A Happy Ending to a Tall Tower Tale: New-York Historical Society Drops Plan for 23-Story Condos on Central Park West
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 70th 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!