From our friends at Landmatk West!

Today, the NYC Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA) gave a green light to Congregation Shearith Israel (CSI)-and to all nonprofit and religious institutions seeking to turn the air above their sites into luxury condo revenue streams, even where laws designed to protect neighborhood character and property values explicitly restrict it. CSI’s planned development project is located in the R8B-zoned, low-scale, brownstone midblock of West 70th Street, adjacent to the Individual Landmark Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue, in the Upper West Side/Central Park West Historic District.

With its unanimous approval of 7 zoning height and setback variances, the BSA bowed to CSI’s argument that denial of its application to construct 5 floors of luxury condominiums on top of a new 4-story community house would interfere with its charitable mission and impose an economic hardship on this congregation (one of the wealthiest in the city, counting among its members Jack Rudin, the developer for the St. Vincent’s Hospital project in Greenwich Village). In other words, CSI says, “Back off, City, we’re a nonprofit and nonprofits can do whatever they want.” The (mayor-appointed) BSA rolled over, despite CSI’s repeated failure over many months of public hearings to demonstrate hardship or any link between its mission and the condos (to be sold on the open market for millions).

Contextual zoning is a ceiling developers have been pushing against for decades. And now, 5 floors or 50 floors, the sky’s the limit for nonprofits with properties in traditional, low-rise communities in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island and Manhattan.

We know all this commotion over a 9-story, 114-foot-tall building sounds alarmist (even though it is double the size of the 4- and 5-story brownstones that define 95% of the historic West 70th Street midblock). But, even as we speak, the BSA is also poised to approve Mount Sinai Medical Center’s proposed development including a 542-foot-tall (the equivalent of 54 stories) residential tower on the eastern edge of Central Park. Meanwhile, planners have identified 10 potential development “soft sites” along Central Park West, many occupied by low-rise institutions such as the New-York Historical Society (which, until recently, had planned a 280-foot-tall tower that would have required special zoning exemptions).

It doesn’t take a microscope to spot this trend, which could have even greater ramifications in the other boroughs. With today’s approval, the BSA has opened the door to luxury condos towering over nonprofits in every previously protected neighborhood in the city. And their decision is final. Except for court. Stay tuned…

From Landmark West!

 Finally, after more than a year and a half of intense community pressure on the New-York Historical Society to come clean about development plans for its “Triple Crown” Landmark site, the words “we don’t have plans for a tower” actually ring true.   

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that the Society has dropped its plans to construct a $100 million, 23-story, 280-foot luxury condominium tower that would have loomed over its historic building–an Individual Landmark, also protected as part of 2 overlapping historic districts, listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places, right across the street from Central Park (a Scenic Landmark) and a crucial part of Central Park West’s syncopated skyline.

 Congratulations and THANKS to everyone in the community, Community Board 7, and colleague organizations who recognized the importance of this fight, turned out by the hundreds for public meetings and hearings, wrote letters and emails, and otherwise helped to create the kind of tumult usually needed to make others come to their senses. 

And there’s more good news.  The Society’s president, Louise Mirrer, states, “We think we can meet our needs over the next few years by focusing on our building” and on increasing the institution’s endowment through fundraising.  Hallelujah! 

 For now, the Society’s ill-advised confidence in tower development to solve its financial issues seems to have faded.  But even in our delight and relief, we cannot overlook the significance of Mirrer’s modifier “over the next few years.”  The door to possible future tower development on this site remains open. 

In the meantime, the Society will doubtless hold its place among the ranks of nonprofit institutions throughout the city, each eyeing its own real-estate “development opportunity” and all watching and waiting to see what happens at West 70^th Street and Central Park West, where the NYC Board of Standards and Appeals appears poised to grant 7 zoning variances to allow Congregation Shearith Israel to build luxury condos on top of a new community house.  Approval of these variances will shatter the contextual zoning that protects this block and, more importantly, the quality and character of neighborhoods in all five boroughs.

 Christopher Hitchens clearly has his eye on the ball.  Writing in this month’s Vanity Fair about St. Vincent’s Hospital’s plans to redevelop a swathe of the Greenwich Village Historic District, he notes, “Those who don’t live in such threatened districts nonetheless have a stake in this quarrel and some skin in this game, because on the day when everywhere looks like everywhere else we shall all be very much impoverished, and not only that but-more impoverishingly still-we will be unable to express or even understand or depict what we have lost.”

And so the fight goes on…  But let us celebrate important victories along the way!

FromThe New York Times

HISTORICAL SOCIETY DROPS PLANS FOR EXPANSION AND TOWER 

After a year and a half of controversy and intense opposition by preservationists and neighborhood groups, the New-York Historical Society at 77th Street and Central Park West has abandoned its pursuit of a $100 million, 23-story luxury condominium tower, along with a five-story annex that would have risen above an adjacent empty lot the society owns at 7-13 West 76th Street.