Con Ed site on the East River

[Fabrizio]

Antinimby: again you show your talent for mis-reading and twisting what one is saying:

You say: "Notice how "quality of life" and "serverly altered" are conveniently brought up, suggesting that somehow developments will always inextricably lead to a degradation in one's quality of life. "

What I SAID was the following: "Let´s see a show of hands of those who would do nothing IF THEY FELT that their quaility of life were to be serverly altered by nearby development."

I´m happy to see the Trump World Tower (for example). I even mentioned it once here as one of my favorite new highrises.

But I perfectly understand Cronkite & company for protesting about losing their million-dollar views.... no matter what guise they present their case. If I had been one of them, I would have been protesting too.... and so would have you... and everyone else here on this forum.

You say: "Truth is, the only thing the NIMBY's are interested in saving is their property values, views, exclusiveness, etc."

Exactly. Amen.

And that´s why a neighborhood like Tribeca is now the most expensive zip code in the US. That´s why the Village is so beautiful. That´s why NYC is so attractive.

Because the educated, informed, sophisticated (read liberal) residents will not easily cave in to what DEVELOPERS necessarily want.

If you want to live that way, I got news for you: NYC is not for you. In NYC there is going to be a clash... that´s part of the deal. This is not 1950. This is not the Third World.

If you want to live that way, there are PLENTY of communities around the US, where the little guy has no say. Gee, they´re even trying to make it so the Government and developers can TAKE your house and land away from you at their whim... for the so-called "higher good". Right out of Stalinist Russia.

Long live the NIMBYs.

[tmg]

Could we move this recurrent debate into a new thread (perhaps "The Great NIMBY Debate") and leave this thread for discussion of the specific plans for this site?

[antinimby]

And what is your interest in all this.I have no personal gain whatsoever in any of this if that is what you're alluding to. What I do have, is an interest in telling the other side of the story. A story that so far has been so skewed towards that of the extremely impudent NIMBY's.

They keep on spewing out hatred towards developers, government or just about anyone that don't share their beliefs. It's interesting that the NIMBY's have no trouble stuffing their ideas of how things should be, down everyone else's throat. No, this development is no good, no that color does not fit in, no this is too large, we don't have enough of this, we need this, we want that.

I find that rather hypocritical and downright arrogant, don't you think? On top of all this, they don't even own the land/building they're trying to make to suit to their tastes. God forbid anyone else should tell the NIMBY's what they should do with their properties.

Look, I'm not against community input. We need a counterbalance to the potential of developers going wild. But at the same time, do we recognize that at this time, in this city, it's really the NIMBY's that we need to keep in check? We've gone from one extreme (Robert Moses) to another (NIMBY's). I believe a balance between these two extremes to be the ideal. That's my interest.

[antinimby]

Antinimby: Let's put up a big tower on your block in Bensonhurst -- say, right next door -- and then see what you do ;)From your question, I seem to sense that you find "big" to be a negative. I myself would have no problem with with a big building. If any developers should find building a BIG tower in my neighborhood is worthy, more power to them.

Buildings do nothing to me. I don't hate buildings. They are inanimate objects, just like a rock, hill, mountain, etc. Do you hate them if they should be big, block your sunlight, cause mudslides and so on? No, you just live with it. Same with buildings. If they happen to be attractive (unlikely in this city), I would even admire it.

[Fabrizio]

"Buildings do nothing to me. I don't hate buildings. They are inanimate objects, just like a rock, hill, mountain, etc. Do you hate them if they should be big, block your sunlight, cause mudslides and so on? No, you just live with it. Same with buildings."

"Dere's an ol' man called de Mississippi;
Dat's de ol' man dat I'd like to be!
What does he care if de world's got troubles?
What does he care if de land ain't free? "

[lofter1]

Could we move this recurrent debate into a new thread (perhaps "The Great NIMBY Debate") and leave this thread for discussion of the specific plans for this site?
Unfortunately there is no new news on this project which leaves us to blather about ...

[ZippyTheChimp]

"Dere's an ol' man called de Mississippi;
Dat's de ol' man dat I'd like to be!
What does he care if de world's got troubles?
What does he care if de land ain't free? ":)
Just what the thread needed.

[antinimby]

Antinimby: again you show your talent for mis-reading and twisting what one is saying:Before you accuse someone else of misreading and twisting anything, you should at least try and practice what you preach. Where in my previous posts did I say or even hint at any of this? Talk about hypocrisy.

If you want to live that way, there are PLENTY of communities around the US, where the little guy has no say. Gee, they´re even trying to make it so the Government and developers can TAKE your house and land away from you at their whim... for the so-called "higher good". Right out of Stalinist Russia.



And that´s why a neighborhood like Tribeca is now the most expensive zip code in the US. That´s why the Village is so beautiful. That´s why NYC is so attractive. Because the educated, informed, sophisticated (read liberal) residents will not easily cave in to what DEVELOPERS necessarily want. If you want to live that way, I got news for you: NYC is not for you. In NYC there is going to be a clash... that´s part of the deal. This is not 1950. This is not the Third World.It's obvious that the more you speak, the more apparent it is that your message is neither liberal nor as sophisticated as you claim. Are you saying that someone who does not agree with the NIMBY's idea of almost anarchistic control of development in the city should not live in it? Is that your idea of liberalism and being informed/educated/sophisticated? Last time I checked, liberalism preaches tolerance of different ideas, religions, etc.

I am a New Yorker. I pay my taxes. I have every right to work, live, play here whether or not I agree with the NIMBY's or not. Unlike the NIMBY's among us, I don't impose my idea of an "ideal neighborhood" on anyone. This is a free market, capitalist country.



Because the educated, informed, sophisticated (read liberal) residents will not easily cave in to what DEVELOPERS necessarily want.Yes, but the NIMBY's want everyone to cave in to them.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Unlike the NIMBY's among us, I don't impose my idea of an "ideal neighborhood" on anyone. Isn't that exactly what you are doing in this neighborhood?

[antinimby]

Isn't that exactly what you are doing in this neighborhood?How'd you figure that? Unlike NIMBY's, I have never told any developers/city/individual how or what to do with their properties.

[ZippyTheChimp]

You didn't say this...
I have never told any developers/city/individual how or what to do with their properties You said this...
Unlike the NIMBY's among us, I don't impose my idea of an "ideal neighborhood" on anyone.This goes hand-in-hand with your interpretation of my question, what is your interest in this neighborhood, as an implication of some underlying profit motive.

We all know what the developer wants, what the neighborhood residents want. What do you want? Is it so obvious that you can't see it right in front of you?

Forget the crusade on behalf of the poor hapless developers, who can't seem to get anything done against the all-powerful NIMBYs. You probably want the same thing for this neighborhood as I want - taller buildings. However, I realize that my viewpoint is not the only vision of what this city should be.

In fact, it is not even the majority viewpoint, as is the case with most issues. Be it who wins the Super Bowl, who the next mayor is, or how tall the buildings on the Con Ed site are; the majority of the population has a marginal interest.

So the developer will make a buck (instead of $1.25), the residents will get less density, and you and I will see the site developed with shorter buildings. The true NIMBYs, who want the site left undeveloped, will not get what they want. This is not really not in my back yard, more like
not as tall in my backyard.

As for the life of the city, it will make little difference if the buildings are 500, 600, or 700 ft.

It might be worth noting that if "NIMBYs" didn't' protest at Atlantic Yards, would Frank Gehry have issued a mea culpa for his horrible design, or would it have been built?

[lofter1]

This is a free market, capitalist country.

Capitalist: Yes.

Free Market: Very, very questionable.

[BPC]

Too late for the Con Ed plant. The developer apparently responded to new calls by the Community Board and the Municipal Arts Society to save the plant by ripping a big hole in it instead. Another piece of our history, another beautiful structure, lost for the sake of a few more glass condo towers.

[kliq6]

If Solow acts this way, this baord will kill the whole project. he is an ass ( ive dealt with him) so i cant say im truly rooting for this project

[Fabrizio]

"The developer apparently responded to new calls by the Community Board and the Municipal Arts Society to save the plant by ripping a big hole in it instead."

So there you are. And some here wonder why folks are suspicious of developers?

[antinimby]

You didn't say this... You said this...This goes hand-in-hand with your interpretation of my question, what is your interest in this neighborhood, as an implication of some underlying profit motive.

We all know what the developer wants, what the neighborhood residents want. What do you want? Is it so obvious that you can't see it right in front of you?

Forget the crusade on behalf of the poor hapless developers, who can't seem to get anything done against the all-powerful NIMBYs. You probably want the same thing for this neighborhood as I want - taller buildings. However, I realize that my viewpoint is not the only vision of what this city should be.

In fact, it is not even the majority viewpoint, as is the case with most issues. Be it who wins the Super Bowl, who the next mayor is, or how tall the buildings on the Con Ed site are; the majority of the population has a marginal interest.

So the developer will make a buck (instead of $1.25), the residents will get less density, and you and I will see the site developed with shorter buildings. The true NIMBYs, who want the site left undeveloped, will not get what they want. This is not really not in my back yard, more like
not as tall in my backyard.

As for the life of the city, it will make little difference if the buildings are 500, 600, or 700 ft.

It might be worth noting that if "NIMBYs" didn't' protest at Atlantic Yards, would Frank Gehry have issued a mea culpa for his horrible design, or would it have been built?Boy, that's a long post, but let me try to address your comments about me.

1) I have NO PROFIT motives whatsoever. I don't own real estate, I don't buy real estate, I don't develop, I know of no one personally that are in real estate or development.

2) Your assumption of my position is wrong. Although I have mentioned it before, you seem to overlook it and assume that since I'm against NIMBY's, that I am automatically for developers. Let me say it again, I am not solely supportive of developers or developments of tall buildings. What I am for is a fair arena where neither developers nor NIMBY's have excessive influence on the city's development. I believe in letting the market decide. The NIMBY's are bent on squashing that and that's not a good thing for the city.

3) The height of buildings don't mean anything to me. I don't really care about tall buildings one way or the other. If it's tall, good. If not, that's okay too. It's just that when I see these developers, who sometimes actually go above and beyond to meet the NIMBY's demands, they will still-out of spite- find something else to complain about.

4) You are right about the all powerful NIMBY's. At this point, the equilibrium that I believe in so much, is leaning heavily in favor of the NIMBY's. No, the developers are not poor nor hapless but are people automatically wrong if they have money? There are good developments and there are bad developments, but if left up to the NIMBY's there wouldn't be any at all.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Your assumption of my position is wrong.I have not commented on your "position." I merely asked (twice) what it is you want to see at developed at the site. That is what I meant by interest. I'm sure if I asked this of everyone, I would get varied opinions.

You are delusional if you think that it is not the developers who have the upper hand.

The state and/or city government usually promote the project for the developer.

The developer usually gets incentives from the government.

The CBs have no control over budget, and their "rulings" are advisory only.

Developers make heavy campaign contributions to state and city officials. Ever hear of a CB member getting a campaign donation.

When all else fails, there is Eminent Domain.

All I have gotten from your last message is that:

You don't really care what is ultimately built on the site, but you don't like the protests.

Huh?

[antinimby]

Don't blame me if I can't read your mind and somehow didn't answer your question. But now that you've made it clear, here is what I believe should happen.

This is Solow's property. He paid for it, he should be able to go ahead with his plan, if it all falls within the law. The community should have bought the site from Con Ed if they were afraid that development would happen there. Nobody stopped them. The fact that this site was available was not a secret. They can then do with the site as they see fit. Nobody will stop them, why should it not be the same for anyone else?

And BTW, am I delusional when projects in this city are constantly attacked, then scaled down, redesigned to suit the NIMBY's tastes, or sometimes even cancelled? The NIMBY's ask for downzoning and get it. That's what you call developers having an upper hand?

Normally, I don't agree with ANYONE getting favoritism from government in return for financial/political support. But when the playing field is so hostile to developers, I can't blame them if they did.

Lastly, I believe we've pretty much beaten this topic to death and frankly I am getting bored. You know where I stand and I know where you stand. Let's move on.

[ZippyTheChimp]

And BTW, am I delusional when projects in this city are constantly attacked, then scaled down, redesigned to suit the NIMBY's tastes, or sometimes even cancelled?
You already said you don't care about the size of projects, which is the usual outcome of these confrontations.

You already said you don't have any profit interest, so the developer's reduced profit margin should not be a problem for you.

The percentage of projects that are cancelled over these confrontations is very small. Despite all the whining about NIMBYs, there is more construction going on now than at any time in the last 40 years.

Developers have the upper hand because they can just walk away, and move on to something else. If they choose to build, it is because they see a profit.

You don't know where I stand on this project; I haven't seen enough to make up my mind. I take them one at a time.

[lofter1]

I believe we've pretty much beaten this topic to death...
One more punch to the nose of that dead horse ...


"I came out from the belief that architecture is a social art.
It’s a great art, but it’s a social art.
It has to work. It has to serve people.”


Ada Louise Huxtable

The first newspaper architecture critic takes on debacles downtown and misguided preservation uptown: Ms. Huxtable still ‘already doesn’t like it.’

By Matthew Schuerman

New York Observer
December 19, 2005 Edition

http://www.observer.com/finance_specialnewsstory4.asp


The phone in Ada Louise Huxtable’s study rang, and she let the machine pick it up. It was someone asking for a time when she could meet as part of a jury for an architecture award. “I resigned!” she barked back at the machine. She collected herself. “I am tired of having to teach these people,” she said. “Let them learn for themselves.”

Ms. Huxtable, who is now the architecture critic for The Wall Street Journal and who essentially invented the field of architecture criticism for a general audience, isn’t looking for extra opportunities to impress others with what she knows about the art of building. At 84, she delivers a takedown as well as anybody, but she’s more selective in her targets. She does fewer of them, for one, and doesn’t feel compelled to save every good building and tear down all the bad ones. “Often, I would do things because I thought I should do them, out of a sense of responsibility,” she said. “Now my philosophy is, ‘Look, you young people, it’s your responsibility. I’m going to do what I want to do.’“


http://www.observer.com/data/articleimages/photoimages/121905_article_huxtable.jpg
Melanie Flood

In 1968, Ms. Huxtable—only five years into her official tenure as architecture critic for The New York Times—was already so well-known for her sharp tongue that The New Yorker ran a cartoon, by Alan Dunn, showing two construction workers in hard hats with the skeleton of a new building going up behind them. One of them, reading the newspaper, says to the other of the unfinished building, “Ada Louise Huxtable already doesn’t like it.” Punch Sulzberger, the Times publisher, bought the original cartoon and gave it to Ms. Huxtable. A friend stitched the quote on a needlepoint cushion that the critic keeps on the sofa of her study.

The study is a compact room for a compact person, with books crawling up to the ceiling, an old-fashioned rug, and a pen-and-ink drawing of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park, Ill., perched on a credenza. Ms. Huxtable herself, attired in a black suit and with a crown of white hair, is much friendlier in person than in print, but just as frank. Her large penthouse apartment sprawls out behind her and, at first glance, appears unexceptional, as if its inhabitant has more on her mind than her most immediate surroundings. That patrician-populist perspective leads her to upbraid the star-chitects who have invaded New York recently, concentrating on expensive condos rather than on civic projects or affordable housing. “And Richard Meier’s buildings—to tell you the truth, if I had the money, I wouldn’t want to live there.”

These days, Ms. Huxtable is steamed with what she has, in a way, wrought herself. She was at the forefront of the historic-preservation movement—she began writing at a time when chunks of New York were being torn down wholesale—but now she thinks that it has gone bonkers. Exhibit A is 2 Columbus Circle, recently the subject of a splashy preservation attempt by such luminaries as Robert A.M. Stern and Tom Wolfe. Its current owner, the Museum of Arts and Design, is now cutting windows into the windowless concrete façade designed by Edward Durrell Stone. Ms. Huxtable panned the building when it opened in 1964, and she panned it again two years ago in The Journal. It is, she said, an example of the city’s landmarking instinct devolving into “chaos.”

“When it opened as the Huntington Hartford Museum,” Ms. Huxtable said, “I thought it was one of Ed Stone’s very poor buildings, when he became very commercial and was giving a screen formula to any client. I reviewed it and said it was a ‘die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollipops,’ and it stuck. It’s now simply referred to everywhere as ‘the lollipop building.’ I also knew Ed Stone—who became Edward Durrell Stone— and I knew his work, and people who were there at the same time agreed. But today they don’t listen. I don’t think they listen in any field.”

On the other hand, the preservation process didn’t work at all for the Austin Nichols & Co. warehouse building on the Williamsburg waterfront. Earlier this fall, the City Council overturned the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s decision to protect the 1915 structure, with the local Councilman, David Yassky, calling it “a nondescript white box of a building.”

Now, now, Mr. Yassky.

“Of course it should be landmarked. It’s by Cass Gilbert, one of our great architects,” Ms. Huxtable said. “You have people who absolutely know nothing making outrageous statements about the architectural value of the building.”

The City Council even overrode Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s veto of the Austin Nichols decision, but the fact he got involved in an architectural fight—and took Ms. Huxtable’s side—has redeemed him in her eyes after his futile attempt to put a football stadium on the West Side. “I think it shows he is not afraid of doing something. I think he has more of a sense of what’s good for the city than other people do.”

Her commitment to The Wall Street Journal is light enough—contractually, just six pieces a year—that she can pick and choose among the big topics about which she feels people must listen. Lately, she has focused on what she has called the “betrayal” of architect Daniel Libeskind’s master plan for rebuilding Ground Zero, of which she was a big fan. First there was developer Larry Silverstein’s insistence that he get to rebuild 10 million square feet of office space in order to receive his full insurance payments. Then there was the architectural do-over of the Freedom Tower by David Childs, “an awkwardly torqued hybrid” that “speaks more of ego and arrogance than of art.” And finally, she wrote, the success of a small, vocal group of victims’ relatives in pushing aside cultural institutions proves that “the entitlements of loss and grief are the third rail of the rebuilding effort.”

