NEW YORK | 250 Water Street | 2 x 470 FT | 38 FLOORS

[Crawford]

I imagine this version will be approved, because the NIMBY Queen Gale Brewer supports this design, as do the neighborhood elected officials. They love bland boxes.

But who knows. Maybe the NIMBYs will be out-NIMBYied and they cannot build anything bigger than a single-wide trailer or plastic port-a-potty, to not disturb the "neighborhood fabric".

Or better yet, wait until a new, more development-friendly mayoral administration, to build a soaring tower befitting of Lower Manhattan.

[DCReid]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I imagine this version will be approved, because the NIMBY Queen Gale Brewer supports this design, as do the neighborhood elected officials. They love bland boxes.

But who knows. Maybe the NIMBYs will be out-NIMBYied and they cannot build anything bigger than a single-wide trailer or plastic port-a-potty, to not disturb the "neighborhood fabric".

Or better yet, wait until a new, more development-friendly mayoral administration, to build a soaring tower befitting of Lower Manhattan.

Let 'em get the junk they deserve!

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I imagine this version will be approved, because the NIMBY Queen Gale Brewer supports this design, as do the neighborhood elected officials. They love bland boxes.

They supported the last version also. I'd be shocked if Landmarks approves this, considering everything they shot down before this.

[Zapatan]

Just another filler, hopefully it looks nicer in person.

If 80 SS ever gets built I won't care as much about this loss.

[Visionist]

I wouldn't mind seeing the time ball on the Titanic lighthouse made functional again. It would become a popular spot to celebrate new year's. Bet the NIMBYs would love that. Haha.

A solemn ceremony every April 15th on the anniversary of her sinking would be an interesting event to add to the city's cultural portfolio.

[BK1985]

WTF is that. I hate these NIMBYS. We went from a cool looking tower to two nice midrises to a total porker

[NYguy]

http://tribecatrib.com/content/propo...ays-not-enough

Proposal for Seaport Building Shrinks; CB1 Committee Says Not Enough





By CARL GLASSMAN
Posted Mar. 13, 2021

Following the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s bruising rejection of its proposal for twin residential towers at 250 Water Street, developer Howard Hughes Corp. is back with a scaled-down design.

The revised treatment calls for a single 345-foot-high structure rather than the previously proposed twin 470-foot towers—27 stories, down from 38; 550,000 square feet reduced from 757,000 square feet.

But the proposed building, to be constructed on what is now a parking lot on the district’s western side, still exceeds the currently allowed zoning height of 120 feet. That was enough for another advisory rejection from Community Board 1’s Landmarks Committee, which was shown the design this week.

In this latest proposal, expected to go before the Landmarks Commission early next month, the shorter tower would be set closer to Pearl Street on the west and farther from the small, historic buildings to the east on Water Street. The building’s base is lower and the tower is set back farther from Water and Beekman streets than in the previous design.

Chris Cooper, the project’s Skidmore, Owings & Merrill architect, called the change “shifting the character of the building to be resonant with the district.”

“We think it’s a very different approach and a very different attitude towards height in the district” from the previous proposal, he told Community Board 1’s Landmarks Committee on Thursday.

But the committee held fast to its position that the building should adhere to the current height limit for the historic district.

“I think it’s better than the prior proposal,” said committee chair Bruce Ehrmann, then adding, “a 500,000-square-foot building within the landmarks district is prima facie to be rejected. The scale is entirely out of hand.”

A Howard Hughes Corp. spokesman said that if this project is rejected by the Landmarks Commission, the developer would pursue an as-of-right 160-foot high building. (Forty feet above the allowed 120 feet is permitted for the building’s mechanicals.)

While the current proposed project would come with about 70 below-market units, there would be none with an as-of-right project.

In addition, the struggling South Street Seaport Museum would presumably lose its promised funding lifeline. The original proposal came with the promise of a $50 million endowment to the museum. If the current project is approved, the contribution would still be “substantial,” said the developer’s spokesman in a statement. But the amount is undetermined. “Given the project’s significant reduction in size, we are in ongoing discussions with the Museum and expect the final funding amount to be determined during the land-use process,” he said.

A rejection of the project, museum advocates warn, will mean the loss of a vital Seaport institution.
“If the museum goes under, I don’t know what you think the historic district will be,” Brendon Sexton, chair of the museum’s board of trustees, told the committee during the public comment period. “The South Street Seaport Museum is the heart of the district. If we go, the ships go. Our programs go.”

