Riverside South Development

[NYguy]

NY Post...

TRUMP ROUNDING OUT W. SIDE DEVELOPMENT

By LOIS WEISS

October 16, 2002 -- DONALD Trump is keeping busy.

He's putting together plans to top off the northernmost piece of his West Side project with a new curved condominium building at 72nd Street, while also working on a new master plan to turn the southernmost commercial portion of the site, at 61st Street, into several more apartment buildings. Skidmore Owings Merrill is now taking another look at the section on Trump's behalf.

Skidmore planned the original Riverside South project on the Hudson Railyards and helped Columbia University lay out the four-block commercial piece as a Business School and performing arts campus annex.Trump and his Hong Kong-based partners will have to take any development plan for the southern Trump Place site through rezoning and the city's land use review process.

"We're designing a fantastic, residential development on that site," Trump confirmed. "It's zoned now for commercial and it's very early in the process, but we will be going for that [zoning] fairly soon."

Meanwhile, at the northernmost piece of the West Side site, HRH Construction has already begun working on an unusual 35-story tower designed by Costas Kondylis that will eventually contain 180 condominium units.

To its south is the tallest building on the site, a 50-story condo that is topped by a round crown. Another condo and three rental buildings already line Riverside Boulevard.

"We're doing a building which is going to be really very beautiful, and very luxurious," Trump said. "It's going to have a gentle curve and will look up and down Riverside Park and the Hudson River to the George Washington Bridge."

Trump compared the design to the curved glass façade on the 17 State St. office building downtown, overlooking New York Harbor.

That building gives a sense of what the new Trump condo will look like - just move it uptown, add lots of limestone and spin it around.

As for Trump's most recent multimillion-dollar commercial venture - a McDonald's ad filmed in his own offices, overlooking Central Park - Trump laughs, "Not bad for an afternoon."

If you watch the ad carefully, you might also glimpse of a small rendering of the first few Trump Place buildings.

[NoyokA]

"We're designing a fantastic, residential development on that site," Trump confirmed. "It's zoned now for commercial and it's very early in the process, but we will be going for that [zoning] fairly soon."

-Wrong move. Spectacular, Im sure, like the rest. Further the final building is nothing like 17 State Street, foremost it is brick, Im sure the NIMBY's wouldnt allow a beautiful glass building anyways.

[Agglomeration]

You're right about that. There is an organization that opposes Riverside South in all its forms. it's called Coalition for a livable west side, and it's the epitome of nimbyism. It wanted to shut down the AOL Time Warner Center, and it virulently opposes the rebuilding of the World Trade Center.

Here is a good example of their views from a newsletter:

The World Trade Center towers should not be replaced. Our collective strength as a nation and as New Yorkers, is rooted not in power or tower, but in the love evidenced in the rescue efforts. Community breeds such devotion.

Neighborhoods, not architectural statements, create bonds among people. Neighborhood residents, workers and visitors share needs, pleasures, adversities, celebrations and commemorations.

Instead of isolating towers, let us choose to embody the core of our society in a community designed to bring commuters and residents together in an all encompassing complex of residential, cultural, educational, health, business, commercial and gathering place uses. And, most importantly, at the center create a tangible monument to all those who so tragically lost their lives on the site. " Mary Brendle, Manhattan resident (Community District 4 Manhattan Historian) (former Chair CB4)

[NYguy]

Instead of isolating towers, let us choose to embody the core of our society in a community designed to bring commuters and residents together in an all encompassing complex of residential, cultural, educational, health, business, commercial and gathering place uses.

And in the process we'll create world peace, end world hunger, and unite in song and dance...

[Fabb]

Right. She's a dreamer.

Trump and his Hong Kong-based partners
I wonder who they are.
Some of them are not afraid to build tall.

[NYguy]

NY Times...

Blotting Out the Light: A New Tower by Trump

By CHARLES V. BAGLI

Richard Seader and his fellow residents in the Chatsworth, a landmark building on 72nd Street near Riverside Drive, battled their landlady for decades with the dramatic flair of the musicals and plays Mr. Seader once produced on Broadway.

Now Mr. Seader and the other tenants have joined forces with the current landlord to fight Donald J. Trump over a 36-inch-wide strip of land that separates the Chatsworth's western wall from the site of the next planned tower in the $3 billion Trump Place project, on the Hudson River waterfront.