Her insistence on which topics must be discussed is the hallmark of her career. Forty-six years ago, Ms. Huxtable got her first assignments by walking into New York Times Sunday editor Lester Markel’s office and telling him everything he was missing.

“They would simply print the puff pieces,” she said, “and they would show architects’ renderings, and I would get so upset. I would say, ‘That terrible thing?!’ I do believe in entitlement. I do believe we all are consumers of architecture, and that we are all entitled to something good, and that this garbage was being foisted on us by developers. I came out from the belief that architecture is a social art. It’s a great art, but it’s a social art. It has to work. It has to serve people.”

Shortly thereafter, The Times created a new job for her: architecture critic, the first one at a daily newspaper in this country. She became an influential voice for the ordinary man in an age of organization men, and an advocate for architecture over real-estate development. In 1970, she won the first Pulitzer Prize for criticism.

Some of what Ms. Huxtable would learn about buildings in practice—she studied architectural history at Hunter College and was, from 1946 to 1950, an assistant curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art—came from her husband, L. Garth Huxtable, an industrial designer she had met at the end of college, during a chance encounter at Bloomingdale’s. She was working at a special sale of modernist furniture staged in conjunction with a show of new designs at MoMA. (“He was furnishing his bachelor apartment and I sold him a piece of furniture, and he got me!”) Later, when he began designing the conference rooms at the United Nations building, he took her along to see the progress.

When she started at The Times, Ms. Huxtable was terrified, and she balked at Clifton Daniel’s offer to take her on full-time as the newspaper’s first-ever architecture critic—until he said that he would hire someone else if she refused. One would never expect, reading her elegant, confident prose or hearing her speak, that Ms. Huxtable ever felt that she didn’t know what she was doing. (“I never handed in a piece that had a correction on it, because I didn’t want anybody else to make a correction.”) She took on cause after cause, and whether it was because of her or her megaphone or the broader preservation movement, at least some of those buildings got saved.

Ms. Huxtable left The Times in 1982, aided by a MacArthur Fellowship that permitted her to work on books full-time. (She is now fishing for a new project.) Her husband died in 1989, and she now spends half of the year on the north shore of Massachusetts, near cousins and other relatives from her mother’s side of the family.

Age has been on her mind lately. Last year, she finished a biography of Frank Lloyd Wright for the Penguin Lives series in which she took the architect—one of her favorites—to task for lying about his birth date, making himself appear two years younger than he actually was. It was, she wrote, “the sort of small, white vanity lie usually embraced by women but common also among men.”

Ms. Huxtable would never do that—“My age is on the record, and I know perfectly well that no one will ever write anything about me without giving it”—but the peace she has made with the age question is a prickly, uneasy one. She is bothered by the idea that she will be treated “as some sort of freak show,” she said.

“I often get these letters that say, ‘I want to do what you do,’ this kind of business, and I try to be tolerant, because I never set out to do this. I set out to learn as much about architecture as I could,” she said. “In other words, you’ve got to have a sense of purpose and interest in something, and that will always lead you somewhere.”


copyright © 2005 the new york observer, L.P.

[NYguy]

OBSERVER

Playbook Solow Aims High, Hiring Lobbyists
Con Ed Developer Took a Leaf From the Dolans’ Playbook

By Matthew Schuerman

In late 2004, the real-estate developer Sheldon Solow was wrapping up his $600 million purchase of the Consolidated Edison plant on the East River. It featured startling views and represented one of the largest raw spaces left in Manhattan.

The only problem—or at least the first one he would have to take care of—was that the United Nations wanted to erect a 35-story tower of its own on a park directly to the north of his property. Such a move would cut off breathing room for any skyscrapers he would build himself. So Mr. Solow fought back. He lavished money on state Republicans and hired one of Albany’s best-connected lobbyists, whose clients have included Philip Morris and the New York Yankees, to block a bill in the State Senate that would have paved the way for the U.N. tower.

The bill died, pummeled by anti-U.N. rhetoric led by Senate Republicans.

It is hard to say how much of an impact Mr. Solow made, but at the very least his Cablevision-like techniques—taking a land-use fight normally reserved for City Hall all the way to Albany—underscores just how protective the developer has been of his interests, and how willing he is to pay to preserve them.

Mr. Solow, who built the 9 West 57th Street building in the 1970’s, partnered with Fisher Brothers to submit the winning bid for the Con Ed site and later bought his partners out, selecting Richard Meier and David Childs as the architects.

The developers talked from the beginning about building a mixed-use project, but early on, nearby residents questioned whether any commercial tenants would lease space almost a half-mile from the nearest subway. That is how the U.N. comes in—both as potential tenant and as an enemy.

Some time before November 2004, according to Gary Tarnoff, one of the developer’s land-use attorneys, Mr. Solow’s company held a meeting to interest the U.N. in his project. While it’s not known what was discussed, Mr. Solow basically could have extended two options: The U.N. could lease space in one of the buildings that he was building, or the U.N. could swap the site where it was planning to build—Robert Moses Park, between 41st and 42nd streets on First Avenue—for a piece of Mr. Solow’s property.

That same fall, four companies that were either explicitly controlled by Mr. Solow or listed the same building address contributed $25,500 to New York Forward, a controversial political-action committee founded by Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and used to fund state candidates. The contributions were all made on the same day, Sept. 16, 2004, in a move that would have maximized their impact. The contributions were tallied from public filings for The Observer by Common Cause New York, a watchdog group. (New York Forward was shut down in November 2005 as a result of a lawsuit filed by state Democrats.)

Also around that time, a lobbyist named Brian Meara talked with Steven Sanders, then the local State Assemblyman, about the Con Ed project.

“That conversation morphed into a brief conversation about Sheldon Solow’s interest in Robert Moses Park, as well as about the possibility of some kind of alternatives to providing the U.N. with additional space that would involve perhaps the Con Ed project,” Mr. Sanders, who is now a lobbyist, told The Observer. “I remember saying to Brian that it was my impression that the city had pretty much committed to that course of action.”

Mr. Sanders added, “That had to have been before November 2004.”

Mr. Meara wouldn’t say whether he was working for the East River development at the time of the conversation, and whether he spoke with other legislators. Mr. Meara didn’t sign a lobbying contract with Mr. Solow until Nov. 15, 2004, according to records online. He registered it with the Temporary State Commission on Lobbying on Nov. 23, specifically mentioning the Senate and Assembly bill numbers for the U.N. expansion.

A spokesman for the lobbying commission said that Mr. Meara would have violated the state lobbying act and could be subject to a civil fine had he agreed to represent Mr. Solow and waited more than 15 days to register. Mr. Meara, when told of the comment, said, “He’s wrong.”

Mr. Meara said that his conversation with Mr. Sanders didn’t count as lobbying because he wasn’t attempting to influence legislation. “I had no idea there was a bill until Steve Sanders told me there was,” he said.

The United Nations Development Corporation, a state-chartered agency, had made a presentation to the community board two years earlier, promising to replace Robert Moses Park with an esplanade along the East River. Despite local opposition, the bill—which would have subjected the U.N. expansion to regular city review but would not have given a final go-ahead—seemed likely to pass later that fall.

The New York Post’s Nov. 18, 2004, editions ran with the headline: “Pols Give Hush-Hush OK for U.N. Expansion,” saying that legislative leaders from both parties had agreed to pass the bill, and that the Republican Senate was to vote on the measure that day. That morning, however, State Senator Martin Golden, a Brooklyn Republican, raised objections, alleging that the international body was incompetent and anti-American. His line of reasoning gathered steam: The New York Sun called the U.N. “little more than an anti-Israel conspiracy,” and the New York Post called it “an institution whose membership virtually without exception doesn’t even try to disguise its contempt for the United States.” Proponents countered that the bill had nothing to do with ideology, that it was just—yawn—about land use, but to no avail. The bill continued to falter, until even the sympathetic New York Times, on Dec. 3, declared it all but dead.

Of course, considering the campaign contributions and Mr. Meara’s lobbying, maybe it was about land-use after all. It’s hard to say what impact Mr. Solow’s intervention made.

“It would be flattering me to say I had anything to do with it,” Mr. Meara told The Observer. “I think the New York Post and The New York Sun could take a lot more credit for it. I was just asking around what people thought the process was when it died.”

Senator Golden, for his part, said that he had never met Sheldon Solow and that his opposition had nothing to do with Mr. Meara’s intervention.

“It was to be a bill that we were going to pass that day,” he said. “I objected to it, and as we discussed it, we put more light on it. Why should we do anything to help the U.N.?”

But Megan Quattlebaum, associate director of Common Cause, said that even a little lobbying can make an impact when the opposing side doesn’t put up much of a fight. The only registered lobbyist working on behalf of the U.N., Sander Lehrer, was paid $24,691 in salary and expenses for the latter half of 2004, according to filings online. Mr. Meara, by contrast, collected $67,500 from November 2004 until March 2005, when he said he abruptly lost Mr. Solow as a client.

“You have a lot happening at the same time,” Ms. Quattlebaum said. “You have a member giving you this message, and you have the lobbyist, and then you have the campaign contributions. This was a full-out lobbying and campaign-contribution press.”

Mr. Solow’s project, which faces city review over the next year, calls for 6.2 million square feet of developed space that would cover more than four riverfront blocks between 35th and 41st streets.

In November, Mr. Solow filed an application with the Department of City Planning to rezone the area from manufacturing use to a commercial designation that would permit substantial residential development. Just 1.1 million of 6.2 million square feet would be devoted to office space. Six of the towers would be apartments, with enough room for an estimated 7,760 new residents, according to the application. About 3.4 acres would be privately owned, publicly accessible open space.

Members of the local community board oppose the proposed project, arguing that the buildings, which would range in height from 578 to 864 feet tall, are too large and that the entirely market-rate project is offensive. “They are obviously trying to turn it into a rich person’s ghetto,” said Charles Buchwald, co-chairman of the community board’s Con Ed subcommittee.

The Con Ed complex itself, which consists of power facilities and an office building, is being gradually dismantled. The U.N., according to spokeswoman Vivian van de Pierre, is considering building two low-rises on its north lawn, and leasing 200,000 square feet nearby, in order to accommodate a renovation of the Secretariat building.

As for finding a tenant, one of Mr. Solow’s attorneys, Sandy Lindenbaum, said that he’s trying the U.N. again.

“Nothing would make us happier than to have the U.N. as a tenant, or one of the tenants, in the commercial building at the north end of the site,” he said.

[kliq6]

this one is going to get ugly, this CB board doesnt want this at all an dthey are just as powerful as CB1, who ive had years of fights with over issues, they are tough

[NoyokA]

http://img430.imageshack.us/img430/9308/coned2pa.jpg

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/7232/coned21es.jpg

[hey19932]

^ :D yay!!!

[lofter1]

Ouch!!

[BrooklynRider]

Looks like Chernobyl.

[tmg]

Didn't we learn from the Hearst Tower that there are ways to look toward the future while embracing the past? Why must we settle for mediocrity?

[kliq6]

Ill put this project like i did the 80 South nothing will happen here till 2008 as well

[Deimos]

If anyone's interested:


Come Join . . .

MANHATTAN BOROUGH PRESIDENT SCOTT M. STRINGER

CONGRESSWOMAN CAROLYN MALONEY

STATE SENATORS LIZ KRUEGER AND THOMAS K. DUANE

STATE ASSEMBLYMAN JONATHAN L. BING

CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS DANIEL R. GARODNICK,

ROSIE MENDEZ AND JESSICA LAPPIN

AND LOCAL COMMUNITY LEADERS

In the fight for sensible development of the former Con Edison power plant sites on First Avenue.

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006
7:00 PM

Farkas Auditorium at the NYU Medical Center

550 First Avenue at 31st Street



* We will discuss the plan proposed by the developer, which includes 6 skyscrapers that will lead to greater traffic congestion and create more overcrowding in area schools.

*Learn about the alternative proposal created by members of the community, and the upcoming City Planning Commission hearing which will determine what will be built in our neighborhood.

Please come find out how you can help plan the future of our community.

[Deimos]

I wanted to keep my thoughts seperate from the post above... I'm glad to be on their mailing list, and I hope they lose. Hopefully this year I'll be able to make this meeting and report back to everyone what is said, but it would be great to see someone else from here at that meeting (potentially being a voice of reason to those anti-development nimbys)

[TLOZ Link5]

If those apartment buildings are going to be condo towers, I highly, highly doubt that many of its occupants will be families with school-age children.

[BPC]

To H___ with them. None of them lifted a finger to save that beautiful Con Ed plant, now 1/2 destroyed. Now they want a "sensible development"?

[TLOZ Link5]

To H___ with them. None of them lifted a finger to save that beautiful Con Ed plant, now 1/2 destroyed. Now they want a "sensible development"?

Word.

[MidtownGuy]

So true. What a loss, it should have been saved because it was beautiful IMO.
It could have been anything, with a little imagination applied. Museum, nightclub complex (jesus that would have drove 'em nuts), who knows.

The anti-development people in that area, let's face it, don't want ANYTHING that will draw people in ANY numbers to their isolated little piece of the island, which they like to keep just as it is, and only for themselves. They are mostly old and intolerant curmudgeons, in my estimation, after meeting a few of them at the table they set up for a Lexington Avenue street fair.

[Alonzo-ny]

when are these people going to realise theyre in manhattan

[krulltime]

Alternate plan presented for Con Ed site south of the United Nations


http://www.cityrealty.com/graphics/uploads/1140731146_conedcb6.gif


23-FEB-06

Community Board 6 and many elected officials who represent East Midtown presented an alternate scheme for the redevelopment of the Con Ed facilities along the East River south of the United Nations last night at a public meeting.

Sheldon H. Solow, the developer, has submitted plans to the city that call for the erection of a 864-foot-high office and residential tower on the southeast corner of First Avenue and 41st Street, a 528-foot-foot residential tower further east on 41st Street, a 836-foot tower on the west side of First Avenue between 39th and 40th Streets, a 792-foot-high tower on the southeast corner of First Avenue and 39th Street and a 578-foot-high tower further east on 39th Street and calls for two residential towers east of First Avenue between 35th and 36th Streets.

The main group of towers would be clustered around a large ice-skating rink and pavilion and a central, landscaped plaza, all on properties that he has contracted to buy from the utility. The United Nations Secretariat Building, one of the city’s most important landmarks, is 505 feet tall.

Mr. Solow’s plans call for several thousand units of housing and several hundred thousand square feet of office space.

The alternate plan was presented by John Pettit West of the land-use committee of Community Board 6 and was enthusiastically endorsed at the meeting by Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, State Senators Liz Krueger and Thomas K. Duane, City Council Members Rosie Mendez, Jessica Lappin and Daniel R. Garodnick, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. Mr. Garodnick chaired the meeting that was held at the NYU Medical Center at 550 First Avenue.

The alternate plan would permit only residential uses on the sites and limited building heights to 400 feet. It also called for the inclusion of affordable housing, a new public elementary school, the creation of public, not private, streets at 39th and 40th Streets east of First Avenue, the creation of a new waterfront park on land that has been used as a parking lot by the utility, the removal of the elevated exit ramp for the FDR Drive at 42nd Street and the decking over of the drive from 38th to 41st Streets to create new public open space.

Mr. Solow’s plans are based on the city approving a floor-to-area-ratio (F.A.R.) of 12. The board’s plan, on the other hand, is based on a F.A.R. of only 6, but with bonuses of 2 F.A.R. each for providing an easement along the FDR drive to facilitate its realignment and eventual decking over and waterfront access, affordable housing, and preservation of some of the existing powerplants. Several speakers noted, however, that the very recent start of demolition of one of the powerplants, as shown in the photograph at the right, that groups such as the Municipal Arts Society were hoping to save, has removed the possibility of that bonus for the Solow scheme in the board’s plan.

Mr. Gardonick told the 300 or so people in attendance that the elected representatives “are standing solidly together for a reasonable and responsible” development and he and the other elected officials urged them to attend a “scoping session” for the project’s environmental impact statement that will be held by the City Planning Commission March 28. All the elected officials suggested that the City Planning Commission be urged to specifically include many environmental factors in a new study as the City Council can ultimately act only on factors cited in the study.

Congresswoman Maloney said that the Solow plan to put open space inside a cluster of towers “is almost insulting,” adding that “we’re so hungry for open space” but not “behind large, forbidding buildings.” She said she and the elected officials at the meeting would draft a letter to various public agencies demanding that they meet quickly to consider ways of creating decks over the drive.


Copyright © 1994-2006 CITY REALTY

[NoyokA]

ATTN: NIMBY's...

"GET DA **** OUT"

[antinimby]

Mark my words:

Kiss goodbye to Solow's 800 ft. tower.

The community deliberately chose 400 ft. so that after a likely compromise, Solow will get one 600 footer and the rest will be in the 200 to 500 range, with added community services that they always want in exchange for their "generosity" in allowing even the one 600 footer.

Oh, and that won't be the end of it either. The height will just be the first part. After that comes the contextual part. The next thing they'll want is a say in what it should look like. Get ready for severely toned-down and conservative boxes.

I'm surprised that Solow, being a veteran NY developer did not foresee this.

[londonlawyer]

To H___ with them. None of them lifted a finger to save that beautiful Con Ed plant, now 1/2 destroyed. Now they want a "sensible development"?

I agree with you. The Con Ed plant was beautiful. They let it get razed and now freak out about tall, but cutting edge towers.

The thing that kills me is that, not including Sutton and Beekman Places to the north, the area in question is not Madison and 79th. It consists of scores of utterly dilapidated, rent controlled buildings with expensive, modern boxes strewn in amongst them. If someone wanted to build a 860 tower on 5th, Madison, Park, Lex, etc. on the UES, I'd agree that it did not belong there. However, I see no problem with such a tower in this area.