“The museum will close if we’re not able to secure the necessary funds to keep it up and running,” Sexton added. “And what we do in the next few weeks and months will determine the museum’s future forever.”

Concerns about the project have long been raised by parents at the Peck Slip School and Blue School, located across the street from the site. At the Peck Slip School’s remote PTA meeting on Wednesday, parents got an update on the scaled-back project, but much of their worries remained focused on mitigation of toxins on the site and the potentially disruptive impact of three years of construction to classroom learning, heightened, they said, by a building bigger than what is now allowed.

“There is a significant difference in the amount of construction time, the amount of noise,” said Megan Malvern, a co-founder of Children First, a parent advocacy group opposed to what it calls “unchecked development” on the 250 Water Street site. “We could be lessening the exposure our kids will have to noise and toxins and the ongoing din, and the [lack of] sunlight if it can stay at 120 feet.”

Added to the concerns, she said, is the psychological effect on children who will be returning to the classroom after a long absence due to remote learning. Malvern introduced Arline Bronzoft, an environmental psychologist and noted expert on the psychological effects of noise, who warned of the potential consequences of the construction on learning.

“We are contemplating a project that will increase noise on children who have been put through so much stress during the past year,” said Bronzaft, professor emerita of the City University of New York. “Any additional impact from noise will only serve to exacerbate the difficulties that children will have to adapt to this new school environment.”

If the Landmarks Commission approves the latest design, the six-month public land use review process is expected to begin in May. A city approval following that review would mean the start of construction sometime next year, a Howard Hughes spokesman said.

[mrnyc]

so i see they jawed it down to ironically reflect the hideous southbridge crap where these lucky retired city worker nimbys live. if the landmarks commission cares about the neighborhood so much they should be looking at tearing that eyesore 1960s development out instead of worrying about what goes up in an old polluted parking lot.

[citybooster]

Jesus Christmas, is this the place they said they'd rather see used for towed vehicles or something like that? Talk about an eyesore. Just get this thing built... that Howard Hughes hasn't shrunk the affordable component to zero is a miracle. Get it done, already!

[BK1985]

At this point, i hope they reject it and HHC is forced to go as of right so the "community" loses all of the kickbacks. They don't get the benefit of extortion and still reject the compromise.

[pianowizard]

$1.4 billion to build two tiny highrises. Such a waste of money.

[NYguy]

“We are contemplating a project that will increase noise on children who have been put through so much stress during the past year,” said Bronzaft, professor emerita of the City University of New York. “Any additional impact from noise will only serve to exacerbate the difficulties that children will have to adapt to this new school environment.”

It's a noisy city. Best they adapt to it now, while they're younger. Besides, it's not as if lower Manhattan is an oasis of peace. Stop using the kids as an excuse.

[WhatTheHeck5205]

If I was Howard Hughes Corp at this point, I’d cut my losses and build as-of-right, but pad it with as many mechanical floors as the revised code allows. Make up some excuse about the ground-floor retail needing separate HVAC equipment, because “green”. The community would lose the benefits and the building would still end up being tall enough to block 75% of the Southbridge whiners’ view. Then I’d go back to the plan for a tower on the waterfront.

[Busy Bee]

But! What! About! The! Children!?!

[NYguy]

They've said they will build as-of-right if this latest version isn't approved, and I hope they move forward with the waterfront tower as well.

Meanwhile, the City is finally getting it's act together...



http://www.tribecatrib.com/content/a...arket-building

After Murder, City Now Hastens to Tear Down Former Fish Market Building




The city-owned former fish market building, 95 South St., which has been vacant since the Fulton Fish Market moved to Hunts Point in 2005



By CARL GLASSMAN
Posted Mar. 19, 2021

The city’s long-delayed demolition of a crumbling former fish market building is now slated to begin this month, following the recent murder of a 19-year-old woman there.

Plans to tear down the 81-year-old structure, vacant since the Fulton Fish Market moved to Hunts Point in 2005 and deemed in danger of collapse, was to begin more than two years ago. The Economic Development Corp., the city agency in charge of the property, said in a statement this week that the work would commence within the month, “starting with a construction fence, followed by the abatement and demolition process.”

The graffitied and poorly secured building has been sheltering an encampment of homeless people, including the two men charged with murdering the woman, Rosalee Sanchez, who reportedly had been living in the area on the street. On March 6, her bludgeoned and stabbed body was found in a stairwell wrapped in plastic.

Local residents believe that people living in the building have been the perpetrators of thefts and drug use in the neighborhood.

