30-OCT-09

Landmarks commission studying creation of large West End Avenue Historic District

The Landmarks Preservation Commission is surveying side-streets along West End Avenue to determine the possible boundaries of a West End Avenue Historic District, according to an article yesterday by Roland Li of the observer.com.

The survey is expected to be completed next year at which time the proposed district will be "calendared," the article said, quoting Elisabeth de Bourbon, spokesperson for the commission, that "signs point in the direction that the commission is serious about this."

A study of the area was commissioned by the West End Preservation Society and prepared by Andrew Dolkart, the well-known architectural historian, and presented to the commission last Spring.

There are already two historic districts on West End Avenue, one between 87th and 94th Streets and the other between 74th and 78th Streets. They are among seven historic districts on the Upper West Side.

The West End Preservation Society, of which Richard D. Emery is president, was formed in June 2007 when brownstone buildings at 508, 510, 732 and 734 West End Avenue, all owned by Sackman Enterprises Inc., of which Alan Sackman is president, were threatened with demolition.

City Council member Gale Brewer asked the landmarks commission in April 2008 to protect the brownstones but the article noted that the landmarks commission "rejected individual landmarking of 732 and 734, and the buildings were destroyed over the summer."

The West End Preservation Society held a community meeting last night on its proposal.

30-OCT-09

Foreclosure initiated against project at 241 Fifth Avenue

Inland Mortgage Capital filed suit this week to foreclose on 241 Fifth Avenue Hotel, a 19-story, 100-unit project that was initially planned as a 76-unit residential condominium building, according to an article today by David Jones at therealdeal.com.

The developers of the hotel project, Dan Shavolian and Jack Hazan, acquired the property in 2007 for $26.5 million from Avraham Sibony, who had bought it in 2005 for $10.8 million.

The property is between 27th and 28th Streets and Mr. Shavolian and Mr. Hazan retained the original plans for Mr. Sibony by Eran Chan of Perkins Eastman Architects that had been approved by the Landmarks Perservation Commission as the property lies within the Madison Avenue North Historic District.

According to the article, the developers defaulted on $27.2 million including $22.75 million in loans, interest and penalties. The developer, it continued, "took out a $7 million mortgage in 2005 and a $15.9 million gap mortgage in 2007, which was later consolidated and restated into the aforementioned $22.75 million in loans. That same year, Shavolian, Hazan, investor Al Cohen and Los Angeles real estate investor Ezri Namvar, entered agreements to guarantee the loan, according to the complaint. Namvar, chairman of Namco Capital Group, allegedly stole hundreds of millions of dollars invested by the Persian Jewish community in Los Angeles, according to published reports, and the Inland Mortgage complaint notes that his creditors pushed him into involuntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2008."

Chan's design had been described by many of the landmarks commission's members as s "intriguing" and "interesting" and it employed four materials: a "rainscreen" terracotta system, an opaque baked and painted glass, clear glass and silver-colored metal panel coping. The planned building would have had a symmetrical facade on the avenue but an asymmetrical facade on its south "party" wall, which has considerable exposure. In addition, it "floats" its setback upper floors in a form that a couple of commissioners described by "Cubist."

Mr. Chen of Perkins Eastman said that the design attempts to make a meaningful transition between a higher building just to its north and the 7-story building just to its south and the 5-story Museum of Sex on the northeast corner at 27th Street.

Commissioner Richard Olcott said at the commission's hearing that he found the design "quite intriguing" and "lively" and that "it seems like the building wishes it was not standing at mid-block." Commissioner Stephen Brynes added that he found the "vaporization" of windows on the south facade "provocative."

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."

28-OCT-09

City Council approves scaling down Nouvel's mixed-use tower near MoMA

The City Council was reported to have voted 44 to 3 today to approve plans for a 1,050-foot-high, mixed-use tower that will include expansion space for the Museum of Modern Art, which is on the same block.

The City Planning Commission recently approved various permits for the building involving transfer of air rights to the project from the University Club and the St. Thomas Episcopal Church on the same block but ordered that its height be reduced from 1,250 feet.

The council's land use committee recently approved the commission's decision despite pleas from the developer, Hines Interests, and its architect, Jean Nouvel, to not lop off the top 200-feet of the mid-block tapering tower with diagonal bracing.

The very thin, asymmetrical tower would not only contain significant expansion space for the museum, which received $125 million from Hines for the site, but also a luxury hotel and about 150 residential condominiums.