[londonlawyer]

It's amazing how a-holes make it impossible to do things in NYC. If this project were proposed in Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, etc., the local community would be giddy with excitement. Only in NY could someone propose a project that would greatly improve a drab area and yet be taken over a barrel by a-holes that oppose it.

It reminds me of how the jackasses in the Flatiron District absolutely busted Apple's balls about the aesthetics of a new store that Apple wanted to put in an old, totally shabby building that used to house a grungy diner. After Apple bent over backwards, it still wasn't good enough to the local morons. Apple backed out of the deal, and the old building remains filthy, disgusting and EMPTY!

[JD]

Alternate plan presented for Con Ed site south of the United Nations

Mr. Gardonick told the 300 or so people in attendance that the elected representatives “are standing solidly together for a reasonable and responsible” development"

If any NYC project of the last 150 years had been held to this standard--Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center, Brooklyn Bridge, World Trade Center--none of them would have been built. The area to the south of the UN is NOT Shangri-La--stop treating as if it were holy earth!

[londonlawyer]

.... The area to the south of the UN is NOT Shangri-La--stop treating as if it were holy earth!

I agree. It's actually pretty crappy. It's kind of a wasteland that straddles the "pristine" Midtown Tunnel, a long row of run down hospital buildings and dilapidated, rent controlled tenements whose owners don't invest a dime in their upkeep.

[BrooklynRider]

Garodnick just got elected and has some posturing to do. The elected offocial will stand solidly until they stop standing solidly together.

[Jake]

heh, speaking of Shangri-La, check out the new hotel by that name going up in Vancouver BC
http://thehoddlegrid.net/dump/shangri-la-vcr.jpg

sorry to knock you guys off topic

[macreator]

...and dilapidated, rent controlled tenements whose owners don't invest a dime in their upkeep.

Well how can the owners of these tenements invest a dime in their upkeep if the tenants are rent controlled?

Ah...cause and effect.

[macreator]

I'm sorry londonlawyer, that comment made it sound like I was attacking you. I was just making a point which came to me when I read your post. For all I know you are on the same wavelength as me.

[londonlawyer]

I'm sorry londonlawyer, that comment made it sound like I was attacking you. I was just making a point which came to me when I read your post. For all I know you are on the same wavelength as me.

No problem, sir. You are a good dude. Anyway, we agree on having sympathy for landlords. Rent control/stabilization causes, among other things, the existence of utterly neglected properties.

[londonlawyer]

heh, speaking of Shangri-La, check out the new hotel by that name going up in Vancouver BC
http://thehoddlegrid.net/dump/shangri-la-vcr.jpg

sorry to knock you guys off topic

Shangri-La is looking to enter the NY market too.

[lofter1]

Vancouver is a fantastic looking city -- I've only visited it once and that was in the past year so I don't know if they're knocking down great old buildings right and left but what is going up there has a great look to it -- due, I understand, to very well throught out zoning and design guidelines --

info here: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/235217_vancouver04.html

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20050804/450vancouver05_1.jpg
Joshua Trujillo/Seattle Post-Intelligencer
David Lam Park, which borders Yaletown, helps make high-rise living
more family friendly in Vancouver, B.C

[ablarc]

Vancouver is a fantastic looking city...what is going up there has a great look to it -- due, I understand, to very well throught out zoning and design guidelines --
They have the sense to develop the ground plane in small increments and they keep their skyscrapers skinny.

[lofter1]

Vancouver has the sense to creative regs that require more glass on upper floors of high-rise residential -- which gives new towers a sense of lightness.

They also consider "view corridors" as an important part of planning.

All of this leads to a better living environment.

[ablarc]

They also consider "view corridors" as an important part of planning.
That's right, the view corridors generate the skinny skyscrapers. Unlike New York NIMBYs, they've figured out in Vancouver that tall, thin buildings block fewer views than shorter, fat ones; most folks --even in a high-rise-- don't live on an upper level.

[lofter1]

Prior NYC zoning regs used to achieve this and resulted in the set-back "wedding cake" style buildings that are classic NYC.

But big business wanted larger floor plates on higher floors ...

ergo: new zoning regs.

There goes the sky :mad:

[ablarc]

There goes the sky
Truthfully, that part doesn't bother me. I like a city that deprives me of sky, whether it's Siena, Mykonos or New York. Makes it that much more miraculous when you break out into sky a-plenty, as in the Sheep Meadow or Piazza.

The loss of views from apartments doesn't bother me either; I categorically deny anyone's inherent right to a view in the city (or anywhere else, for that matter).

What does bother me is the shittily-proportioned buildings that result from big floorplates and insufficient height. The Lower Manhattan skyline from the water has been completely ruined by the fat, waddling boxes that have taken over down there. That, I find offensive.

[elfgam]

I wish for once that the complex was design driven and not size driven -- the whole mentality is that everyone talks about these things in a vacuum: 800' boxes, 400' boxes... quiet frankly who the F' cares? Instead, all the Rockefeller Centers, Lincoln Centers, Empire States even the WTC started out as a concept -- make it something inspiring and then argue to the nitty gritty points about size.

[elfgam]

That being said, I also fault the community for being utterly ridiculous (400'! in midtown Manhattan?) and I wish NYC community boards weren't so damn predictable -- they're job is to encourage good development not to discourage all development! I wish for once they'd say -- wow, this is an empty avenue with nothing on it (though I too wish they would've saved a few elements of the power-plant) let's hold a huge competition and make something that gives Shanghai, Hong Kong and London a run for their money.

[Ed007Toronto]

Shangri La Toronto. Coming soon.

http://www.westbankcorp.com/mixed.cfm?projectid=32

[ablarc]

^ Influenced by Piano's New York Times Tower.

[antinimby]

...but will probably come out looking better than the Times.

[lofter1]

heh heh ^ No Way ...

It's got dinky balconies :eek:

And what's going on with that boxy projection up near the top???


http://www.westbankcorp.com/images/Shangri-LaTo-full2.jpg

[londonlawyer]

Does this community board actually have the authority to force Solow to lower the height of the buildings? Given that the architects have specified very specific heights (e.g.,864 feet), I assumed that those are heights that he may build as of right. It would really suck if this project is watered down.

That area is hardly beautiful. It is the land of hospitals, the Midtown Tunnel and thoroughly neglected, rent stabilized/controlled tenements with a few nice buildings and the UN sprinkled in here and there. Therefore, these schmucks have a lot of chutzpah in busting Shelly's nads.

[BrooklynRider]

Wouldn't it be more to their advantage to negotiate FOR something rather than against it. It seems that a large development could bring much needed retail to the area or a new school or community center. It would seem better politics to go to the table optimistic to get an agreement than pessimistically to just kill it outright.

[lofter1]

Community Boards have no power beyond who their members can talk to -- and they can make noise.

But essentially CBs are purely advisory -- anything that they put into their reports (which then go on to City Planning, City Council and the Borough President) are simply recommendations with no binding power.

[TranspoMan]

The Community Board does not come across as being outright opposed to this project, instead they are trying to negotiate for such things as a new community facility (i.e., a public elementary school on-site), mandatory street walls with retail fronting the streets, and the provision of pedestrian access across the FDR Drive to the waterfront.

The community wants to have their rezoning plan analyzed in the supplemental EIS. The City Council can vote yes to a plan with modifications, but only if those alternatives were studied in the environmental impact analyses.

[londonlawyer]

Community Boards have no power beyond who their members can talk to -- and they can make noise.

But essentially CBs are purely advisory -- anything that they put into their reports (which then go on to City Planning, City Council and the Borough President) are simply recommendations with no binding power.

That's what I thought. Therefore, if Solow has the ability to build to 864 as of right may he do so notwithstanding their objections?

[NYguy]

The Community Board does not come across as being outright opposed to this project

They seem to be drawing a pretty hard line to me:

The alternate plan would permit only residential uses on the sites and limited building heights to 400 feet


The guy is planning five towers over that height, and 3 at least or nearly twice that height. They want them all knocked down. It's not even a matter of asking that one tower be dropped in favor of a larger park. It's the height factor they want to kill. The height is what the developer wants and needs. (Did they really think that site would be sold to someone to build a park?)


They have no official power, but beware. The NIMBY is very crafty:

All the elected officials suggested that the City Planning Commission be urged to specifically include many environmental factors in a new study as the City Council can ultimately act only on factors cited in the study.

Westway, anyone?

[lofter1]

If a developer can build "as of right" per zoning regs then it is much harder to stop or change the development.

NYC during the Westway debate was an entirely different animal. Nowadays the city is much more development friendly.

Not to say that the CB won't be able to get concessions (public amenities) on this one.

The developer will be looking at ways to move this forward -- rather than letting it get stuck in on-going "review process".

[londonlawyer]

So all they can do is slow this down -- not force Solow to stop the project? It kills me that a-holes in this mediocre area are going ballistic over an awesome project, and yet no one (on than those of us on this board) is shaking at stick at the demolition of The Drake, the townhouses, etc.

[kliq6]

if they get a true waterfront park as part of this, they meaning the CB will move aside

[kurokevin]

Alternate plan presented for Con Ed site south of the United Nations

The alternate plan was presented by John Pettit West of the land-use committee of Community Board 6 and was enthusiastically endorsed at the meeting by Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, State Senators Liz Krueger and Thomas K. Duane, City Council Members Rosie Mendez, Jessica Lappin and Daniel R. Garodnick, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. Mr. Garodnick chaired the meeting that was held at the NYU Medical Center at 550 First Avenue.


As a consistent viewer of this board, and as citizen of Manhattan I intend, and suggest, writting letters to the above mentioned people. I love New York City, and care passionatly about it's future. Solow has developed some very nice properties in this city His presentation here looks, IMO, astounding and exciting. Perhaps a new Rockefeller Center? Besides, this isn't Brownstone Brooklyn, but Midtown Manhattan- if something like this doesn't get built here, I seriously fear for our future as a world class city of architectural importance.

I recommend that instead of complaing about NIMBY's and such, each of you writer to the above (a simple google search should suffice) and state your stance on this project.

I'll post my letter on this board for everyone to see at a later date

Best

Kevin

[macreator]

No problem, sir. You are a good dude. Anyway, we agree on having sympathy for landlords. Rent control/stabilization causes, among other things, the existence of utterly neglected properties.

Glad to know I have an ally in this matter. :)

With "affordable housing" being the buzz word nowadays, it has become un-PC to be pro-Market rate housing.

I'm paying market rate, why should some Joe Shmo next door be paying half that?

The more housing stock there is the more affordable housing will be -- tell NIMBYs that and they'll probably lynch you.

[londonlawyer]

I am against rent control/stabilization for numerous reasons, including the fact that it results in the city being infested with dilapidated properties in which the landlord does not invest a penny.

[macreator]

I am against rent control/stabilization for numerous reasons, including the fact that it results in the city being infested with dilapidated properties in which the landlord does not invest a penny.

Exactly. And it breeds an environment where the neighborhood goes to crap; i.e. The Broken Glass theory.

With such dilapidated properties in an area, where is the incentive for a developer to come in and build a nice looking project? There is none. Instead a developer is going to put up a crappy looking building because he figures it won't make any difference in a neighborhood that looks so ratty.

And it is a nightmare for building owners who are literally pinned and can't do anything to upgrade their building as they are making little to no profit since their tenants are paying rents that would be considered market rate if the year was 1980.

[lofter1]

You're way out of date as to where Rent Stabilization laws now stand. Owner's of RS buildings have gotten more legal power via NYS Legislature over the past 10 years, both to up the rents and to oust tenants.

What often exists in RS buildings nowadays are owners who do little or no maintenance -- "deferred maintenance" is the legal term -- thus allowing their buildings to get to the point where people say "Ooh, what a crap building ... Poor owner ... Damn those RS tenants ... Look what they have caused!"

[TranspoMan]

To clarify, I really should have said that the community is not outright opposed to developing these parcels, yet clearly opposes the specific plan put forth by the developer. It doesn't surprise me that building heights are a sensitive issue in this community after the nearby Trump World Tower was developed as-of-right, bypassing public review processes. Proposing anything higher than the Secretariat will now surely raise community objections.

I think the community really wants to see these sites developed, making First Avenue a much more inviting space for pedestrians than it is right now. Their 197-c plan addresses some of their issues with Solow's proposal: placing limitations on building heights, making the public open space truly a "public" space that's not walled off by skyscapers, remapping 39th and 40th Streets, and providing public access to the waterfront.

[MidtownGuy]

making the public open space truly a "public" space that's not walled off by skyscapers


Bryant Park is walled off by skyscrapers. It's magnificent.

[TranspoMan]

Bryant Park is walled off by skyscrapers. It's magnificent.

Bryant Park is nicely framed by skyscrapers and is a splendid open space, but it is bordered by West 42nd Street to the north, West 40th Street to the south, and Sixth Avenue to the west, all publically mapped streets that provide excellent pedestrian access and make the park inviting to visitors. The open space proposed by Solow is a bit different and I believe a better comparison can be to Teardrop Park in Battery Park City - sometimes described as a fancy backyard for luxury high-rises. Compare these two descriptions:

Teardrop Park
http://www.pps.org/gps/one?public_place_id=869

Bryant Park
http://www.pps.org/gps/one?public_place_id=26

I've been to Teardrop Park and think it is a nicely landscaped, yet underutilized space. While Battery Park City is afforded with numerous open spaces and parks for people to choose from, East Midtown residents/workers do not have a plethora of choices when it comes to open space.

[ablarc]

What's your point?

Design an open park and it'll fill up with people; design a secret labyrinth and it won't.

What else is new?

[antinimby]

TranspoMan, after thinking about this I have come to this conclusion: the user-unfriendliness of Teardrop park is not so much the result of having tall buildings around it but more of the design of the park itself. The foliage and the layout creates a feel of a path instead of a park.

Even without the buildings around it, the feel of it would still be the same. If you were to stand there and look around, you'd pretty much see nothing but shrubs and trees. As nice as they maybe, they're not very interesting to look at. Whereas in Bryant Park, you can look around and see a lot of interesting things. Believe it or not, having the tall buildings around BP adds to the visual splendor and is actually an asset, not a disadvantage. Imagine if BP were placed in the middle of a non-urban environment, say an open field that had no buildings or traffic as far as the eye can see, would it be as interesting?

We are too quick to put the blame on buildings when in fact it's the design of the park and the streets are what makes it succeed.

[antinimby]

TranspoMan, I couldn't help but think about your comment:

East Midtown residents/workers do not have a plethora of choices when it comes to open space.
And also a quote from our lovely Ms. Maloney (who btw, should be fighting in Washington for NY and not at home fighting against progress in NY).

Congresswoman Maloney said that the Solow plan to put open space inside a cluster of towers “is almost insulting,” adding that “we’re so hungry for open space” but not “behind large, forbidding buildings.”First of all, if these people are so "hungry" for open space, why haven't they or she did something about it before? Hmmm...let's see, instead of putting our money and effort into relieving our hunger, we'll just wait until someone comes along and proposes to do something with the Con Ed site and then we'll just cry and bitch until we get exactly what we want.
They seem to be surviving without the park and open space so far. If everything was left alone here (meaning no open space or park) they wouldn't have a problem either. So is the open space what they really want or is it just that they don't want other people coming into the neighborhood?

[lofter1]

I think if you dig a bit deeper (where to dig? I don't know :confused: ) you'll find that Teardrop Park was actually designed to be a walk-thru park, rather than a hang-out park -- except for the playground areas.

[tmg]

TranspoMan, after thinking about this I have come to this conclusion: the user-unfriendliness of Teardrop park is not so much the result of having tall buildings around it but more of the design of the park itself. The foliage and the layout creates a feel of a path instead of a park.

Both factors have an effect. There is no question that the visibility and permeability of a park from the street is a prime determinant of how safe it feels and how much use it receives. Before its redesign, the interior of Bryant Park was not visible from the street, and it became a very unsafe and undesirable place to hang out. In that case, buildings didn't block the view, the design of the park did. But buildings can do the same thing. They can also ensure that the park remains in permanent shadow.

A park with street frontage on First Avenue and the streets to the north and south will be a better urban space and a better public resource than one walled in by buildings. There can be buildings on the same block, I think the community groups are just saying they buildings shouldn't wall the park off from the street.

[NYguy]

First of all, if these people are so "hungry" for open space, why haven't they or she did something about it before?

A more important question would be what the hell are they doing in Manhattan in the first place? If I were starved for open space, that's one of the last places on earth I'd be.

[londonlawyer]

A more important question would be what the hell are they doing in Manhattan in the first place? If I were starved for open space, that's one of the last places on earth I'd be.

Good point. Someone I know on York and 72nd was complaining about the loss of the buildings on 1st and 72nd that contained the High Life bar. He didn't care about the architectural loss; instead, he complained that a tall building would be built and that he "hates tall buildings." I asked why on earth he lives on the eastern section of the UES in that case as opposed to the Village, SoHo, etc., let alone another borough. He had no answer.

[Deimos]

Well at least I know who I'm not voting for next election.... State Senator Liz Krueger:


Update on Plans for the Con Edison/Waterside Site:

On February 22, my office, along with seven other elected officials, the East Midtown Coalition for Sensible Development and Community Board 6, held a Town Hall meeting that was attended by more than 300 community residents to discuss the development of the former Con Edison Waterside power plant sites. The discussion included details of the plan proposed by the developer, the alternative plans created by Community Board 6, an explanation of the rezoning process, and the importance of community members getting involved in the fight for sensible development. I was extremely pleased by the large community turnout at the meeting as well the unity among all the elected officials and community groups involved.