Twenty people were evicted from the building in late February “in one shot,” according to a police source quoted by the New York Post. “We found all these bedrooms. It was disgusting, terrible living conditions … There was a canoe in there. It stunk like you wouldn’t believe,” the source told the Post.

Asked why the city had not followed through with its plans to demolish the building, Helen Jonsen, an Economic Development Corp. spokeswoman, said in an email: “After funding delays compounded by COVID-19—we received the necessary resources last month (February 2021) to proceed with demolition.” (Most recently, the work was reportedly planned for later this spring.) As for why the building had been left open to squatters, she said only that the agency would “continue our efforts to seal and secure the building.” Mobile light towers are now onsite for added visibility and security and the NYPD is patrolling the building daily, she said.

The future of the New Market Building was uncertain after the Howard Hughes Corp. abandoned plans in 2015 to put a 42-story residential tower on the site. Preservationists and local activists insisted the building has historic merit and argued that the city should restore it for public use. (Though it is on the state and federal registers of historic sites, the New Market Building lies just outside the historic district and is not a protected city landmark.) But the city deemed the decking and pilings beneath the building in danger of collapse and too costly to repair. In early 2018 officials announced plans to demolish the old fish market structure as early as that fall.

[NYguy]

https://www.archpaper.com/2021/04/so...e-critics/amp/

SOM’s shorter 250 Water Street still can’t convince critics




Jonathan Hilburg

Opponents of the Howard Hughes Corporation’s plans to build a mixed-use tower at 250 Water Street in Lower Manhattan made their voices heard during a grueling six-hour-long Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) hearing yesterday, April 6, even as SOM presented a cut-down version of the project. Still, the revised design seemed to win over some of the project’s former critics.

.....

[Visionist]

So no time ball refurbishment.

Thanks a lot Nimbys. No wonder millennials were hoping bat flu would kill you all.

[yankeesfan1000]

If all you have to contribute / say is "No", why do you even have a seat at the table?

[Zapatan]

They could propose a hole in the ground and these people wouldn't be satisfied...

Maybe this lame building just won't be built

[NYguy]

At this point, I’m ready for that tow pound to be built....


https://therealdeal.com/2021/04/08/h...ower-proposal/

Howard Hughes told to further refine Seaport tower proposal
Landmarks commissioners "torn" over 345-foot, mixed-use project


Apr. 08, 2021
Orion Jones

The Howard Hughes Corporation will get a third chance in front of the Landmarks Preservation Commission with its South Street Seaport tower proposal.

After a volley of public comments Tuesday over revised plans for a mixed-use development at 250 Water Street — during which the New York Landmarks Conservancy reversed its previous position, throwing its support behind the project — members of the Landmarks Preservation Commission offered their view.

That view can largely be summed up by a comment from commissioner Everardo Jefferson: “I’m torn on this one.”

Landmarks’ chair, Sarah Carroll, said that enough commissioners have an “open mind” about a taller building in the Seaport, but further refinements may be necessary to gain the majority vote that the project needs to advance to the city’s public land-use review, perhaps next month. Based on commissioners’ comments, those could include lowering the street wall to conform with surrounding buildings, meaning lower ceilings and shorter windows for office space in the proposed tower.

Bigger buildings add “vibrancy and dynamism” to historic districts, Carroll noted, as long as “undue attention to the new” doesn’t come “at the expense of the historic.”

Commissioners Jeanne Lufty and Adi Shamir-Baron expressed similar sentiments, while noting their reservations about the proposed building’s 75-foot-tall base.

“ The neighborhood is evolving,” said Lufty. “There’s going to be more population here.”

Other commissioners maintained that the revised proposal was still out of scale with the historic district.

“[Howard Hughes’] project would bring the height and mass of the surrounding modern city into the clearly delineated precinct of the historic district,” said commissioner Michael Goldblum. The proposed 345-foot tower must be shortened substantially to win his support, he added.

Members of the commission also disagreed over whether the revised building proposal would encroach on the historic district by placing a tower on the east side of Pearl Street, which separates the historic area from the Financial District, or help define its boundary.

A simple majority of the LPC’s 11 commissioners needs to approve the project to advance it to the land-use review, in which the City Council has the final say. Council member Margaret Chin, who represents the district, has expressed support for the development, which makes Landmarks’ vote the make-or-break moment for Howard Hughes.

Howard Hughes has said if denied approval, it would build a 160-foot-tall structure — 120 feet as-of-right plus an additional 40 feet permitted in a flood zone. That smaller project would not come with any affordable units or a subsidy for the Seaport Museum. The commission is expected to issue its decision in the coming weeks.