At one point, the tower was supposed to have 85 stories and some reports today maintained that the plan approved today was 82 stories but no new renderings have been made public and the loss of 100,000 square feet from the original proposal of 658,000 square feet would suggest that the tower's design would be substantially altered and made squatter.

The decision by the City Planning Commission was surprising and not widely embraced.

In an article in The New York Times, Nicholai Ouroussoff wrote that "Amanda Burden, the city planning commissioner, said the tower's top, which culminates in three uneven peaks, did not meet the aesthetic standards of a building that would compete in height with the city's most famous towers." He said that Ms. Burden said that the project "had to show us that they were creating something as great or even greater than the Empire State Building and the design they showed us was unresolved.'"

Citing its "legant proportions," Mr. Ourossoff wrote that "seen from the street, its receding facades would have induced a delicious sense of vertigo."

In his October 6, 2009 testimony before the council's subcommittee on zoning and franchises, Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried argued that "a building of this magnitude on a mid-block location immediately adjacent to a historic residential neighborhood violates the basic principles of New York City zoning and good urban planning."

He maintained that the St. Thomas Church, which wanted to sell 275,000 square feet of its air rights, "should do what congregations do, and turn to its members." He also maintained that the University Club, which wanted to sell Hines 136,000 square feet of air rights, "also falls short of demonstrating financial need."

"Neither landmark is in danger of deterioration, or has a stated lack of resources," he declared, adding that "there is substantial public burden resulting from the excessive height and density, shadows, traffic, and other impacts the proposed tower will impose on the community."

Hines has not indicated what it plans to do with the site in view of the council's action and market conditions.

28-OCT-09

Landmarks Preservation Commission considers the "South Village"

The Landmarks Preservation Commission yesterday held a hearing without taking a vote on a proposal to extend the Greenwich Village Historic District to the south. It heard more than thirty speakers on the proposal and said it will keep the record open for comments for a month.

The proposal, however, was considerably smaller than the plan that the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation has been campaigning for that is based on an 80-page report written by Andrew Dolkart.

Mr. Dolkart's report called the creation of a South Village Historic District comprising 38 blocks and about 800 buildings.

The commission, however, is now considering an "extension" that would only include about 235 buildings between Sixth and Seventh Avenues and West Fourth and West Houston Street.

"The South Village was long the cradle of Greenwich Village's Italian-immigrant community, and contains perhaps the most impressive array of intact late-19th and early-20th Century tenements anywhere in the world," the society argued.

"Its converted rowhouses, off-Broadway theaters, reform-housing, and religious, social and charitable institutions vividly reflect its history as a working-class neighborhood from New York's last great wave of immigration," it continued.

"The South Village was also long the scene of some of the most important counter-cultural movements, institutions, and events in our city and our country's history, as well as having served as the center of New York's African-American community in the mid-19th Century and its gay community in the first decades of the 20th Century. While the South Village's unconventional charm, working-class architecture, and immigrant history may not have been deemed worthy of landmark designation in 1969, we feel it's critical that these characteristics now be recognized, honored and preserved."

"The incredible concentration of tenements of every style and configuration - pre-law, old law, new law, Neo-Grec, Italianate, Romanesque Revival, Beaux Arts - is virtually unrivalled in New York, as is the frequency with which precious details such as original storefronts, cornices, and iron work - so often lost over time on tenements, remain intact," Andrew Berman, executive director of the society, wrote in the foreword to the report.

"Within its boundaries are more than fifty intact rowhouses in the Federal style (1800-1835), twenty-five in the Greek Revival style (1835-1850), and an additional 150 Federal or Greek Revival houses which have been completely transformed over time for commercial or multi-family use," he continued.

"Thankfully," according to Mr. Berman, "the South Village's architecture remains strikingly unchanged. Whole streets are largely untouched from a hundred years ago or more, with colorful tenements, ornate fire escape balconies, cast-iron and wooden storefronts, and early nineteenth century rowhouses still defining the cityscape." Mr. Berman, however, noted that the neighborhood has recently lost some historic buildings like the Provincetown Playhouse and Apartments and some artists' studios.

"Although only a few buildings in the area are significant as great individual works of architecture," according to Mr. Dolkart, "this area forms an amazingly cohesive landscape of great value to the character of New York City and to the history of the city and the nation. The buildings in this remarkably intact area are vulnerable - in danger of demolition or insensitive alteration. Indeed, during the preparation of this report, the Tunnel Garage, a historically and architecturally significant early automobile garage was demolished; the historic Circle in the Square Theater was mutilated; and the Sullivan Street Playhouse, where the musical The Fantasticks ran for decades, was destroyed."