All of the elected officials and community groups present emphasized that, if appropriately developed, the redevelopment of the Con Ed sites would provide an unparalleled opportunity to create a vibrant new neighborhood with improved access to the waterfront, new public parks and affordable housing that would benefit our entire community. Unfortunately, the owner of the sites, East River Realty, has submitted rezoning plans to the Department of City Planning without taking into account the input of the community board, concerned organizations or local elected officials. East River Realty’s proposals call for the construction of seven residential and commercial towers that would dwarf the already tall residential buildings around the sites, create private rather than public open space, and add to the already overburdened local school system and mass transit network. In response to the developer’s plans, Community Board 6 has created its own rezoning plan for the sites, which would limit building heights to 400 feet, create a new public park and waterfront esplanade, a new elementary school and a substantial amount of affordable housing.

I urge everyone interested in this important project to testify at the upcoming City Planning Commission scoping hearing, which will be held on Tuesday, March 28, 2006, at the Shottenstein Cultural Center, 239 East 34 Street, at 4pm and 7pm. Even if you don't want to testify, you can come to support your neighbors and elected officials who will be speaking. At this hearing, the City Planning Commission will be considering what information should be studied in the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that will be written about the development. The EIS attempts to predict how the planned development will affect its surroundings, including the character of the neighborhood, the population of the schools, the public parks, the traffic, and so on. It is crucial-and only fair-that the Planning Commission fully evaluate the impact that any development will have on the surrounding community and comprehensively study the zoning plan proposed by Community Board 6. If you would like to learn more about the redevelopment of the Con Ed sites, or have questions about testifying at the scoping hearing, please call Sarra Hale-Stern in my district office at 212-490-9535.

[ablarc]

he "hates tall buildings."
What's to hate?

I can see hating bigotry, dishonesty, injustice, hypocrisy, and even stupidity.

But tall buildings?

[londonlawyer]

I wouldn't want to see tall buildings everwhere either. If someone wanted to build a 1,300 foot building on 5th, Madison or Park on the UES, or on CPW, the Village, etc., I would be against it. For someone on York to complain though is retarded. 1st, 2nd and York are the home of the bland, 30 story concrete box. The UES east of 3rd is hardly the West Village.

[ablarc]

^ Yeah, it just sounded like a blanket condemnation coming from him. Most NIMBYs think a building's wickedness is a linear function of its height.

[LeCom]

What's to hate?

I can see hating bigotry, dishonesty, injustice, hypocrisy, and even stupidity.

But tall buildings?
Trust me, some people straight up hate tall buildings.

[ablarc]

Trust me, some people straight up hate tall buildings.
That's evident; what's not evident is: why?

[vc10]

What's additionally not evident is why such people choose to live in NYC. NYC is all about tall buildings. The population density, both residential and commercial, is what gives the city its energy. That density is driven by tall buildings.


That's evident; what's not evident is: why?

[ablarc]

Still, I can't wrap my mind around blanket skyscraperphobia; I can't find the real of it. Oh sure, I wouldn't want a skyscraper in the West Village or Beacon Hill and I join those who deplore Paris' Maine-Montparnasse Tower. Those are all situations that can be discussed rationally from an aesthetic, artistic, compositional standpoint.

What I don't understand is:

1. what do people actually feel who loudly proclaim that they hate all tall buildings?

2. why do so many people think that the virtue of any building --skyscraper or otherwise-- is a function of its lack of height? NIMBYs believe this; to them, shaving five feet off a fifty foot building improves the building. Always.

I've heard people say skyscrapers are oppressive. That seems like a literary idea --something they got out of a book or intact from a grade-school teacher. Never having felt oppressed by a skyscraper (au contraire, I have been elated by many a tower), I don't know what they're talking about experientially.

Must be a phobia if it's real at all --like fear of crowds.

I once designd a house for a lady who smugly declared that she hated the color blue, so there was no blue in her house (piece o' cake); maybe it was because her husband often dragged her off to Florida's Keys for a spot of deep-sea fishing. Think how she must have suffered, suspended between sea and sky!

People shouldn't inflict their irrationalities and phobias on others; that's what NIMBYs do at least half the time when they obsess about building height.

[JD]

add to the already overburdened local school system and mass transit network.

I love this argument about the mass transit network. Believe it or not, the community board used this against Trump World Tower as well.

If CB6 were really concerned about an overburdened transit network, having a bunch of towers capped at four-hundred feet wouldn't be much of a solution, now, would it?

[ablarc]

If CB6 were really concerned about an overburdened transit network, having a bunch of towers capped at four-hundred feet wouldn't be much of a solution, now, would it?
See? It's tall-o-phobia! Strikes again!

[antinimby]

That's right. Instead of taller, they'd just be fatter, with just the same number of people. But the NIMBYs would be happy nonetheless, which goes to show that the overcrowding argument is not what they are worried about but instead it's the buildings and their height. This goes to show that the NIMBYs will resort to using any argument--be it legitimate or not--to make their point.

I really think this is going to in the end play out this way: we'd have a bunch of shorter buildings designed to be "in context" with the neighboring buildings. And you know what that means, right? Four or five Battery Park City brick boxes on the East River.

[ablarc]

^ Like the ones at the bottom of this page, only a bit taller?: http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3786&page=6

[antinimby]

You got it!

[londonlawyer]

I drove through this area the other day, and I reiterate that 1st and 2nd in the 30's and 40's (excluding Tudor City and a few HIGH RISES) is a dump! Surely, the people who live in fancy high rises are not complaining as this project will gentrify their area further.

[alibrot]

its all very simple. tall buildings and luxury are usually associated. these people want "affordable housing" not to help others, but to protect themselves, ensuring that the area doesnt get too nice and that they will never be priced out of the area. its pure self interest. and some jealousy mixed in.

alternatively, tribeca would never want affordable housing. they just want to keep people out. more space and resources for the current residents, and fewer developments also mean apt prices stay high.

different interests, similar arguements, similar results. these people dont hate tall buildings, but are threatened by what they bring.

go in front of any coop board lately? once you're on the inside, you life is about keeping people out.

[lofter1]

alternatively, tribeca would never want affordable housing. they just want to keep people out.
There has been a huge fight regarding Indepence Plaza, one of the ORIGINAL residential complexes in what is now called Tribeca -- the effort is to maintain IP as affordable housing ...

http://www.ipnta.org/assoc.html


We need to show the political forces that it is a crime and a total lack of conscience for the government, who owns 95 percent of IPN, to turn their backs on over 3,500 people -- the people who literally built the Tribeca neighborhood. Our tenants have helped all of downtown for the past 30 years. We were here, even when there weren't many other people living here. We have been good neighbors and dedicated New Yorkers. We have helped build Washington Market Park, P.S. 234, Hudson River Park, the downtown little league, and supported our neighbors during the loft law campaign to make loft living legal.

Now, the powers that be would like to eliminate us from New York City.

Please share our message with your neighbors, other Mitchell-Lama tenants, and residents of New York City. How anyone can turn their backs on this issue? Imagine looking back and remembering that over 3,500 people at IPN were forced out of their homes because someone who never had anything to do with creating Tribeca wants to cash in on our hard work here.

The Tenants at IP fought a hard battle ... http://www.ipnta.org/newsletters/mar_04_1.html

[alibrot]

well, yea, when there are affordable rate tenants, they will fight hard anywhere...but what about the rest of the community? they arent pushing for NEW affordable housing.

same thing in hell's kitchen as at the con ed site. all of a sudden high end housing comes in and threatens the economics of the area. the CBs in these fast gentrifying areas push for smaller buildings with a % affordable housing too keep the buildings from going high end luxury, and keep it "working class friendly". while they push this goal as being noble, its all self interest.


There has been a huge fight regarding Indepence Plaza, one of the ORIGINAL residential complexes in what is now called Tribeca -- the effort is to maintain IP as affordable housing ...

http://www.ipnta.org/assoc.html

The Tenants at IP fought a hard battle ... http://www.ipnta.org/newsletters/mar_04_1.html

[lofter1]

its all self interest.
I'd argue that it is in the interest of NYC as a whole to maintain affordable housing in all neighborhoods.

Otherwise in the future Manhattan will become an enclave of rich only -- a virtual "gated island".

Of course, changes in the economy will dictate eventually.

[londonlawyer]

I'd argue that it is in the interest of NYC as a whole to maintain affordable housing in all neighborhoods.

Otherwise in the future Manhattan will become an enclave of rich only -- a virtual "gated island"....

I respectfully disagree. London and Tokyo are other very expensive cities that don't have rent subsidies. If you want to live in Central London, you need money.

I also think that the end of rent control would be a huge advantage to areas like the South Bronx that would see a huge migration of people seeking affordable housing in the city.

[johnnypd]

I respectfully disagree. London and Tokyo are other very expensive cities that don't have rent subsidies. If you want to live in Central London, you need money.

I also think that the end of rent control would be a huge advantage to areas like the South Bronx that would see a huge migration of people seeking affordable housing in the city.
not true, there's affordable housing all over central london. firstly there are long-established council properties and developments in every corner of central london and such properties are very common, there are 22,000 of them in westminster alone (out of a total of 91,000 properties). secondly as a precondition to housing developments in london, 30% to 50% of all properties in any one development must be designated as "affordable".

[londonlawyer]

I'm familiar with counsel housing. I lived in London. We have the same thing in NY also. However, London does not have rent control laws like NY does.

[lofter1]

Would you be willing to trade properties that are now under rent control / rent stabilization laws for "counsel"-type housing to assure that affordable housing is maintained throughout all areas of NY and not shunted off to the edges?

[MidtownGuy]

I agree 100% with Lofter1.

[londonlawyer]

Would you be willing to trade properties that are now under rent control / rent stabilization laws for "counsel"-type housing to assure that affordable housing is maintained throughout all areas of NY and not shunted off to the edges?

No. We have enough projects/council housing. However, rent control should end. If it did, people looking for cheaper housing would go to areas in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens that middle class now avoid like the plague. Many parts of the city would be rejuvenated, including the scores of buildings in Manhattan that, because of rent ceilings, their owners don't spend a dime on.

Rent control is a political issue like America's unyielding support for Israel regardless of whether it slaughers innocent Palestinians or violates UN accords. We all know it's wrong, but to placate voters, we adhere to it.

[Deimos]

I'm afraid to continue the affordable housing debate in this thread, since this probabely should be taking place in the politics or anything goes forums, but I've been thinking about this for a while today, and I'm completely against rent controls. I've said it before in other posts, but I think that my understanding of the issue has matured over the past two years since joining this board.

The pricing of 310 E 53rd St is really what's setting me off here. Why is it that a 1-Br apartment in this city (just talking about the neighborhoods from the Upper sides down to 14th St as I don't know much about the downtown market) can range from 400k to 2.2M? This screams of a housing shortage in certain neighborhoods to me. As a homeowner, I'm not too upset by this whole situation, as my land value has risen dramatically, but this isn't good for the long-term future of this city. There are only two solutions increase supply or decrease demand.... really the only answer is to increase the supply; these community boards appear to seek the opposite as their solution.

Does this mean that the vision of New York from The Fifth Element is about to happen? I'm not sure, but I think it's inevitable. We have a finite amount of real estate on this island. We can expand it only by landfill or taking advantage of nature's gift of Manhattan Schist to go vertical. If we're to prevent a future of Manhattan Island becoming a gentrified sterile rich man's playground, what other option do we have?

Until then, I'll continue to profit from pyrrhic victory given to my by the NIMBY attitute of the community boards.

[BPC]

Ending rent control would end the housing shortage in Manhattan and bring down rents for all the working persons who are not legacied into existing rent control space (most of which are rented to persons who can afford market rate housing) and cannot afford housing at the crazy prices created by the shortage. It should be mean-tested and age-tested, so that the poor and the elderly are not thrown out into the street. But the welfare for the rich has to end, or working people are going to be completely priced out

[londonlawyer]

Ending rent control would end the housing shortage in Manhattan and bring down rents for all the working persons who are not legacied into existing rent control space (most of which are rented to persons who can afford market rate housing) and cannot afford housing at the crazy prices created by the shortage. It should be mean-tested and age-tested, so that the poor and the elderly are not thrown out into the street. But the welfare for the rich has to end, or working people are going to be completely priced out

Well said. I agree.

[lofter1]

The end of Rent Control / Rent Stabilization is in the works -- although it will not happen overnight. Imagine the chaos if it did -- all of a sudden hundreds of thousands of renters have to move within a short amount of time (the maximum lease term for a Rent Stabilized apartment is 2-years, so under the "proposal" that seems to be tossed about here, all existing RS leases would end and those units would move to "market rent" level within the next two years).

Most of the people who live in these units have made them their homes for many years and have established their lives based on that security. These people work in NYC, pay taxes, etc.

What is the idea as to where everyone will move?

It certainly would be a good deal for brokers!

The NYS legislature has made changes to the RS laws over the past 10 years, the result being that large numbers of units are moving out of RS. Over the coming years more and more units will move out of the system.

Eventually the lower numbers will decrease the political clout that RS tenants have (you're absolutely correct that no politician is going to make a blanket move against all these voters).

So, not to worry -- like all things, RS will come to an end.

[macreator]

Ending rent control would end the housing shortage in Manhattan and bring down rents for all the working persons who are not legacied into existing rent control space (most of which are rented to persons who can afford market rate housing) and cannot afford housing at the crazy prices created by the shortage. It should be mean-tested and age-tested, so that the poor and the elderly are not thrown out into the street. But the welfare for the rich has to end, or working people are going to be completely priced out

I'm with you too.

[MidtownGuy]

But the welfare for the rich has to end, or working people are going to be completely priced out

A very good point.

[Deimos]

My "glorious" state senator has spoken again via email:

NEWS FROM STATE SENATOR LIZ KRUEGER
New York State Senate, 26th District

Fight
For the Future of
Our Community

Join your elected officials, Community Board 6, neighborhood organizations, and advocacy groups in the fight for the sensible development of our community by taking part in:

The City Planning Commission Scoping Hearing for the Redevelopment of the Former Con Edison Power Plant Sites

Come testify, learn about others' concerns, and support the fight for the sensible planning of the East Side's largest development project in decades.

The hearings will take place:

Tuesday, March 28th
At 4 PM & 7 PM
Schottenstein Cultural Center
239 East 34th Street (between 2nd & 3rd Avenues)


If you are unable to attend the Scoping Hearing you can still submit written testimony until April 7th. Written testimony should reference the "First Avenue Properties Rezoning" and should be addressed to:

Environmental Assessment & Review Division
Department of City Planning
22 Reade Street, Rm 4E
New York, NY 10007

If you have any questions, please call Sarra Hale-Stern in my District Office at 212-490-9535.

__________________________________________________ _______________________

Talking Points for the
City Planning Commission Scoping Hearing
regarding the Con Edison Waterside Sites

Background: The former Con Ed sites along the East River between 35th and 41st Streets compose the largest plot of developable land on the East Side of Manhattan. At the scoping hearing, the City Planning Commission will be considering what information should be studied in the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that will be written about this development. The EIS is a document that attempts to predict how the planned development will affect its surroundings, including the character of the neighborhood, the population of the schools, the public parks, the traffic, and so on. The purpose of having members of the public testify at this hearing is to make sure that the EIS studies not only the developer's plan, but also alternative plans that are more acceptable to our community.

Please use the bullet points below as a guide, but try to relate these general points to your experience as a resident of this neighborhood. Remember that you will only have three minutes to speak.

Talking Points:
The EIS, as proposed, studies only the developer's plan, which was created without taking into account the input of the community board, concerned organizations or local elected officials. It is crucial and only fair that the Planning Commission also comprehensively study the zoning plan proposed by Community Board 6.


The developer's plan to build a massive office tower in this neighborhood is completely inappropriate. This is a residential neighborhood. Any review of this proposal should include a plan that is all-residential, with no commercial office component.


The lack of affordable housing in the developer's plan is unacceptable. The EIS should study the impact of including a substantial percentage of affordable housing.


The tremendous influx of new residents will add to our already overburdened local schools. Any development on this site must include a new public school for neighborhood residents.


Our community needs a waterfront esplanade accessible via public streets that should be carved out of the Con Ed site. The EIS should study an alternative plan that would extend 39th and 40th Streets out to the FDR Drive as public streets and provide access to the waterfront.


The EIS also needs to study the shadows that the buildings will cast, not only on Tudor City greens but also on the waterfront park proposed by the community.


Instead of giant towers away from the street, there should be a plan that provides for continuous storefronts along First Avenue, encouraging people to stroll those blocks.



__________________________________________________ _______________________

District Office: 211 East 43rd Street, Suite 1300
New York NY 10017
(212) 490-9535 Fax: (212) 490-2151

Albany Office: Room 302, Legislative Office Bldg.
Albany NY 12247
(518) 455-2297 Fax: (518) 426-6874

On the Web at www.lizkrueger.com

[macreator]

Instead of giant towers away from the street, there should be a plan that provides for continuous storefronts along First Avenue, encouraging people to stroll those blocks.

This is the only thing I agree with Liz on.

My sole worry with this project is that since it is a superblock, we might repeat some of the mistakes we made with other superblocks.

No towers in the park please!

[BrooklynRider]

The developer's plan to build a massive office tower in this neighborhood is completely inappropriate. This is a residential neighborhood. Any review of this proposal should include a plan that is all-residential, with no commercial office component.


This wasn't residential space before the developer purchased it. This seems like a very weak point.

[BPC]

Liz K apparently feels that her pronoucements are sufficient by themselves, and she need not explain "Why?" Nevrtheless, as to her "residential-only" proclamation, it has long been accepted in New York planning circles that mixed use is best, so perhaps Liz can make an exception here and tell us why she believes only residential should be permitted here.

[BrooklynRider]

Probably because only residential vote in her district.

[Deimos]

Probably because only residential vote in her district.

you are unfortunately 100% correct. We need politicians who have the guts to stand up to the masses and actually think long-term, not vote pandering idiots. We need politicians who aren't afraid of losing their next election and returning to the private sector if they make an unpopular choice.

