A 29-story residential tower and a low-rise base with 220,000 square feet of retail space is planned at 808 Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side by PWV Acquisitions, the owners of the large Park West Village rental complex between 97th and 100th Streets, Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, that surrounds the site.

Several stores on Amsterdam and Columbus Avenue have recently been closed in and around Park West Village, which was bought by Joseph Chetrit of the Chetrit Group and Laurence Gluck of Stellar Management, from Helmsley-Spear Inc., in 2000 for about $122 million.

Martin J. McLaughlin, a spokesman for The Chetrit Group, has told CityRealty.Com that no change contemplated for the residential buildings in the complex.

Park West Village, a large "towers-in-a-park" development, was erected in 1961 along Central Park West between 97th and 100th Streets and designed by S. J. Kessler & Sons. It has 7, red-brick, balconied, slab towers and four of them are condominiums and three are rentals.

The proposed retail space at 808 Columbus Avenue will have 60,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space, a 80,000-square feet basement and a 80,000-square foot second story, according to an article by Elisabeth Butler in the May 17, 2006 edition of Crains.

According to an article by Alex Mindlin in the June 11, 2006 edition of The New York Times, the apartment tower, which is on the west side of Columbus Avenue, is expected to be completed in 2008 and it will be "13 stories taller than its immediate neighbors and will cut off the bottom of Park West Village's 'U,' filling some open space and funneling residents bound for Columbus Avenue through two covered walkways."

Costas Kondylis & Partners are the architects for the planned tower and retail complex.

Extell Development is erecting two high-rise apartment towers across from one another on Broadway between 99th and 100th Streets and as a result a taskforce of Community Board 7 has recommended rezoning parts of the Upper West Side above 96th Street to limit building heights.

The proposed rezoning reflects concerns in the community about a number of "soft" sites, that is, sites current built to less than half the permissible bulk, on Broadway north of 106th Street and elsewhere in the community.