Eran Nornberg, vice president of 346 West 17th Street LLC, which is part of Hampshire House Hotels, the new owners of the former Covenant House building between 16th and 17th Streets and Eighth and Ninth Avenues presented plans to the land use committee of Community Board 4 Monday night to redevelop the through-block property at 346-360 West 17th Street into transient hotel and apartment hotel uses.
Hampshire House Hotels, whose properties include the Time and Dream Hotels, has commissioned Handel Architects to create 270 transient hotel rooms on 17th Street and 74 apartment hotel units on 16th Street by "scooping out" a mid-block section of the existing properties and transferring that bulk on the site by adding one story to the existing 11-story building on 17th Street and 3 stories to the existing five-story building on 16th Street.
The development would have a health club and small restaurant but no garage.
The building on 17th Street has a slanted facade with porthole windows and Frank Fusaro of Handel Architects said that more porthole windows would be added to create "a quirky syncopation" for the facade.
The Covenant House property is directly to the east of the Maritime Hotel that fronts on Ninth Avenue and also has porthole windows.
Members of the committee expressed concerns over the project's impact on the low-rise character of 16th Street and that street's traffic, which they said was horrible, and over any retail spaces in the project becoming a large nightclub.
Elise Wagner, a lawyer representing the developer, said that it did not plan nightclub uses and that the top of building on 16th Street would have a 10-foot setback and that it was across the street from the immense full-block and much taller building at 111 Eighth Avenue.
Ms. Wagner said that the apartment hotel units, which would range in size from about 400 to 600 square feet, in the 16th Street structure would be for sale and that the owners must stay a minimum of 30 days a year in the units.
She said that the project's requests for variances have not yet been calendared.
The building at 346 West 17th Street was erected in 1966 for the National Maritime Union of America Joseph Curran Annex and subsequently became the New York Service Center, Manhattan Plaza. It and the plaza facing Ninth Avenue were both designed by Albert C. Ledner & Associates.
In their fine book, "The A.I.A. Guide to New York City, Fourth Edition," Elliot Willensky and Norval White wrote that "A startling white tile-faced, porthole-pierced front wall sloping 8 ¿ degrees from vertical was the architect's way of meeting the setback requirements of the 1961 zoning resolution: the 20-foot setback required above 85 feet from the sidewalk was hereby accommodated," adding that "As novel on the exterior as the union's former main building, it was efficiently laid out inside to accommodate medical and recreational facilities for union members."
The tile facing on the 17th Street facade was replaced some time ago with stucco.
Hampshire House Hotels, whose properties include the Time and Dream Hotels, has commissioned Handel Architects to create 270 transient hotel rooms on 17th Street and 74 apartment hotel units on 16th Street by "scooping out" a mid-block section of the existing properties and transferring that bulk on the site by adding one story to the existing 11-story building on 17th Street and 3 stories to the existing five-story building on 16th Street.
The development would have a health club and small restaurant but no garage.
The building on 17th Street has a slanted facade with porthole windows and Frank Fusaro of Handel Architects said that more porthole windows would be added to create "a quirky syncopation" for the facade.
The Covenant House property is directly to the east of the Maritime Hotel that fronts on Ninth Avenue and also has porthole windows.
Members of the committee expressed concerns over the project's impact on the low-rise character of 16th Street and that street's traffic, which they said was horrible, and over any retail spaces in the project becoming a large nightclub.
Elise Wagner, a lawyer representing the developer, said that it did not plan nightclub uses and that the top of building on 16th Street would have a 10-foot setback and that it was across the street from the immense full-block and much taller building at 111 Eighth Avenue.
Ms. Wagner said that the apartment hotel units, which would range in size from about 400 to 600 square feet, in the 16th Street structure would be for sale and that the owners must stay a minimum of 30 days a year in the units.
She said that the project's requests for variances have not yet been calendared.
The building at 346 West 17th Street was erected in 1966 for the National Maritime Union of America Joseph Curran Annex and subsequently became the New York Service Center, Manhattan Plaza. It and the plaza facing Ninth Avenue were both designed by Albert C. Ledner & Associates.
In their fine book, "The A.I.A. Guide to New York City, Fourth Edition," Elliot Willensky and Norval White wrote that "A startling white tile-faced, porthole-pierced front wall sloping 8 ¿ degrees from vertical was the architect's way of meeting the setback requirements of the 1961 zoning resolution: the 20-foot setback required above 85 feet from the sidewalk was hereby accommodated," adding that "As novel on the exterior as the union's former main building, it was efficiently laid out inside to accommodate medical and recreational facilities for union members."
The tile facing on the 17th Street facade was replaced some time ago with stucco.
Architecture Critic
Carter Horsley
Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.
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