Both sides claim to own what can best be described as a three-foot demilitarized zone.

The dispute has all the elements of a typical New York real estate brawl, but it also wends its way through the city's industrial past, when railroad barons ruled New York, and the storied history of the Chatsworth, a Beaux-Arts masterpiece where Brenda Vaccaro and Susan Sarandon once lived and Conan O'Brien now occupies the penthouse. Finally, the Chatsworth's fate may have fallen into a Catch-22 in the arcane and contradictory world of zoning and urban planning.

If Mr. Trump has his way, his latest condominium tower at Trump Place will cantilever over the 36-inch strip and block the unobstructed views of the Hudson from the Chatsworth's 350 or so west-facing windows. More important, the tenants say, a portion of the 31-story Trump tower will come as close as three inches from 102 windows of the 12-story Chatsworth, blocking all light and air from 82 rooms and rendering them uninhabitable.

The city does not usually permit windows in a wall built on a property line, but no one imagined when the Chatsworth was completed in 1904 that a residential development would spring up on the once bustling railyard next door.

Mr. Seader and the tenants' association worry that the fire escapes on the western wall, like the one outside his kitchen window, will become dangerously impassable and that construction of Mr. Trump's tower will damage the stability of the Chatsworth, much as a nearby sewer project cracked the foundation in the 1970's. Some of the fire escapes themselves could be knocked out by Mr. Trump's tower. The landlord has filed a lawsuit to block the project. There is also a Web site: TrumpPlaceIsChokingUs.com

"This is an enormously serious problem," said Mr. Seader, who has lived in the Chatsworth with his wife, Sylvia, for 41 years. "The most critical issue is the physical safety of the building."

Mr. Trump, who successfully fended off lawsuits against his supersized Trump World Tower near the United Nations, is unsympathetic to the tenants' complaints about their loss of views.

"Welcome to New York," Mr. Trump said.

"They've had those windows for many years," he continued. "But I got this approved in 1992. They're 10 years too late."

After years of community opposition and lawsuits, Mr. Trump obtained city approval in 1992 to build what he now calls Trump Place, which will have 16 apartment buildings with 5,700 apartments when finished, a 20-acre public park and an extension of Riverside Drive from 72nd Street to 59th Street. The developer's model clearly showed that the tower at 72nd Street would butt up against the Chatsworth, blocking windows and possibly making some rooms illegal for occupancy.

The tower will be the sixth built in the project and the one regarded as the most valuable, because of its location. Excavation work for the foundation has already begun, and the developer hopes to begin construction by December.

But the owner of the Chatsworth, Lenore Dean, never voiced any opposition, mostly because control of the building had been taken away from her and put into the hands of a receiver in 1987.

Regarded as one of the finest apartment hotels in the city a century ago, the Chatsworth had fallen on hard times. The vast 15-room apartments had been carved into smaller units, the elevators did not work and the terra cotta cherubs that adorned the facade were chipped and broken. For more than 20 years, the tenants' association, which included Ms. Sarandon and Mr. Seader, had to fight for heat, hot water and the most basic repairs.

"It was monstrous what was going on here," said Mr. Seader, a tenant leader who produced more than 60 plays and musicals on and off Broadway, including "Swinging on a Star."

Mrs. Dean died in 1998 at 93, and ownership of the building passed to her five grandchildren, who have regained control of the property and worked hard to restore the grandeur of the Chatsworth, according to Mr. Seader and another tenant, Henry Saltzman, whose apartment windows on the 10th floor look west onto Mr. Trump's construction site.

But just as a sense of relief and hope settled over the residents of the building, the reality of Mr. Trump's project shocked them. The only windows in a number of apartments will be completely blocked by Mr. Trump's tower. In some spots, the new building will be 3 to 48 inches away, according to the lawsuit. The tower will be so close, Mr. Seader said, that the fire escapes could be turned into dangerous chimneys in the event of a fire.

Assemblyman Scott Stringer said he had asked the city to intervene, but so far, each of the appropriate agencies has said the matter is out of its hands.

"We're looking at the issues," said Ilyse Fink, spokeswoman for the Buildings Department. "But the siting of the building was approved by City Planning."

Not so fast, said Robyn Stein, Ms. Fink's counterpart in the Department of City Planning.