I think it's time for a change?

[miminy]

You would think the politicians should be on the side of progress.
After all, if the plan is for 5000 new residential units and new
commercial space - that would mean an expanded district and a
massively increased tax base - more votes, more prestige, more power,
more money, etc.

[SilentPandaesq]

You have to remember that it has to be the "right" kind of money, power and prestige. I mean... what self respecting manhattan politician is going to advocate letting in more people to their area. Dangerous people to boot. People who might disagree with you, or heavens forbid might bring down the "character" of the neighborhood. :eek: (and property values)

[londonlawyer]

I had to go to Long Island yesterday and drove down 2nd Avenue to get to the Midtown Tunnel. On my way, I noted that 2nd Avenue in the 30's and 40's is a MASSIVE DUMP!!! First Avenue is hardly better. Indeed, practically every structure on 1st and 2nd in the 30's and 40's that's not a hospital building is a filthy, run-down, rent-controlled crap hole that isn't even nice enough for the rats that I'm sure infest them. The Solow project will DRAMATICALLY improve this slum. Of course, all of the commies who inhabit these rent-controlled prisons don't want the area to gentrify.

[MidtownGuy]

Slum? Come now,Londonlawyer, I'd hardly go that far;)

[lofter1]

... MASSIVE DUMP!!! ... filthy, run-down, rent-controlled crap hole that isn't even nice enough for the rats that I'm sure infest them ... slum ... commies ... rent-controlled prisons ...
Ever heard of ativan? ;)

[Teno]

LondonLawyer you do go thoroughly to one side of an extreme. We need to keep some perspective. Rent control is not as bad as you try to bill it.

[londonlawyer]

LondonLawyer you do go thoroughly to one side of an extreme. We need to keep some perspective. Rent control is not as bad as you try to bill it.

Although I am firmly against rent control, that post was written to be entertaining (especially the bit about "commies").

[BrooklynRider]

I felt the humor but was disappointed that "crap" was not the total focus of your report.

[londonlawyer]

I wanted to mix it up a little. Crap is a bit hackneyed at the moment. Also, JeffPark uses it now too, so I needed something fresh.

[Fabrizio]

"Also, JeffPark uses it now too, so I needed something fresh."

LOL.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Fresh Manure

I saw a sign in Pennsylvania.

[stache]

Right. Fresh crap. london needs to keep his humor on the Disney channel.

[lofter1]

http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/images/MANURE%20HAPPENSsm.jpg

[lofter1]

An appropriate logo for those in favor of tearing down the crap??

http://www.horsepresence.com/shop/media/NTMMSign.jpg

[lofter1]

The lament of NYC preservationists ...

http://home.earthlink.net/~joefournier/manure.jpg

[londonlawyer]

Right. Fresh crap. london needs to keep his humor on the Disney channel.

Wow. You're really witty!

[krulltime]

Environmental "scoping" hearings start for Solow site near the U.N.


http://www.cityrealty.com/graphics/uploads/1143665213_coned7.gif


29-MAR-06

The City Planning Department held two hearings yesterday on the environmental studies needed for the planned redevelopment of the Con Ed facilities along the East River south of the United Nations complex.

The redevelopment is planned by Sheldon H. Solow and calls for the development of 6,266,790-gross square feet, of which 4,324,635 square feet would be residential, 1,119,979 square feet, commercial office space, 40,433 square feet of retail space, 60,725 square feet of community facility use, and 721,018 square feet of below-grade parking space to accommodate 1,183 public spaces and 376 “accessory” spaces. The proposed plan also includes 149,863 square feet, or 3.44 acres, of “publicly accessible open space.” The complex includes 4 different parcels with a total of 8.7 acres and the redevelopment scheme requires numerous special permits and zoning text amendments relating to uses, heights, and setbacks.

At the afternoon hearing yesterday at the Shottenstein Cultural Center at 239 West 34th Street, Gary Tarnoff of the law firm of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP, which represents the developer, said that the parcel at 616 First Avenue would consist of two 45-story residential buildings with 60,725 square feet of community facilities in a three-story building, 2,000-square feet of retail space, 30,000 square feet of open space, and 294 parking spaces. The parcel at 685 First Avenue would be a 67-story residential tower with 3,750 square feet of retail, 96 parking spaces and 1.1 acres of open space. The parcel at 700 First Avenue would have a 63-story residential tower on its west side and a 50-story residential tower on its east side, 12,000 square feet of retail space, 2.56 acres of open space, 280 accessory parking spaces and 889 public parking spaces. The parcel at 708 would be a 57-story mixed-use tower with a roof-top restaurant.

Richard Meier and Skidmore Owings Merrill are the architects of the project, which will have 5 towers taller than the Secretariat Building of the United Nations just to the north and three that are almost as tall as the Trump World Tower at 47th Street and First Avenue. The rendering above shows the towers of the proposed complex in white.

The project has encountered considerable opposition and Community Board 6 this month submitted to the planning department its own specific development plan for the site that calls for lower buildings, no commercial office space, the inclusion of affordable housing, a school, and public ownership of cross-streets, shadow studies and a comprehensive plan that envisions the removal of the 42nd Street exit ramp from the FDR Drive and the decking over of the drive to create new park land and waterfront access.

Almost all of the speakers at both sessions yesterday spoke in favor of the Community Board 6 plan.

City Councilman Dan Garodnick told the standing-room-only evening hearing last night that all of the elected local politicians from the area will soon be presenting a joint statement to the department supporting the community board’s plan.

The developer is seeking an overall floor-to-area ratio (FAR) of 12 for the complex. The board’s plan, on the other hand, is based on a F.A.R. of only 6, but with bonuses of 2 F.A.R. each for providing an easement along the FDR drive to facilitate its realignment and eventual decking over and waterfront access, affordable housing, and preservation of some of the existing powerplants. The recent start of demolition of one of the powerplants, however, has removed the possibility of that bonus.

Robert Dobruskin, the director of the Environmental Assessment and Review Division of the Department of City Planning, said that he will hold another hearing, probably in May, and that written comments can be submitted up to 10 days after that hearing. The hearings are intended to help the department formulate the scope of a Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the project.


Copyright © 1994-2006 CITY REALTY

[NoyokA]

Ridiculous. The community board didn't purchase the land, the development should be in the hands of the developer with input only from the community.

[infoshare]

Ridiculous. The community board didn't purchase the land, the development should be in the hands of the developer with input only from the community.

I feel differntly about even the "community review process" these days. As mentioned before - I along with cb1 blocked the construction of a new condo on Prince street in Soho.

I was acting as a community member in opposing it: I took the position of "claiming" that I was a "stakeholder" because the building was in my community. My attitude is
different now - I (or anybody) has no right to block or delay the construction of a new building. So yes, I agree with you that the the development should be in the hands of the developer/owner: not the community board OR anyone else.

The NIMBY nonsense has to stop!

cheers

[TranspoMan]

Ridiculous. The community board didn't purchase the land, the development should be in the hands of the developer with input only from the community.

The development is essentially in the hands of the City Planning Commission and the City Council. The developer is asking for a rezoning and these are the agencies that must approve such an action.


Almost all of the speakers at both sessions yesterday spoke in favor of the Community Board 6 plan.

This is true, but nearly all of the speakers requested that the CB#6 plan be analyzed as an alternative in the SEIS. It seems that if an alternative rezoning plan is not included, the City Council will vote this rezoning down because they won't be able to modify it in the ULURP process. Many of the speakers stated that they aren't NIMBYs; they want the sites to be developed but at a sensible level.

[ablarc]

Many of the speakers stated that they aren't NIMBYs; they want the sites to be developed but at a sensible level.
One man's sensible level is another man's lost opportunity. Is a lost opportunity sensible?

[TranspoMan]

One man's sensible level is another man's lost opportunity. Is a lost opportunity sensible?

This depends how you define lost opportunity - presumably the developer loses out on maximizing his return on his real estate investment. What is a sensible level of profit? I guess the real question is how much Con Ed received for the parcels and what level of development is necessary to recoup those costs.

[infoshare]

Many of the speakers stated that they aren't NIMBYs; they want the sites to be developed but at a sensible level.

If you come forth with "anthing to say" about a proposed building my opinion is that you are a NIMBY.

There seems to be some confusion on definitions here. I think a nimby is anyone who claims to be a "stakeholder" in a building project that they do not own.

NIMBYs act as if every plot of land in NYC is "thier (backyard) property" and therefore have a "right" to stop/alter the project.

[BPC]

I think a nimby is anyone who claims to be a "stakeholder" in a building project that they do not own.

That definition leaves no room for zoning, and puts us in Houston, Texas.

[JD]

Sensible development...sensible development. Let's see...how sensible is it that over two million people live on a small island--and tens of millions of visitors flock to see it every year? How sensible is it that a handful of blocks away from the site sit two of the tallest, most famous skyscrapers in the world?

New York is New York precisely because it is traffics in superlatives. It's NOT sensible, and if it became so, it would cease to sizzle.

There's not a chance in hell the Solow plan is going to be built, but I'd sooner let the land lie fallow than see a bunch of low-rise junky brick buildings with the requisite "community center" go up instead. The folks who make up CB1 should go live in a sensible city--wherever that is.

[infoshare]

That definition leaves no room for zoning, and puts us in Houston, Texas.

Has nothing to do with zoning....I am takling about "community members" claiming to be stakeholders.........of corse there is zoning requirements....has been that way for decades.

So I guess I needed to say that "community members" claim to be stakeholders: when in fact they are not.

[stache]

This town still sizzles? Did they open a Sizzler?

[infoshare]

The folks who make up CB1 should go live in a sensible city--wherever that is.

I agree,,,,,looks like the same sort of thing is happening at this uptown site too.

[TranspoMan]

The draft scope of work for the EIS is on the City's website and includes a few maps and figures such as a proposed site plan:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/env_review/first_ave/first_avenue_properties_seis_draft_scope.pdf

[JMGarcia]

Here are the proposed heights:

616 First Ave. 45 floors 578 feet - residential
685 First Ave. 67 floors 836 feet - residential
700 First Ave. A 63 floors 792 feet - residential
700 First Ave. B 50 floors 643 feet - residential
708 First Ave. A 57 floors 864 feet - mixed use
708 First Ave. B 40 floors 528 feet - residential

[JD]

Can there be any doubt Solow is simply going pie-in-the-sky, knowing full well those #s can't be realized, so that way he can shave 20 or so stories off each building in a grand gesture of compromise?

Look at it this way: he proposes a five-hundred foot tower; the community blasts it--predictably. He makes the necessary concessions; the finished building is three-hundred fifty feet.

But...start off with eight-hundred feet, then offer to shave to five-hundred? Shrewd tactics.

But I'll await CB6's counter proposal, which should be some form of BANANA---> Building Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody.

[londonlawyer]

Here are the proposed heights:

616 First Ave. 45 floors 578 feet - residential
685 First Ave. 67 floors 836 feet - residential
700 First Ave. A 63 floors 792 feet - residential
700 First Ave. B 50 floors 643 feet - residential
708 First Ave. A 57 floors 864 feet - mixed use
708 First Ave. B 40 floors 528 feet - residential

These buildings aren't even that tall. While I'm no fan of Chicago, in that city, they'd add another 200 feet to those heights just for kicks, and the residents would support the developer wholeheartedly for doing so.

[TranspoMan]

But I'll await CB6's counter proposal, which should be some form of BANANA---> Building Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody.

Wait no longer...I found the 197c plan here:
http://www.cb6mnyc.org/197%20C.pdf

[TLOZ Link5]

I was hoping that there'd be more office space.

[infoshare]

Wait no longer...I found the 197c plan here:
http://www.cb6mnyc.org/197%20C.pdf


Read some of it TM,thanks. This may go the same way as 200 chambers street went.......great architecturals at the start (norman foster) then after months/years of bikkering;;;;;;; great architect gives-up in frustrationand leaves the project............ we then get watered down project and NYC gets only an ok building..........not a Great Building.

[antinimby]

Here are the proposed heights:
616 First Ave. 45 floors 578 feet - residential
685 First Ave. 67 floors 836 feet - residential
700 First Ave. A 63 floors 792 feet - residential
700 First Ave. B 50 floors 643 feet - residential
708 First Ave. A 57 floors 864 feet - mixed use
708 First Ave. B 40 floors 528 feet - residentialThe shortest of the proposed buildings is still taller than what the CB is allowing. This graphic is from CB6's proposal above (p.12):

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/7880/coned6pq.jpg

[lofter1]

The sensible solution is to let the UN build a new ~1,200 ft tower next to the existing property ... the Secretariat is thereby framed by Trump's tower and the new UN tower.

Then let Solow go up to 800 - 1,000 ft. on his properties.

Dynamic.

[SilentPandaesq]

I am new to the whole zoning process, but could someone explain or point me to a concise explanation of the "FAR". I get that it is Floor Area Ratio. But a Far of 12 makes a building of what height? And if you halve the FAR do you get a building half as tall?

On a side note, this community board thing is depressing. I found this site because I was looking for more information on this particular project cause I thought it would be massive. Alas it looks like some people want to live in NYC and not actually know they live in NYC

[JD]

The mantra of community boards:

Sensible development now! Sensible development forever!
Stop the dangerous overpopulation of NYC!
Stop shadows!
Stop everything!

[antinimby]

I am new to the whole zoning process, but could someone explain or point me to a concise explanation of the "FAR". I get that it is Floor Area Ratio. But a Far of 12 makes a building of what height? And if you halve the FAR do you get a building half as tall?Definition taken from the Dept. of City Planning (http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/zone/glossary.shtml):

Floor Area Ratio (FAR)
"Floor Area Ratio" is the total floor area on a zoning lot divided by the lot area of that zoning lot. For example, a building containing 20,000 square feet of floor area on a zoning lot of 10,000 square feet has a floor area ratio of 2.0.

[SilentPandaesq]

ok, i think i get it now. Thanks!

So to figure out how big a building will be you have to know the Area of the plot and how much FAR is present. Then knowing how much sq ft the developer is planning on building, you can then figure out a sq footage per floor and then using FAR, scale that up and get an approx floor count.

So over at 2 Madison Square Garden there is unlimited FAR - so that means that it does not matter how much the height of the building relates to the area of the plot?

[mgp]

ok, i think i get it now. Thanks!

So to figure out how big a building will be you have to know how much area the land is and how much FAR is present. Then knowing how much sq ft the developer is planning on building, you can then figure out a sq footage per floor and then using FAR, scale that up and get an approx floor count.

So over at 2 Madison Square Garden there is unlimited FAR - so that means that it does not matter how much the height of the building relates to the area of the plot?

FAR basically decides how large a building can be, which surely plays a role in the height of a building, but FAR doesn't directly deal with height issues.

If you own a 10,000 SF lot with an FAR of 12, you are allowed to build 120,000 sf on this lot. This doesn't mean you are going to build a 12 story building with 10,000 SF floor plates. Maybe you build a 24 story building with 5,000 SF floor plates... etc. Other zoning issues like height restrictions, setback requirements also help (together with FAR) determine the ultimate height of the building.

[czsz]

I'm still going to miss the view of the Chrysler Building. It would be nice if, rather than combatting the heights, someone cared to preserve this perspective. Maybe if the people living in Queens West were considered part of the process...but as with all development projects in New York, it's the immediate neighbours, rather than the rest of the city (which is ultimately impacted as well, whether negatively or positively) who determine the shape and outcome of the streetscape and skyline.

[Alonzo-ny]

Can we not argue then that we are stakeholders in the city and protest against the nimbys and for the towers and demand more height? we have as much right as them. Ive never known the public to have so much input. The most i know in britain is when something is actually getting built

[TranspoMan]

Can we not argue then that we are stakeholders in the city and protest against the nimbys and for the towers and demand more height? we have as much right as them.

If you want to voice your opinion, attend the public hearings and/or submit written comments. Once the EIS is completed, the rezoning application will be reviewed by the Community Board, Borough President, City Planning Commission, and City Council. This process is somewhat conplicated, but is illustrated in the following flow chart:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/luproc/lur.pdf

Essentially, the City Planning Commission and the City Council will vote on whether to approve the proposed plan, reject the proposed plan, or approve a modification to the proposed plan (such as the community alternative).


Can there be any doubt Solow is simply going pie-in-the-sky, knowing full well those #s can't be realized, so that way he can shave 20 or so stories off each building in a grand gesture of compromise?

Look at it this way: he proposes a five-hundred foot tower; the community blasts it--predictably. He makes the necessary concessions; the finished building is three-hundred fifty feet.

But...start off with eight-hundred feet, then offer to shave to five-hundred? Shrewd tactics.

This may be the ultimate strategy - the developer goes pie-in-the-sky because he knows there will be community opposition. If the CB#6 alternative is approved, then the polititians get to declare victory in their next batch of campaign literature and the developer gets bigger buildings than if he first proposed a smaller-scaled plan (assuming the community would develop a "sensible alternative" to those plans as well).

NYC TV airs hearings of the City Planning Commission on a regular basis and their website is:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nyctv/html/shows/shaping_city_cpc.shtml

[Citytect]

But doesn't the "pie-in-the-sky" stategy sort of perpetuate the problem by encouraging opposition?

Ideally, it seems, the best solution to sometimes overly influential NIMBYs would actually be more widespread community awareness - where people in favor of development speak as loudly as those against it. But, then again, this might create an even more political process.

[infoshare]

But doesn't the "pie-in-the-sky" stategy sort of perpetuate the problem by encouraging opposition?

Ideally, it seems, the best solution to sometimes overly influential NIMBYs would actually be more widespread community awareness - where people in favor of development speak as loudly as those against it. But, then again, this might create an even more political process.

Greenie,
I think people who are in favor of new developments generally will not take part in community activism. Just my impression.

