John Adams Owners Inc., and numerous individuals including Carol Greitzer.

In announcing its participation in the "friends of the court" brief, the Municipal Art Society said that it and the other "amici" "have taken the uncommon step of supporting neither part to the litigation," arguing that the intent "is to assist the court in reaching its determination by outlining the proper judicial test for hardship relief, as well as the regulatory takings analysis on which that test is premised."

"By applying a test much more lenient than the courts have sanctioned, and inventing a campus-based exception to the Landmarks Law, the LPC has upset the finely tuned balance the law strikes between the rights and needs of non-profit property owners and the values of historic preservation. Even more disturbingly, the LPC's reasoning opens the door - far more than the Constitution requires - for non-profit owners of landmarks and buildings within historic districts to circumvent the requirements of the Landmarks Law," it maintained.

The hospital bought the O'Toole Building four years after the landmarks commission had included it within the Greenwich Village Historic District and in 1979 the City Planning Commission permitted the hospital to treat its properties on both sides of Seventh Avenue as a "large scale community facility development" so that it could pool all the air rights together to expand its complex.

The landmarks commission indicated in May, 2008 that the O'Toole Building, which was designed in 1964 with nautical motifs by Albert Ledner for the National Maritime Union, could not be demolished under a certificate of appropriateness because it contributed significantly to the historic district. The hospital then made a hardship application to demolish it based on principles in a case involving Sailors Snug Harbor properties in Staten Island. The landmarks commission subsequently voted six to four October 28, 2008 to approve the application.

In its "final determination" May 12, the commission stated that it had relied on the "hardship" standards of the Snug Harbor case that were "further elaborated by the Second Circuit" in a famous landmark controversy involved St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on Park Avenue and 50th Street.

"The commission did not consider, as it must, whether the O'Toole Building would be 'taken' by enforcement of the regulations imposed upon it by the Landmarks Law. Instead, in making its Final Determination, the LPC found that 'the O'Toole Building is part of St. Vincent's campus...."

"The LPC's invention of a campus-based exception to the judicial test," the brief concluded, "flies in the face of the United States Supreme Court's repeated admonitions that property owners may not gerrymander the definition of their property, and is contrary to the language of the Landmarks Law, as well as forty years of the state and federal courts' application of the judicial hardship test."

30-OCT-09

Silverstein and Menin press for progress at Ground Zero

Larry Silverstein told a RealShare New York conference this week that everytime there's been a gubernatorial change in New York and New Jersey "there's a change of agenda" at Ground Zero that that "wreaks havoc with everything you're trying to accomplish if you're trying to hold a specific timeframe."

Mr. Silverstein and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey are in arbitration over their financial relationship at Ground Zero and while Mr. Silverstein told the conference that therefore he could not say much about it, he noted, according to an article in this week's edition of Downtown Express by Julie Shapiro that the "unfortunate thing" is that "the people who built the Trade Center - the last major high-rise project they were involved with - are long since gone. And the people who are there today don't have the experience, don't have the ability, don't have the comprehension of what it takes, the need for timely decisions."

Mr. Silverstein initially said he committed to staying at Ground Zero for 10 years to rebuild it, but the article said "now an optimistic estimate looks more like 17 years," adding that Mr. Silverstein said his attitude was "you've gotta stay there....I want very much to be around to see it accomplished."

Mr. Silverstein told the meeting he anticipates the arbitration will be finished by the end of the year and it said that "a source familiar with Silverstein's position said a few months ago that the developer would ask the arbiters to award him at least $2.75 billion as compensation for Port delays and for all of the rent and insurance he has paid to the authority."

The article said that if the arbitration panel finds in his favor and forces the authority "to give him the resources he needs to build the towers," "the entire site with all three...office towers would be complete by 2016." The authority has said that it wants Mr. Silverstein to not built two of the towers until the office market improves and objecting to financing them because it might "compromise the Port"s ability to complete public infrastructure projects elsewhere," a position that it did not embellish.

According to the article, Mr. Silverstein told the meeting that his 80-story mixed-use project just to the west of the Woolworth Building is still alive. Construction stopped this summer because he could not get financing to continued but the article said he told the meeting "we're going to have to be patient."

Downtown Express also carried an article by Julie Menin, the chair of Community Board 1, that lamented "the lack of progress on the Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center," noting that "the cultural component of the W.T.C. site has been significantly downsized."

"The Drawing Center, the Freedom Museum and the Signature Theater were all once included in plans for the site," she continued, "but have since been eliminated. The Frank Gehry-designed PAC, as the principal and now only remaining cultural facility planned for the W.T.C. site, remains a key element of the master plan and its realization is absolutely essential to the revitalization of Lower Manhattan."

"It is imperative," she argued, "that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, City of New York, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and all other public and private agencies involved in the reconstruction of the W.T.C. site respect the very strong desire of the community to see the promised PAC built as it was intended in a timely manner. One need only look at the ways in which significant cultural components have helped to revitalize other cities to see its importance as the only community enhancement planned for the W.T.C. site."