Ruppert Playground Tower - Related Companies
Crain's NY
April 24, 2009 2:27 PM
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article...FREE/904249977
Protestors target Related Cos. park project
Developer’s deal to maintain Upper East Side park it bought from city 25 years ago has run out. Neighbors fear tot lot to be replaced by 40-story tower.
Developer’s deal to maintain Upper East Side park it bought from city 25 years ago has run out. Neighbors fear tot lot to be replaced by 40-story tower.
Hundreds of Upper East Side residents are expected to rally Sunday in an effort to prevent one of the city’s largest developers from turning a popular park into a 40-story residential tower.
Weeks after equipment to take boring samples landed at Ruppert Playground on 92nd Street between Second and Third avenues, protesters will call on the city to negotiate a deal with the Related Cos. that would preserve the approximately 1-acre space as a park.
“This community ranks dead last in the amount of parks and open space in the entire city,” Geoffrey Croft, president of New York City Park Advocates, wrote in a letter to a local assembly member. “The park must be preserved exclusively for park and recreational uses.”
The Department of Housing Preservation and Development sold the property to Related’s Carnegie Park Associates in 1983 as part of a larger deal that fell under the Ruppert Urban Renewal Project Plan. Under terms of the agreement, Related had to maintain the park for 25 years. That deal expired last June, freeing Related to develop the site. With the recent arrival of drilling equipment in the playground, residents and elected officials are concerned their opportunity to save the park may be waning.
“It’s very hard to justify losing parkland in an area that is starved for it,” said City Councilman Daniel Garodnick, who plans to attend Sunday’s protest. The area’s councilman says Related plans to build a 40-story tower that would include 80% market housing and 20% affordable housing.
A spokeswoman for Related declined to comment. An HPD spokesman referred calls to the Department of Parks and Recreation, where a spokeswoman responded in an email: “The city does not have jurisdiction over private land that the developer owns.”
Advocates say the original 1968 urban renewal plan recognized the lack of parkland in the area, but that it did not go far enough in its call for one permanent park and one temporary park within the four-block zone. More than 40 years of development that has added dozens of high-rise residential buildings to the neighborhood has only compounded the problem, they say.
Advocates are calling on Related to suspend any actions related to the development until the city has a chance to address the park issue. “The city sold the property to a developer and the city can negotiate a deal to get it back!” Mr. Croft wrote.
Ruppert Playground includes a tennis court, tot lot, basketball court, handball court and dozens of trees and bushes. Nearby Ruppert Park, the permanent recreational space called for in the Urban Renewal plan, is owned and operated by the city.
Curbed had a piece about this last week also
http://curbed.com/archives/2009/04/2...eader_comments
Some photos from Curbed.
They filed the permit last week for a 49 story 514 foot tower by Gary Handel. Residents must be pissed. This will be the tallest bldg. built in the UES in about 15 years and oddly enough it's on 92nd Street. It will also be the furthest north skyscraper (500'+) in the city.
http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/Jo...ssdocnumber=01
That sucks. Useful sites and nice old building are developed or redeveloped while we have parking lots, rail yards and holes in the ground languishing. Ironic.
Last edited by Tectonic; June 28th, 2009 at 04:22 PM.
With all of the dilapidated buildings that NY has, why would these a-hole pigs want to build on a playground? NY has such limited outdoor space, so it's bs that these schmucks are building on the little bit that exists. Haven't these putzes taken a look at all of the auto showrooms on 11th Ave. and the warehouses on 12th that can be developed?
It's just insane, meanwhile skyscrapers are too tall for Midtown and we're turning elevated rails into parks when we need more subways... New York just seem so twisted sometimes.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...Tabs%3Darticle
Residents Gird to Keep Park
Upper East Siders Rally as Plans for 49-Story Residential Tower Progress
By MAURA WEBBER SADOVI
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/m...#ixzz1Zge7B46S
No kidding! Firm locks playground
By CYNTHIA R. FAGEN
Posted: 2:25 AM, October 2, 2011
If only Related could acquire and build on the site of this low rise building next to the park instead.