Also, my view is that a key NIMby strategy is to "perpetuate the issue". They drive off people who just want to go on with thier lives.....and the NIMBys get to slow/alter or stop the project......they win.

I would like to try to explain it better - lets just call it a war of attrition that drives off all that is truly great, and leaves behind nothing but mediocrity. NOte. Follow the 200 chambers street thread (site 5b it think) and see what happend with the Norman Foster project.....that is a perfect example of what I am trying to express.

[Citytect]

Greenie,
I think people who are in favor of new developments generally will not take part in community activism. Just my impression.

That's my point. If people aren't going step up and support development vocally, the opposition is going to continue to get what it wants regularly. Perhaps some of us (myself included) should start focusing our attention on getting projects we find beneficial to the city built instead of complaining about NIMBYs.

[infoshare]

Perhaps some of us (myself included) should start focusing our attention on getting projects we find beneficial to the city built instead of complaining about NIMBYs.

I enjoy viewing the "Art"chitecture in general and exchanging views and information on-line. I think to some extent that alone is "focusing attention" and in effect fostering awareness of the benefits of good/benificial projects.

So I hope that helps the issue,,,,,,but the fact is I am not a community activist.....I just grouse about NIMBY once in awile.....mosty want to see architecture links and photo.....thats all.....no hassels,,,,,,,just fun.


P.S. If you want to join me in a tennis match,,, or go kayaking on the huson.......send me a PM..........with the warm weather comming that is what "focusing attention on" these days.....cheers

[lofter1]

BLOOMBERG PUSHES NEW U.N. TOWER

By KENNETH LOVETT
NY POST

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/66896.htm

April 12, 2006 -- ALBANY - Mayor Bloomberg is readying a new battle with the state Legislature, this time reviving a plan for a new U.N. building on a city playground, The Post has learned.

Bloomberg aides say once the state budget is resolved, the city will make the U.N. project - which the state Senate killed in 2004 - a priority in Albany.

The United Nations wants to take the Robert Moses Playground from the city and erect a 35-story building that would serve as its headquarters while the main secretariat building is renovated.

Once the main building is done, the new building would serve as additional U.N. office space.

The Bloomberg administration plans to argue that the project will not only create construction jobs, but will ultimately free up two city-owned buildings at 1 and 2 U.N. Plaza that eventually can be sold for big bucks.

The bill would also temporarily incorporate a nearby park within the UNDC district so the agency can plan for the construction of the 35-story office building on the park site.

The legislation was blocked by the Senate in late 2004 after several Republican senators, including Martin Golden (R-Brooklyn), fumed that the world body doesn't deserve help because it is "corrupt, ineffective and a drain on New York City resources."

Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

[Citytect]

More Bloomberg meddling?

I don't mind.

[PlanJunkie]

The NIMBY issue can be a double edged sword, which is why the powers of the community boards are limited. There needs to be some kind of structure for neighborhood participation in local decision making, but the people next door to a project may not take the big picture into consideration.

Ultimately, the mayor and the city council, along with the department of city planning make the calls. Yes, they are vulnerable to public pressure, but they should be! There needs to be a counter-weight to the inherent power of wealthy, connected developers.

I agree that good design can get left behind in this process, but that is as much about DCP's decision not to engage with design issues as anything else. If you care about quality architecture, make yourself heard! Write letter to your council person, start an architecture advocacy organization. Things get done in this city because people fight for them. Affordable housing may be easier to get worked up about than architecture. Is that a bad thing? No, but good design can exert a powerful influence and it should be supported.

End rant.

[lofter1]

I walked by this site yesterday and the buildings are about 1/4 of the way down ---

Enough of the inards of the old brick Con Ed building are visible to see that it would have been nearly impossible to create out of that building an open space ala the Tate modern -- girders and beams everywhere.

Now that the old one is coming down I say build new TALL towers on this site -- NYC needs it!!

[MrSpice]

So what is going with this Con Ed site? I see that it's being demolished. There were so posts in this thread. Do we know what's going to be built there now? Was it finalized/approved?

[Deimos]

Now that the old one is coming down I say build new TALL towers on this site -- NYC needs it!!

I would say NYC needs a massive build of apartments, and of course going tall is the easiest way to fit the most number of buildings in the smallest space. It's the only way to keep the escalating prices of the city in check.

[webuiltthiscity]

I work in the building just across 1st ave from the proposed site. Currently we have a nice view of the demo of the old con-ed plant and once it's down will be able to see the FDR and river. If the towers are as tall or even 20 stories less we would still be completely shadowed by them. With that said, I still support that development and would even go as far as to say I would move into a high-rise apartment just across the street if it delivers the views/ammenities Solow promises.

[BrooklynRider]

You need to write to the community board and tell them this. You might want to write to Liz Krueger as well, but she would have to put down both her donut and the french fries to pick-up your letter and read it. Sadly, that's your uphill battle.

[krulltime]

Revised E. Side plan facing opposition
Developers shorten towers; critics seek more public space


By Erik Engquist
Published on June 26, 2006

Radically downscaled plans for the largest Manhattan development tract outside of Ground Zero will get their first official viewing today. The proposal envisions eight towers--one more than originally proposed--that top out at 600-plus feet instead of at 864 feet.

Even that reduction might not be enough.

"A 600-some-odd-foot building is still a big building," says Edward Rubin, land-use chairman of Community Board 6. "This [project] may be, overall, just too dense.

The fight over the nine-acre site that sprawls along the East River just below the historic home of the United Nations promises to be heated. Community leaders and others insist that the very character of the neighborhood is at stake.

Among other things, they want the developer, Sheldon Solow, to guarantee public access to the waterfront and to the open space amid the towers. In addition, they want Mr. Solow to restore block-long sections of East 39th and East 40th streets that were eliminated more than a century ago when Consolidated Edison erected its huge granite-and-brick Waterside Steam Plant on much of the site.

The revised design that Mr. Solow will present to a community board subcommittee today addresses earlier criticisms by shortening the towers, by making the project's three acres of open space more accessible to the public and by increasing the space allotted for retailers along First Avenue. The new plan also includes a three-block promenade along the FDR Drive. But East 39th and East 40th streets would remain private.


Crucial links


"The two streets that run through the Con Ed superblock would be the main access to any kind of waterfront development, which we feel is crucial there," says Frank Sanchis, vice president of the Municipal Art Society, a private planning organization.

More controversially, critics accuse the city of squandering a chance to work with the developer to build an East Side waterfront park. They want a coordinated project extending beyond the four parcels he purchased for approximately $630 million. They would like him to kick in money for a $190 million landscaped deck over the FDR Drive that would be built in part with public funding. Calls for the city to exert pressure have been rebuffed by the Bloomberg administration, which insists it cannot compel the developer to consider another proposal.

A fierce tug-of-war, with freshman Councilman Daniel Garodnick pulling on the community's side against Mr. Solow, is taking shape. The rest of the council is likely to side with Mr. Garodnick and another local community ally, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. But sources say Amanda Burden, the city planning commissioner, is concerned about making demands that could unfairly delay a project that has already taken five years to get going and won't be finished before 2014.


Key player


The project's fate ultimately rests with the City Council, which will vote on the developer's request for a zoning variance to build his planned 6 million-square-foot project. It would include a large commercial office building, market-rate housing and a modest retail component. The need for a variance gives the city crucial leverage. Most of the site is zoned for manufacturing.

Michael Gross, a spokesman for the developer, says the environmental review should be completed this year and the seven-month land-use review process would begin in early 2007. Construction would follow.

A rocky future would be nothing new for the project. In 2001, an architect was selected for the development through an international competition, only to be rejected by Mr. Solow. Instead, he hired the well-known Richard Meier, who is working with Skidmore Owings & Merrill, designer of 7 World Trade Center, the Time Warner Center and many other projects.

Mr. Solow may also have alienated one of his neighbors. Nearly two years ago, he reportedly lobbied the state Senate to kill the U.N.'s plan to build a new office building on a 1.3-acre playground between Mr. Solow's site and the U.N. Secretariat.

The U.N. intends to renovate the Secretariat and would have used its new building as interim office space. Without it, the U.N. might wind up renting space in Mr. Solow's new development, which is too far east for many other office tenants.


©2006 Crain Communications Inc.

[antinimby]

Community leaders and others insist that the very character of the neighborhood is at stake.What exactly is the character of that neighborhood that warrants protecting?
Someone please clue me in because I haven't a clue.

[NYguy]

Radically downscaled plans for the largest Manhattan development tract outside of Ground Zero will get their first official viewing today. The proposal envisions eight towers--one more than originally proposed--that top out at 600-plus feet instead of at 864 feet.

Even that reduction might not be enough.

"A 600-some-odd-foot building is still a big building," says Edward Rubin, land-use chairman of Community Board 6. "This [project] may be, overall, just too dense.


What a sad state of affairs this is. And these morons don't even have the sense to know when they've won. Truly disturbing.

Since they see no difference between 600 and 800 ft, the proposal should revert to its original heights.

[Kris]

What exactly is the character of that neighborhood that warrants protecting?
Someone please clue me in because I haven't a clue.
The "character" is the residents' representation of their neighborhood formed by habit and idealization. Any significant change is too much of a threat to their mental comfort (not to mention their precious views). Reality is almost irrelevant.

I can't wait to see the ugly compression.

[NYguy]

A fierce tug-of-war, with freshman Councilman Daniel Garodnick pulling on the community's side against Mr. Solow, is taking shape. The rest of the council is likely to side with Mr. Garodnick and another local community ally, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. But sources say Amanda Burden, the city planning commissioner, is concerned about making demands that could unfairly delay a project that has already taken five years to get going and won't be finished before 2014.

Smart woman, that Burden. The delays and fighting here could eventually put even the WTC debacles to shame.

[sfenn1117]

"This [project] may be, overall, just too dense.

At this point, I agree. The solution? Build taller with fewer towers, allowing more open space. But these selfish idiots can't understand that.

8 towers only topping out at 600 feet is going to look like the rest of the midtown skyline....stumpy and overcrowded.

[krulltime]

...and meanwhile Chicago builts without any height restrictions... what is going on with NYC?

We are infested with too many NIMBYs. NYC doesn't have a rat problem, it has a NIMBY's problem.

[infoshare]

...and meanwhile Chicago builts without any height restrictions... what is going on with NYC?

We are infested with too many NIMBYs. NYC doesn't have a rat problem, it has a NIMBY's problem.

At this point I am not sure wheather to move to Chicago: or start going to community board meetings.:D :D

[jeffpark]

who is the GC on this development,
Bovis. Tishman. Turner. Plaza. ??

[Fabrizio]

I don´t understand WHY everyone on both sides of the camp seems to boil this thing down to "short" or "tall". It´s infantile...and has little to do with whether this project will work or not.

I think it´s dumb even that the talk is immediately about "towers"....who the hell cares about "towers"? As if some huuuuuuge ....super-duper tall tower will make everything OK and wonderful. That´s all ya need...a big ol´tower to save the day.

Can we talk about the kind of neighborhood that is planned?

What´s happening down on the street? Will the old street grid get reconstructed? Will it be towers in a park? Or will we have a recreation of the East Side streetscape? A streetwall? The original plan called for an ice rink. Perhaps that was inovative in 1939 at Rockefeller Center...but today? Isn´t it an easy and banal, suburban style choice? Is that the best we can do here?

Do you guys measure quality-of-life in feet? What difference in your day-to-day lives does 600, or 800, or whatever feet of tallness make? There are other hard questions to ask.

[MrSpice]

This place right now is empty and looks horrible. Any skyscrapers that would be built there would make it a better. All this talk about "character of the neighborhood" in this area is a total pile of crap - pardon my French. The community boards nowadays behave as if they own the land and invest the money and can call the shots. Just because someone lives in a community, does not give him/her the right to dictate what will be built on someone else's land. It's especially true here where currently, there's nothing there. Anything that replaces nothing will be a net plus for the city (more commercial space, more housing, more taxes going to the city and its residents). Why not allow him build as high as he wants to? The higher the better. That's what New York has always been about - more, taller and grander than anywhere else...

[Fabrizio]

"Anything that replaces nothing will be a net plus for the city"

Yes anything there WOULD be better than nothing.

As I said: "infantile"

[ablarc]

Fabrizio and MrSpice are both right. There's no real contradiction in what they say. Just add their observations together to get the complete picture.

Height is always a red herring --neither less height nor more height is the issue. Fabrizio identifies streetscape and MrSpice identifies community usurpation of property rights: those are the real issues.

With common sense and goodwill you can have proper streetscape and respect property rights. The process has too many cooks.

[Fabrizio]

Ok get in a developer with a grand idea....it could include the frigginest tallest building in the world for all I care....but let´s hear something about building a real piece of NYC. They ACTUALLY were talking about towers around an ICE SKATING RINK....like it´s 1968 and this is Toronto or something. I´m hearing strains of "Lara´s Theme".

[JD]

I'm not sure why the idea of a skating rink has you so apopleptic, Fabrizio. It works splendidly at Rockefeller Center--so much so that one was set up with great success at Bryant Park this past winter as well. I'm more concerned that nothing happens at this site until 2035 than I am about the prospect of some frolicking ice skaters.

[ablarc]

^ He's not apoplectically against it; he just thinks it's now a ho-hum idea.

It's a ho-hum idea.

[infoshare]

I'm more concerned that nothing happens at this site until 2035 than I am about the prospect of some frolicking ice skaters.

I agree!:)


This quote by Ablarc is more to the point!
http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=105419&postcount=1529

[ablarc]

I agree!:)

Well, of course! But it's not either/or: either build a skating rink or wait 35 years.

I agree with Fabrizio that folks with imagination can come up with something better (heck, even I can do that ;)).

[Fabrizio]

Demand THIS :

http://www.pps.org/info/newsletter/december2005/international_squares?referrer=newsletter_contents

[ablarc]

Empty paved areas, except for a couple. There's something to be learned from that.

Public space in this country is overdesigned.

Or maybe we Americans need that; maybe we don't know how to use an empty space.

Sorry about that, if it's true. Sorry we spend so much on overbuilding, if it's not true.

[antinimby]

...and meanwhile Chicago builts without any height restrictions... what is going on with NYC?Two cities heading in the opposite direction. One is gaining appreciation for skyscrapers, the other hates them and see them as something bad. Do I need to tell you which is city is which?

Speaking of Chicago, here are a few quotes from a Washington Post article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/24/AR2006062400509.html) posted over at the Chicago Reaching for the Sky thread:


"Out my window there are two, three, four, five new high-rises under construction or just completed in the last year and a half, and they've just announced another 80-story building," said Jim Fenters, who has lived on the 51st floor of a 54-story building overlooking Grant Park since 1979. "It's just remarkable what's happened here."

Projects that would be headline news in other cities go all but unnoticed.

"The Waterview Tower, that project is 1,047 feet, taller than the Chrysler Building," Blair Kamin, the Chicago Tribune's Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic, said of one building under construction. "In any other city there would be endless conversations, (but) here a 1,000-foot tower is `Ho-hum, how are the Cubs doing?'"



"I remember at least two (planning and development) staff members saying `Can't you make it taller? We really would like it taller,'" Chicago architect David Haymes says about discussions with the city for a planned condominium tower.


The change makes sense, says planning commissioner Lori Healey. In exchange for allowing developers to go higher _ where they get eyepopping views that allow them to charge huge price tags _ the city gets buildings that are a lot smaller at their base, allowing more open space and light than in cities crammed with shorter, wider buildings.


Still, more than a century after the world's first skyscraper _ the nine-story Home Insurance Building _ went up in 1885, Chicagoans remain enamored with tall buildings.
"Chicagoans live and breathe high-rises both within the profession and within the city," said David Scott, chairman of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, an international nonprofit organization based in Chicago.

[Kris]

Yes, antinimby, but don't you know that's INFANTILE? I bet you still suck your thumb, and you know what that stands for...PENIS ENVY.

[ablarc]

^ Wrong side of the bed. ;)

[TonyO]

Penis envy...phallic symbols, all descriptions used to denigrate ambitious and tall projects. There's nothing wrong with the drive to build tall buildings in a city like New York or Chicago.

Especially on the east side of Manhattan. In Williamsburgh I can see a reason for opposition but the area is fit for it. People there just don't want their views cut off, its hardly for the common good.

[kliq6]

its the 9/11 effect, if the Sears Tower was/is hit chicago would act different believe me.

[sfenn1117]

its the 9/11 effect, if the Sears Tower was/is hit chicago would act different believe me.

I strongly disagree. I think if the Sears Tower was hit a taller tower would be halfway up already. The argument here isn't about the potential of being a terrorist target, but rather a loss of river views and the appearance of shadows for residents. In other words, personal concerns of about 8,000 people are affecting this project, not the other 8,000,000 NYers who were also there on 9/11 and who could care less about the height of this project.

[TonyO]

I strongly disagree. I think if the Sears Tower was hit a taller tower would be halfway up already. The argument here isn't about the potential of being a terrorist target, but rather a loss of river views and the appearance of shadows for residents. In other words, personal concerns of about 8,000 people are affecting this project rather than all 8,000,000 NYers which is the way it should be.

I think the lack of pushing forward from groups/individuals other than the developer on these tall developments is what is different since 9/11. In Chicago there are government officials actively seeking taller developments. Here they are not, for whatever reason, but I think it does have to do with 9/11.

[pianoman11686]

Let's not forget the Freedom Tower. Sure, you can say it has been mired in delays stemming from security concerns, but the bottom line is that politicians here want to see it built, as do the developers of the WTC site. The fact that it's taking a long time is not unique to this building; there have been numerous proposals in Chicago's past for super-tall buildings that have been shot down or taken years to approve. Leaving aside the Freedom Tower, there are a few other general observations I'd like to point out. Firstly, it simply costs less to build in Chicago, so getting financing for a supertall is easier. Secondly, zoning seems to be a less complex issue there, as far as putting together air rights and getting community approval. It helps when you have a mayor who's enthusiastic about it. I don't think Bloomberg gives a damn one way or another. Thirdly, super-tall building seems to be cyclical, for one reason or another. Chicago's in the midst of one right now, mainly due to the real estate boom (none of these new projects are commercial, by the way). Let's see how many of these proposals (and how many new ones) are realized when the housing boom winds down and Daley finishes up his tenure.