"It's not under our purview anymore," she said. "We went through the land use process 10 years ago. We approved a facade and an envelope," or a space within which a developer can design a building. "But the design wasn't detailed. They have to go to the Buildings Department."

So the Chatsworth owners are trying to force Mr. Trump to redesign his tower so it does not encroach on their property. They contend that they own the 36-inch strip of land atop the retaining wall at the edge of the two properties as a result of a 100-year-old deal with Chauncey M. Depew, president of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company.

According to the documents, Mr. Depew wanted to build the retaining wall on the two properties in 1887 so that rocks, earth and debris would not fall on his train tracks. In a subsequent agreement, Mr. Depew gave his neighbor the right to excavate a portion of the retaining wall and erect the western foundation of what became the Chatsworth.

The Chatsworth's current owners contend that Mr. Depew also said that the three-foot strip along the top of the retaining wall and along the west side of the Chatsworth belongs to the building. Even if he did not, the Chatsworth lawyers contend, the Chatsworth has established ownership by maintaining the fence and the locked steel gates at either end of the strip for more than 30 years.

"It's totally without merit," Mr. Trump said of the Chatsworth lawsuit.

The Trump project's lawyers claim that the developer owns the top of the retaining wall and can therefore build a tower that will rise up against that wall and then cantilever over the top of it and almost, in some places, brush up against the Chatsworth.

Howard S. Weiss, a lawyer for the Chatsworth owners, said that they had tried to reach a compromise with Mr. Trump this year. But, Mr. Weiss said, when City Planning officials indicated they would consider their alternative proposal from the Chatsworth group, the talks were broken off. He vowed to continue the battle.

"This is not about views," Mr. Weiss said. "We understand that the reality of life in New York is that there's always going to be development and views are going to be lost and gained. This is about light, air and safety."

[Gulcrapek]

So make it thinner and taller.. geez

[chris]

Does anyone have photo progress or renderings of this building?:
"HRH Construction has already begun working on an unusual 35-story tower designed by Costas Kondylis."

[Derek2k3]

looks like 17 State Street my ass...maybe in the dark.

240 Riverside Boulevard at Trump Place http://www.kondylis.com/projects/00a09.html

240 Riverside Boulevard at Trump Place, or Building A at Trump Place is part of a large-scale residential architecture project on Riverside South in New York City. These buildings are being designed and constructed for Trump New World Project Management and Hudson Waterfront Associates. This building will have 409,000 square feet of rental space upon completion.

[enzo]

Yuck. How is that "unusual" as stated in the first article?

Looks like a great condo-complex for Buckhead, Atlanta but falls really short of anything that deserves built on a bluff overlooking the Hudson. Not much interesting in the entire development if you ask me.

[NYguy]

I like it. *For a residential building, its better than 17 State St. *17 State is nice, but it does stick out from the rest of Downtown. *This building will be a nice addition not only to Trump's development, but the entire Upper Westside...

[NYguy]

I'm still more interested in this area of the development though...

"We're designing a fantastic, residential development on that site," Trump confirmed. "It's zoned now for commercial and it's very early in the process, but we will be going for that [zoning] fairly soon."

[DominicanoNYC]

Trump is starting to become the *juggernaut of residential buildings. He's buying property like crazy. This render looks nice though.

[JerzDevl2000]

Not a bad building, I think Mr. Kondylis also designed TWT.

The renderings are better than that architecture itself. Anyone else think that this should have more than a flat top. C'mon!

[Edward]

Riverside South's official website, www.riverside-south.org , is coming soon:

Riverside South is a $3 billion real estate and public use development on the 52-acre site of the former New York Central Railroad yards on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The final Riverside South project will include 5,700 new apartments and condominiums at both market and affordable rates and a 27-acre public waterfront park along the Hudson River financed with private funds. The Riverside South Planning Corporation exists to implement details of the master plan, including enforcing building design controls, overseeing park construction, and lobbying for the relocation of the elevated Miller Highway, the noisy, obstructive and potentially dangerous structure that cuts through the entirety of the new waterfront park.


Hudson River waterfront in January of 2002, with the gantry of the float bridge of New York Central Railroad and George Washington Bridge in the background.





Construction started on a 27-acre public waterfront park along the Hudson River. 24 March 2003.