I think that Related owns, or has rights to, the entire site. There was some sort of complicated long-term agreement re. usage.
So I imagine that the new tower would front on 3rd.
The issue, I think, is whether the tower footprint replaces the playground.
I agree. That little building is crap. These schmucks should keep the park and build on this site.Originally Posted by Derek2k3
the low-rise building isn't graceful, but it has great restaurants, retail, and a dance studio
Related to bring cancer center to controversial UES site
Stephen Ross, chairman of the Related Companies, and Ruppert playground.
October 31, 2011 09:00AM
The Related Companies is bringing a state-of-the-art cancer treatment center to its Upper East Side development site occupied by a beloved park, the Wall Street Journal.
The site, at 205 East 92nd Street between Second and Third Avenues, is currently home to Ruppert Playground, which Related built in 1983 as part of a 25-year deal with the city but neighbors are rallying to save. While Related is in the process of trying to find a suitable compromise with residents of the neighborhood, the firm has exceeded its legal obligation to the playground and can begin development without interference.
The plan calls for the real estate firm to team with a group of local hospitals, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and NYU Langone Medical Center, to build a $240 million facility that uses a new proton treatment to fight cancer. The proton therapy has grown in popularity across the U.S. in recent years, and two centers are already planned for New Jersey. The group of hospitals had originally planned for a similar site on West 57th Street, but began looking for a new location months ago.
According to the Journal, a 35-story apartment building would rise over the site with 250 units.
© 2011 The Real Deal
Lab floors tend to be very high, slab to slab. The MSKC Tower only has 20 floors and is more than 400 feet tall.
This could very well be the tallest tower on the UES, especially if they try to minimize the footprint.
that photo in the wsj article doesn't look like ruppert playground
Looks like Poughkeepsie. I've seen that photo used for this site a few times now.
Unsporting
Fight over playground—once public, now padlocked—on New York's Upper East Side.
by Cecilia Fagel
Ruppert Playground, a sliver of open space on 92nd Street between 2nd and 3rd avenues, is easy to miss, surrounded as it is by tall residential brick buildings. The acre-size site is home to a tot lot and playing courts that now sit behind a padlocked fence while developer Related Rentals tries to turn the popular playground into a residential luxury tower. Community Board 8 (CB8) is fighting back and the debacle of how Related was able to privatize a public space has become both a warning for the future and a worrisome precedent.
The crux of the issue is the 1983 sale of the site directly behind the playground, the last phase in the development of the Ruppert Urban Renewal Plan, part of the Mitchell-Lama housing program. Related Rentals offered to pay the city $10 million for that site with plans to build a residential high-rise, the present Carnegie Park. The sale hinged on CB8’s approval to amend the site for residential use, the city intimating that the developer’s funding was necessary to build the nearby neighborhood senior center, Yorkville Gardens. The controversial motion, accused as being “emotional blackmail” by CB8 member Sam Hamoy, was passed. A Land Disposition Agreement was then drawn, stipulating that Related maintain the two public recreation sites prescribed in the Ruppert Plan and built by the city in 1978: Ruppert Park for 10 years and Ruppert Playground for 25 years. In 1997, the park, three blocks away from the playground, was transferred to Parks & Recreation. The playground, a time-release bonus, became private property.
Ruppert Towers on the Upper East Side.
Courtesy AIA
On review, the backroom deal was shortsighted. Community advocates have urged the city, in vain, to buy back the playground. Since the agreement expired in 2008, Related has opened the playground intermittently, based on public sentiment. While Related does not need approval to build on the site, it has other projects elsewhere in the city that need community support and so it is treading carefully. Its latest move was to announce an anchor tenant to its planned 35-story tower: a $240 million cancer radiation center.
The community’s countermove is to file for a full public review under the Uniform Land Use Process. The ball is in the Department of City Planning’s court.
The empty playground behind locked gates.
http://www.archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=5862
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