[BrooklynRider]

Well, in NYC one could argue that the more 1000+ buildings we build the reduced chances on any specific one being a target. NY really lacks visionary builders and a planning commission that appreciates that the skyline is as much of a tourist attraction as Radio City or the Stature of Liberty.

[JMGarcia]

The politics of cutting down building heights in NY comes from way before 9/11. That has nothing to do with it in the long run except for maybe at the WTC site.

What I can never figure out about those who always seeks to scale down a project is what they see as the difference between a 600 foot building and an 800 foot building.

[SilentPandaesq]

I don't even think it is about the height, not really.

I always thought that it was about what height brings with it. Volume of units.

The higher the building the more units for sale, which means more people in their "special" part of the city. Also per chance people see increased lux apts as competing against their lux apts if and when they decide to put it on the market.

My girlfriend summed it up best yesterday as we cruzed by the site on the FDR. She asked what they were complaining about since the "dirty" power plant was blocking the view to begin with. :rolleyes:

[pianoman11686]

Stature of Liberty.

Misspelled on purpose?http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/images/icons/icon7.gif

SP^: I don't think you can deny that people oppose projects because they will lose their views and sunlight, which will definitely happen with this project. Whether they have an unalienable right to always have that view is another debate altogether. The fact is, most tall buildings we see don't really bring that many units, relative to their height. Just look at Trump World Tower. A well-designed, slender, tall building will not block as many views, will cast a much narrower shadow, and will not put as many new units on the market as a building half its size but four times in girth. But even if it did bring a lot of units. Does that really matter to the residents already there? Especially in Manhattan, where housing is almost always in high demand and vacancy rates are near zero? And if a development is truly high-quality, doesn't it increase the value of your apartment by making the neighborhood more desirable? I have no doubt that this project has the ability to do that, similar to what TWC did to the neighborhoods north and west of it. I just don't understand how people who complain about height can have so much influence. If a developer has all the air rights, and can build it legally, it should not be an issue. Period.

[TREPYE]

NY really lacks visionary builders and a planning commission that appreciates that the skyline is as much of a tourist attraction .

So true. Sometimes we get on the architects but we fail to realize (including myself) that it is the developers that push for conservative designs to save $$ that end up being resoundingly uninspiring buildings.

Look at the latest SOM, or Pelli projects outside NYC that are so much better than what we get here lately.

[SilentPandaesq]

PM: I agree with you on most of those points. I just have a hard time believing that what people advocate as their reason for objecting is the real reason. (this goes for most objections period). I always assume that behind evey great astetic or contextual argument there is a base argument of "that means less for me and more for you" So I try to apply that basic premise to all nimby-ism.

[antinimby]

Kris was just joking. I know he's very much pro-large "penis." ;)

Anyway, let me reply to the other comments.
New York, or at least a segment of the population, was very much anti-development, particularly tall, shiny new buildings, way, way, way before 9/11.

Whoever said that 9/11 is the cause, either have a very short memory or is historically oblivious. Tons and tons of projects were downsized or cancelled because of community resistance long before there was even such a thing as Al-Qaeda.

Someone brought up Mayor Bloomberg, but they are badly mistaken. Bloomberg is the only mayor in recent memory that is very much pro-development. Did we forget his upzonings? In many instances, it's not up to him. If you want to blame politicians for this particular case, these are the ones: U.S. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, NY State Senator Liz Krueger and the whole City Council.

These local politicians, regardless of what they believe themselves, will usually cave into the demands of the "community." Of course, we all know not every one in the "community" is dead-set against development, but in this city, the people opposed to them are usually the most vocal and are willing to make their voice heard.

[antinimby]

The other thing besides height for these folks is contextuality.
That's right, every building will have to look like what came before it or else it's just not contextual.

Trepye, you can blame the lack of creative designs in this city, in part, to this New York phenomenon as well. Architects and developers know very well that an underwhelming, conservative design will be less likely to get the attention of NIMBY community groups than flashy ones.

Add to that, the cost of construction in NY is so much more expensive (community resistance is a major factor here as well due to adminstrative delays, court lawsuits, etc.) and there you got a natural coming together of the forces that create the rather bland collection of buildings we have.

[pianoman11686]

I brought up Bloomberg, but I never said he was anti-development. I said that he, unlike Mayor Daley, could not give a damn about a building being 20 stories taller. Whereas Daley encourages building higher, Bloomberg simply advocates development, and doesn't care enough to personally involve himself in the details of development. He didn't even inject himself into the WTC until relatively recently.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm just saying it's a "not" thing.

[kliq6]

who is the GC on this development,
Bovis. Tishman. Turner. Plaza. ??

Answer will be none, Solow has his own in house CM team that he uses and hires more people when need for bigger projects, as he will with this for sure

[NYguy]

I don´t understand WHY everyone on both sides of the camp seems to boil this thing down to "short" or "tall". It´s infantile...and has little to do with whether this project will work or not. I think it´s dumb even that the talk is immediately about "towers"....who the hell cares about "towers"?

Who the hell cares?

The proposal envisions eight towers--one more than originally proposed--that top out at 600-plus feet instead of at 864 feet.

Even that reduction might not be enough. "A 600-some-odd-foot building is still a big building," says Edward Rubin, land-use chairman of Community Board 6.


Its what opposition groups criticize first in any new proposal, the height...


East River Realty’s proposals call for the construction of seven residential and commercial towers that would dwarf the already tall residential buildings around the sites

http://www.cityrealty.com/graphics/uploads/1143665213_coned7.gif

The already tall residential buildings around the site?



Community Board 6 and many elected officials who represent East Midtown presented an alternate scheme for the redevelopment of the Con Ed facilities along the East River south of the United Nations last night at a public meeting. The alternate plan would permit only residential uses on the sites and limited building heights to 400 feet.

How nice of them to approve 400 ft...



Members of the local community board oppose the proposed project, arguing that the buildings, which would range in height from 578 to 864 feet tall, are too large and that the entirely market-rate project is offensive.

Too large, and we're not even reaching 900 ft....



Mr. Rubin said that Donald Trump’s Trump World Tower on First Avenue at 47th Street "dealt a serious blow" to the community by not respecting the 505-feet height of the Secretariat Building at the United Nations and was "out of scale and color."

That's a new one...



Ed Rubin, chairman of the land-use committee of Community Board 4 has expressed concerns about the buildings’ height.

Again with the height...



Neighbors in the area have already expressed concern that the proposed high-rises — all of different design, with heights up to 866 feet — will tower over the United Nations Secretariat building, which rises to just over 500 feet.

I'm beginning to see a theme here...



The heights are Donald Trump size - huge buildings," said Edward Rubin, chairman of the land-use committee for Community Board 6, which covers the far East Side. "There is a real serious issue whether that's an acceptable paradigm for what high-rise development should be on the East Side."

Really...


In particular, the community board and other neighborhood groups object to any buildings higher than the United Nations. "Nothing should be built taller than that icon," Mr. Rubin said.

Nothing!



"We supported East River Science Park," said Edward Rubin, chairman of the community board's land-use committee. "We supported the United Nations tower. We're not an anti-development board. But we do want planning input. We don't look kindly on commercial, nor on buildings taller than the U.N. Secretariat."

No sir, we certainly don't...

__________________________________________________ __

You're correct Fabrizio, in that both sides boil it down to "short or tall", but that's basically what this fight is about. But these people can't be pleased. If the original proposal was for 400 ft., they'd still be criticizing it and calling for half that height. Its just that attitude of "anything new must be bad" that so many community groups seem to have these days. Now I'm not saying that anything new is great, but anything that brings more life to that area is better than that power plant, I don't care what the preservationists have to say about it.

[antinimby]

I brought up Bloomberg, but I never said he was anti-development. I said that he, unlike Mayor Daley, could not give a damn about a building being 20 stories taller. Whereas Daley encourages building higher, Bloomberg simply advocates development, and doesn't care enough to personally involve himself in the details of development. He didn't even inject himself into the WTC until relatively recently.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm just saying it's a "not" thing.Well, you've got to realize that "giving a damn" is easier for Daley because there aren't much resistance in his city. In Bloomberg's case, when you have so much people around you that are against the extra 20 stories, what are you going to do, fight them?

Why should he waste his time in office for that? There are more important issues for him to be concerned about and a whole city to run than take time to fight the community for that extra 20 stories. That's the private developers' job.

[TREPYE]

The other thing besides height for these folks is contextuality.
That's right, every building will have to look like what came before it or else it's just not contextual.

Trepye, you can blame the lack of creative designs in this city, in part, to this New York phenomenon as well. Architects and developers know very well that an underwhelming, conservative design will be less likely to get the attention of NIMBY community groups than flashy ones.

Add to that, the cost of construction in NY is so much more expensive (community resistance is a major factor here as well due to adminstrative delays, court lawsuits, etc.) and there you got a natural coming together of the forces that create the rather bland collection of buildings we have.

Yes that contextualism BS brought on by community groups kills good innovative development. But it can be overcome, look what happened with the Trump Word Tower (and I hoped that the NIMBY's would win cuz the tower was hideous).

The city Gov't as well has to be blamed cuz they are just happy with any thing that gets built. Look what happened in Chicago where the city Major demanded that Trump add a spire to that new tower of his. Here, tax breaks are given for garbage like the Goldman Sach Tower in DT to be built. For some strange reason they fail to realize that the skyline is the very emblem of the NYC and it should be preserved and enhanced.

[Fabrizio]

Antinimby: would you back up your statements with some facts?

NY "was very much anti-development, particularly tall, shiny new buildings, way, way, way before 9/11."

Uh....could you point-point exactly when? First of all, huge swaths of Manhattan were torn down and replaced by "tall, shiny new buildings" all through the 1950´s and 60´s. 6th Avenue in mid-town went from being a string of tenements to a line-up of tall office towers....as just one example. Park, 3rd Avenue, 2nd avenue....check out some before&after photos. The 1970´s saw a period of stagnation mostly because of the city´s finacial and social crisis. There was a boom again in the 80´s with huge flashy buildings like the IBM building, the Sony tower, the Equitable building....and look at the group of residential towers built around Carnegie Hall...the MOMA Tower etc. The late 80´s through the 1990´s saw Times Square basically torn down and re-built with new towers.

"The other thing besides height for these folks is contextuality.That's right, every building will have to look like what came before it or else it's just not contextual."

"Trepye, you can blame the lack of creative designs in this city, in part, to this New York phenomenon as well. "

Wha???? "Lack of creativity" today?? Will you please look at nearly EVERYTHING built in NYC during the 50´s and 60´s. Certainly there were masterpieces like the Seagrams, CBS, Lever House etc.... but the majority were look-a-like International Style buildings (a style that I personally like). But please remember: they were PURPUOSLY look-a-like because that´s what corporate America wanted for their companies. The late 60´s and 1970´s were really NY´s low point architecturally... with plenty of buildings built on wind-swept plazas, sunken plazas, blank walls....every architectural mistake you can think of.

Although lots of ugly things are still getting built.... on the whole architecture in NYC is better now than it has been in DECADES. With MORE buildings being built since anytime that I can remember.

[NYguy]

Look what happened in Chicago where the city Major demanded that Trump add a spire to that new tower of his.

Yeah, well, that didn't work out so well in New York. Look at what happened when governor Pataki demanded a spire for the Freedom Tower. We got a freak of a building that luckily had to go back and be redesigned due to security issues. (That spire in Chicago isn't so great either by the way)

http://mit.edu/cre/research/ncc/i/manhattan2.jpg


But I do think that if some major proposal was presented for the Westside, Bloomberg would suddenly become a great architect in his own right...

[TREPYE]

Yeah but the spire wasn't the issue with the FT it was the overall design. No matter what this scraper was going to get a spire even without Pataki saying anything.

[krulltime]

Revised Solow plan for Con Ed site near UN to be presented tonight


http://www.cityrealty.com/graphics/uploads/1151351502_conedxxx.gif


26-JUN-06

Sheldon H. Solow’s plans to redevelop the Con Ed facilities along the East River south of the United Nations complex have been revised and now call for more, but shorter, towers, according to an article by Erik Engquist in today’s edition of Crain’s Business.

This spring the City Planning Department held hearings on the environmental studies needed for the proposal that then called for the development of 6,266,790-gross square feet, of which 4,324,635 square feet would be residential, 1,119,979 square feet, commercial office space, 40,433 square feet of retail space, 60,725 square feet of community facility use, and 721,018 square feet of below-grade parking space to accommodate 1,183 public spaces and 376 “accessory” spaces. The proposed plan also included 149,863 square feet, or 3.44 acres, of “publicly accessible open space.” The complex included 4 different parcels with a total of 8.7 acres and the redevelopment scheme requires numerous special permits and zoning text amendments relating to uses, heights, and setbacks.

In the plan then under review, the parcel at 616 First Avenue would consist of two 45-story residential buildings with 60,725 square feet of community facilities in a three-story building, 2,000-square feet of retail space, 30,000 square feet of open space, and 294 parking spaces. The parcel at 685 First Avenue would be a 67-story residential tower with 3,750 square feet of retail, 96 parking spaces and 1.1 acres of open space. The parcel at 700 First Avenue would have a 63-story residential tower on its west side and a 50-story residential tower on its east side, 12,000 square feet of retail space, 2.56 acres of open space, 280 accessory parking spaces and 889 public parking spaces. The parcel at 708 would be a 57-story mixed-use tower with a roof-top restaurant.

Richard Meier and Skidmore Owings Merrill are the architects of the project, which will have 5 towers taller than the Secretariat Building of the United Nations just to the north and three that are almost as tall as the Trump World Tower at 47th Street and First Avenue.

The project has encountered considerable opposition and Community Board 6 this spring submitted to the planning department its own specific development plan for the site that calls for lower buildings, no commercial office space, the inclusion of affordable housing, a school, and public ownership of cross-streets, shadow studies and a comprehensive plan that envisions the removal of the 42nd Street exit ramp from the FDR Drive and the decking over of the drive to create new park land and waterfront access.

The community board’s plan has received widespread endorsement from elected local politicians.

The developer is seeking an overall floor-to-area ratio (FAR) of 12 for the complex. The board’s plan, on the other hand, is based on a F.A.R. of only 6, but with bonuses of 2 F.A.R. each for providing an easement along the FDR drive to facilitate its realignment and eventual decking over and waterfront access, affordable housing, and preservation of some of the existing powerplants. The recent start of demolition of one of the powerplants, however, removed the possibility of that bonus.

According to the Crain’s article, “the revised design that Mr. Solow will present to a community board subcommittee today addresses earlier criticisms by shortening the towers, by making the project’s three acres of open space more accessible to the public and by increasing the space allotted for retailers along First Avenue.” “The new plan also includes a three-block promenade along the FDR Drive. But East 39th and East 40th streets would remain private,” according to the article.


Copyright © 1994-2006 CITY REALTY.COM INC.

[pianoman11686]

No TREPYE, you're incorrect. The spire was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, design issues with the tower. There was no practical way, from an engineering standpoint, to hold that big a spire, in that part of the building, in place, without it being unstable. The security concerns arose from the location of the tower being too close to busy West Street. The tower was moved away from the street, the fortress base was added, and in the meantime we got a redesigned, better-looking tower with a reasonable spire.

Anti - I agree with you. Bloomberg shouldn't have to be in charge of demanding better architecture. There are other people who can do that. Hence me saying, "It's not a bad thing. It's just a "not" thing." Chicago's simply lucky that they have a mayor who can afford to spend time on that sort of thing.

[kliq6]

as someone who has went to hundreds of these CB meetings, i urge anyone that can to go and see what developers and builders have to deal with. Ill never forget one job when I was at Durst when a man jumped into th epit to stop excavation

[pianoman11686]

Revised Solow plan for Con Ed site near UN to be presented tonight

The project has encountered considerable opposition and Community Board 6 this spring submitted to the planning department its own specific development plan for the site that calls for lower buildings, no commercial office space, the inclusion of affordable housing, a school, and public ownership of cross-streets, shadow studies and a comprehensive plan that envisions the removal of the 42nd Street exit ramp from the FDR Drive and the decking over of the drive to create new park land and waterfront access.[/b]

Give me a break. You're in Midtown Manhattan, the largest central business district in the world, and you want to get rid of all the commercial office space in the plan, with the office crunch that's about to occur? You've got to be nuts.

Shadow studies? Yeah, do a shadow study to discover what the effects are of making buildings shorter and fatter. I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised.

The decking over of the FDR I can understand. You've got some leverage, and you know you can get the developer to agree to a few things. Maybe he'll even acknowledge this is a good idea, and will raise the land values in the area even further.


The community board’s plan has received widespread endorsement from elected local politicians.

The developer is seeking an overall floor-to-area ratio (FAR) of 12 for the complex. The board’s plan, on the other hand, is based on a F.A.R. of only 6, but with bonuses of 2 F.A.R. each for providing an easement along the FDR drive to facilitate its realignment and eventual decking over and waterfront access, affordable housing, and preservation of some of the existing powerplants. The recent start of demolition of one of the powerplants, however, removed the possibility of that bonus.

That is entirely unreasonable. How egotistical and self-centered do you have to be to demand that someone cut a project's FAR by half? Why not just tell the developer that he can't build anything at all? Why go through the hassle? And why, why would you ever want to keep a powerplant in your neighborhood?


According to the Crain’s article, “the revised design that Mr. Solow will present to a community board subcommittee today addresses earlier criticisms by shortening the towers, by making the project’s three acres of open space more accessible to the public and by increasing the space allotted for retailers along First Avenue.” “The new plan also includes a three-block promenade along the FDR Drive. But East 39th and East 40th streets would remain private,” according to the article.

Some of this could be positive. We want lively streets, and open space, if it's accessible, is never a bad thing. But for crying out loud: who gives you the right to make all of these demands? Is it not enough that the developer is willing to provide certain benefits to the community in exchange for building a development that is entirely legal?

[TREPYE]

No TREPYE, you're incorrect. The spire was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, design issues with the tower. There was no practical way, from an engineering standpoint, to hold that big a spire, in that part of the building, in place, without it being unstable. The security concerns arose from the location of the tower being too close to busy West Street. The tower was moved away from the street, the fortress base was added, and in the meantime we got a redesigned, better-looking tower with a reasonable spire.

Anti - I agree with you. Bloomberg shouldn't have to be in charge of demanding better architecture. There are other people who can do that. Hence me saying, "It's not a bad thing. It's just a "not" thing." Chicago's simply lucky that they have a mayor who can afford to spend time on that sort of thing.

I think the proximity to West St was the biggest issue, not the spire. I remember the spire being an issue of contention between Childs and Liberskind but when they reported the story about the redesign all I kept hearing about was the tower was too vulnerable to a truck bomb due to its proximity West St.

And who should be in charge of demanding better architecture if not the major? As far as know nobody in NYC ever makes aesthetic suggestions to developers about any tower.

[antinimby]

Antinimby: would you back up your statements with some facts?
NY "was very much anti-development, particularly tall, shiny new buildings, way, way, way before 9/11."Sure and here are some prominent ones: Trump's Television City, Columbus Center by Moshe Safdie and One Worldwide Plaza. These were the headline catching ones, but certainly there were plenty of other smaller, lesser known projects that also faced stiff community resistance.


Uh....could you point-point exactly when? First of all, huge swaths of Manhattan were torn down and replaced by "tall, shiny new buildings" all through the 1950´s and 60´s. 6th Avenue in mid-town went from being a string of tenements to a line-up of tall office towers....as just one example. Park, 3rd Avenue, 2nd avenue....check out some before&after photos. The 1970´s saw a period of stagnation mostly because of the city´s finacial and social crisis. There was a boom again in the 80´s with huge flashy buildings like the IBM building, the Sony tower, the Equitable building....and look at the group of residential towers built around Carnegie Hall...the MOMA Tower etc. The late 80´s through the 1990´s saw Times Square basically torn down and re-built with new towers.Don't even try to sneak the 1950's and 60's into the debate here. The social mentality was entirely different then. The attitude towards development did not turn antagonistic until later in the 60's and it has gotten progressively worst since.

For this very reason, some parts of Manhattan, like Midtown, there was a tolerance for "progress" early on. Once the office towers were built, the few residents left did not have an argument against any of the new ones you mentioned that came along later.


Although lots of ugly things are still getting built.... on the whole architecture in NYC is better now than it has been in DECADES. With MORE buildings being built since anytime that I can remember.Can't compare now with other times, architectural times and tastes have changed. Furthermore, it's debatable whether the architecture is better now.

[pianoman11686]

TREPYE: Apparently you didn't get the gist of my post. I know the location of the tower was a problem. Location is not architecture. Neither is making the base inpenetrable to truck bombs. From a design standpoint, the spire and windfarms in the upper levels were illogical because of engineering constraints.

If New York didn't have 8 million people, and wasn't one of the biggest terrorist targets in the world, then maybe Bloomberg could worry about architecture. There are many more important issues he should spend time on. If you want someone to regulate this sort of thing for your city, you have to appoint someone to do this and only this. Someone who is qualified and will have enough time to do the job, and do it right. For a city as large as New York, one person may not be enough. If the mayor wants a say, he can give the final approval.

[Fabrizio]

Antinimby:

You are re-writing history. You are simply WRONG.

You write: "Don't even try to sneak the 1950's and 60's into the debate here. The social mentality was entirely different then. The attitude towards development did not turn antagonistic until later in the 60's and it has gotten progressively worst since."

Actually, since the late 60´s Manhattan has been transformed by new development. The World Trade Center; a completely new Times Square; huge parts of the East side; Battery Park City.... Huge parts of the city are unrecognizable compared to what they were 30 years ago.

But even so....it is NOW that NYC is in a true building boom, like it has not seen since after WWII.

From the NYSun DEC 30, 2005:

"Buoyed by low interest rates and a decline in crime, New York City is in the midst of a historic construction boom on par only with the real estate rush that defined the early 1960s and the late 1920s, eras that gave birth to iconic city structures such as the Met Life Building and the Chrysler Building."

"The number of permits issued for new private residential building units issued citywide in 2005 is.....(.......).....more than FIVE times the amount issued a decade ago, according to the city's Department of Buildings."

"The deputy mayor for development, Daniel Doctoroff, told The New York Sun yesterday, "I think we are in the midst of, arguably, the greatest building boom in probably the period since World War II. It's important to note that it touches every sector of the economy and it's also, I think, in its very early stages.""

http://www.nysun.com/article/25157/

-------------------------

About Safdies Columbus Circle Project: Are you familiar with the look of that project? It´s style? Let´s count our blessings that we got the Time Warner Center instead.

Trump´s Television City? It was a line of tall buildings with a highway in front. It was ridiculous. And there were doubts at the time that Trump was really serious about it...

Paul Goldberger writes about it here:

"The challenge is to make the connections that turn a complex into something that possesses genuine urban qualities and is not simply an array of big buildings side by side. The one large project in our time that has succeeded at doing this is Battery Park City in lower Manhattan, which under its new master plan by Cooper Eckstut has begun to evolve into the ideal example of large-scale development that should be made today. At Battery Park City, as in so much of the most knowing urban design produced now, the traditional elements of a city - varied scale and size of buildings, small, tightly defined open space, street life - are all seen as things to be sought, not things to be ignored. Most important of all, surely, is the street - it is the critical organizing element in all urban design. Yet in Television City there is but a single street, and it is more a traffic artery than a place to walk and enjoy the pleasures of city life."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9802E4DE153BF931A15751C1A9639482 60&sec=&pagewanted=print

[antinimby]

Antinimby:
You are re-writing history. You are simply WRONG. Actually, since the late 60´s Manhattan has been transformed by new development. The World Trade Center; a completely new Times Square; huge parts of the East side; Battery Park City.... Huge parts of the city are unrecognizable compared to what they were 30 years ago.
But even so....it is NOW that NYC is in a true building boom, like it has not seen since after WWII.No, I'm quite RIGHT, actually. Rewriting history won't be unnecessary. It is plain for all to read up and see.

Go back to my posts and your posts. You questioned my assertion that community groups were protesting developments in the city well before 9/11. You asked for examples and I gave them to you.
Note: no one argued that there hasn't been construction going on in New York. Heck, even Boston has had quite a few skyscrapers go up, despite being well-known for their unrelenting NIMBYism.

The point is that the NIMBYs win some and the developers win some, but it seems like just about every proposal, regardless of merit, especially nowadays, has some kind of opponents. One only has to follow the threads on this forum to see that. How healthy is that?

One would argue that this is good because it supposedly keeps the developers in check. However, rarely do these communities ever call for a better design. Most of the time, it's all about the height or calling for community centers in the building or more contextualism (which in their opinion is usually something plain). Judging from the outcome so far, I'd say community involvement has been a major flop.


About Safdies Columbus Circle Project: Are you familiar with the look of that project? It´s style? Let´s count our blessings that we got the Time Warner Center instead.
Trump´s Television City? It was a line of tall buildings with a highway in front. It was ridiculous. And there were doubts at the time that Trump was really serious about it...
Paul Goldberger writes about it hereFrankly, I don't really care what Goldberger thinks. I have seen the Safdie proposal and I think it looks fantastic, almost iconic. Twin towers with classy slanted roofs, how many buildings look like that in the city? A true missed opportunity.

As for Trumps proposal on the Westside, I would take what he proposed than we we got with the Kondylis Riverside junk, in a heartbeat. I might add that the junk might very well have been better designed if not for the Coalition for a Livable Westside clowns, another worthless NIMBY group.

[Citytect]

I think Safdie's Columbus Center is better looking than the boring glass boxes Childs gave us.

But that's really beside the point. Neither of these designs is an example of truly bad architecture, which it seems Fabrizio was suggesting about the Safdie plan.

[pianoman11686]

From http://cityrealty.com/new_developments:

More details about Solow's revised Con Ed site plans 27-JUN-06

The East River Realty Company, which is headed by Sheldon H. Solow, presented a significant revision of its plans to redevelop the Con Ed facilities along the East River south of the United Nations complex to the land-use committee of Community Board 6 last night.

Margaret Taylor of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which is co-designing the plan with Richard Meier, said that the overall mass and number of housing units remain unchanged but that the heights of all the towers have been reduced, a mixed-use tower has been changed to an office tower, one more tower has been added, and the major park space with an oval reflective pool has been repositioned closer to the eastern edge of the site.

Ms. Taylor is shown at the right with Ed Rubin, chairman of the land-use committee, discussing a large model that shows the proposed buildings in white with Trump World Tower at the right.

The tallest building formerly proposed was the northernmost on Solow’s site: an 864-foot-high apartment and office tower that has now be reduced to a 632.5-foot-high office tower. This building was to have contained a rooftop restaurant but Ms. Taylor said that it may not now although the overall plan remains “a work in progress.”

The tallest building in the new plan is now the building on the west side of First Avenue between 39th and 40th Streets that formerly was 836 feet high and has now been reduced to 698 feet in height.

The United Nations Secretariat Building, the city’s most important landmark on the East River, is 505 feet high and its height in the neighborhood was only surpassed by the Trump World tower on First Avenue and 57th Street which is 891 feet high, a height that aroused great community opposition.

The meeting last night was attended by many residents in high-rise buildings near the site such as the 552-foot-high Corinthinian, the 383 foot-high Manhattan Plaza and the 442-foot-high Horizon, all clustered along First Avenue and the Manhattan entrance to the Queens Midtown Tunnel. Part of Mr. Solow’s site includes the block between Rivergate and Manhattan Plaza and the plan calls for two residential buildings and a resident of the angled Manhattan Plaza asked why the plan’s two residential buildings there were not oriented to complement rather than abruptly abut its large triangular plaza.

Many of the speakers commented that the revised plan was definitely an improvement, but most also continued to voice strong opposition to its height and density. Ms. Taylor received a long round of applause for her clear and patient presentation.

The redevelopment scheme requires numerous special permits and zoning text amendments relating to uses, heights, and setbacks.

Community Board 6 this spring submitted to the planning department its own specific development plan for the site that calls for much lower buildings, no commercial office space, the inclusion of affordable housing, a school, and public ownership of cross-streets, shadow studies and a comprehensive plan that envisions the removal of the 42nd Street exit ramp from the FDR Drive and the decking over of the drive to create new park land and waterfront access. Mr. Rubin said last night that its plan will be processed by the planning commission at the same time as the Solow plan.

Ms. Taylor indicated that the 4,000 housing units on the site will “likely” be a mix of rental and condominium units, adding that at present the plan does not call for any “affordable housing.” She said that the plan includes a five-story community facility of about 120,000 square feet that conceivably could be a school. Ms. Taylor also noted that the revised plan improves its retail presence along First Avenue and creates a three-block-long promenade overlooking the East River at a height where the FDR Drive could be bridged over to create more public space and access to an esplanade along the river.

http://www.cityrealty.com/graphics/uploads/1151432818_conedzzzzzzz.gif

[ZippyTheChimp]

I agree with the point that community opposition is often directed in the wrong direction, but I must take issue with this...


Judging from the outcome so far, I'd say community involvement has been a major flop.Without community involvement, the landscape of New York would have been severely altered for the worse.

Grand Central Terminal

Cross Brooklyn Expwy

Manhattan Expwy

The BQE through Brooklyn Heights

No community voices:
The Singer Building
Savoy-Plaza

Muted voices:
Penn Station

The unrealized projects pale in comparison to what would have been lost.

Even when developers have a free hand, the result is mediocre at best, and often terrible.
12 Barclay.

[londonlawyer]

As I have noted on many occasions, this area is an utter dump. But for a few nice buildings on 1st and Tudor City, this area consists of filthy, run-down, rent-controlled tenements and is marred by the filthy entrance to the Midtown Tunnel. It amazes me that people with $300 per month, rent-controlled apartments are going to kill what could have been a great project.
This area is a dump. 800+ foot towers would not ruin the character of the area. This isn't Perry Street. It's a dump!

Can't Solow build over 800 feet as of right?

[antinimby]

^ Right on.

Zippy, I am talking about absurd NIMBYism fighting building heights or bulk, base on their own selfish reasons and their irrational fear of change, gentrification, losing views, losing sunlight, air, etc.
These people are not fighting to save the next Grand Central or to keep a 6-lane highway from going through the Village.
Heck, why weren't these NIMBY's fighting to save the old powerplant?
They only cared about the 800 foot towers.
These modern day NIMBYs do not have preservation at heart.

Straw Man?

[pianoman11686]

There are some special zoning variances that he's applying for. Part of this entire community opposition is aimed directly at preventing those variances/permits from being issued. It's not that it would be illegal; it's that they want their voices heard.

My problem is this (and I know it's been said a thousand times already): If you're in a neighborhood like this, that is surrounded by tall buildings, what good does it do to reduce a building's height by 200 feet? You can already see where this is going: Solow has added a building, which makes the project denser, and other buildings have been shortened, which makes the project bulkier. If you're worried about shadows, don't live in Manhattan. Or better yet, just don't live in Midtown. Move to the Lower East Side.

I understand community concerns when they're rational. I've read through some of the statements given by the local politicians. School overcrowding is a major issue, so it's reasonable to ask the developer to include a school, especially when he plans to include so many new housing units. It's also reasonable to include retail, because more people means more services to be desired. It's also reasonable to include open space, and provide some improvements to the surrounding infrastructure. What do these demands all have in common? The fact that none of them affect whats going on hundreds of feet up in the sky.

[ZippyTheChimp]

I was only objecting to the blanket statement that implied community involvement was a failure in New York. Like it or not, the city would be worse off if developers had a free hand.

Many of the people that opposed the highway through the Village did it for the most selfish of reasons.

[antinimby]

A reduction of 200 feet is what Solow proposed. They want more reduction. Heights of 0 would be best in their opinion.

[londonlawyer]

...
Heck, why weren't these NIMBY's fighting to save the old powerplant?
They only cared about the 800 foot towers.
These modern day NIMBYs do not have preservation at heart.


I totally agree with you. This old plant was beautiful. Where were these wankers when Solow tore it down? Also, why don't these weiners make some good use of themselves and protest the detruction of the townhouses on 56th Street, the Drake, etc.? These wankers are full of it!

[antinimby]

I was only objecting to the blanket statement that implied community involvement was a failure in New York. Like it or not, the city would be worse off if developers had a free hand.It was only blanket because you selected it out of the rest of the post.

We've gone back and forth many times about the role of the community with respect to keeping developers on their toes. You know I don't condone letting anything, be it developers, NIMBYs or politicians, go unchecked.
There is probably a better solution out there, but the current system we have now definitely needs some adjustments.

[antinimby]

I totally agree with you. This old plant was beautiful. Where were these wankers when Solow tore it down? Also, why don't these weiners make some good use of themselves and protest the detruction of the townhouses on 56th Street, the Drake, etc.? These wankers are full of it!That's exactly what I mean by the system we have needs adjusting. There are nice old buildings that are getting torn down and no one does anything about it (other than a few wirednewyork forum members making some noise). Yet, when something nice is propose for an empty parking lot, people fight it. You can't tell me this is the best for the city.

[pianoman11686]

Also, why don't these weiners make some good use of themselves and protest the detruction of the townhouses on 56th Street, the Drake, etc.? These wankers are full of it!

56th street is not Tudor City's backyard.

[londonlawyer]

Good one! Clearly though, these wankers don't care about the city as a hole. They care only about their maggot strewn, filthy 4 block area.

[ZippyTheChimp]

It was only blanket because you selected it out of the rest of the post. I can only respond to what you write, not what you mean. Don't tell me I took it out of context. Your post was mostly concerned with the history of community opposition, and I responded in a historical context.

I qualified my opposition to the statement with...

I agree with the point that community opposition is often directed in the wrong direction, but I must take issue with this...

[ablarc]

So can we agree the problem isn't community involvement but stupid community involvement?

Community should be involved but not to the extent of shooting itself in the foot --as it's presently in the process of doing with its idiotic height obsession. The result will be fat, graceless buildings and more pervasive shadows.

[antinimby]

^ I agree.


I can only respond to what you write, not what you mean. Don't tell me I took it out of context. Your post was mostly concerned with the history of community opposition, and I responded in a historical context.Yes but history is a long time. I was talking about more recent history.

[ZippyTheChimp]

So can we agree the problem isn't community involvement but stupid community involvement?
That's exactly the problem, but I don't have an answer.

Removing community involvement would create a vacuum, since there is little city mechanism outside of hiistoric districts and general zoning to establish sound development guidelines.

It's hard to get people to understand that the sun moves, and a narrow shadow passes more quickly than a bulky one.

[ablarc]

It's a question of education.

Problem is, many community activists can't be educated.

You can't learn if you already know everything.

[kurokevin]

What is the demographic of people who attend these meetings? I imagine it must be mostly senior citizens and the elderly. If so, it's just a matter of time before their numbers slowly dwindle in this town (to think very morbidly on how to solve the Nimby problem).

[stache]

Yes but there's always a fresh crop coming up. If you want to see the effects of unchecked development, take a look across the Hudson at Newport/Pavonia in JC.