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Episcopal Church Encounters Opposition to Apartment Plan in Chelsea
BY GABRIELLE BIRKNER – Staff Reporter of the Sun
January 23, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/47199
Neighbors are vowing to fight the construction of a 15-story apartment tower in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood on the campus of the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, which says the building is needed to raise funds to keep the seminary operating in New York City.
The seminary has already scaled back its proposal to build a cooperative apartment tower, but some neighbors say the proposed housing complex is still too large and too contemporary to inhabit Chelsea’s historic district.
The 19th-century seminary has fallen into disrepair, and church officials say that selling their development rights will help fund building restoration and maintenance. If the institution fails to raise tens of millions of dollars in short order, the institution will have to leave Chelsea, the seminary’s dean, Ward Ewing, told about 250 people who came to last night’s Community Board 4 meeting at the Hudson Guild – Fulton Center on Ninth Avenue.
In what seminary officials are calling an effort to compromise with Chelsea residents who have spoken out against the residential project since it was first unveiled more than a year ago, the institution revised its plan. The 15-story height of the tower is reduced from the original 17 stories. The new plans also call for using more masonry and less glass than originally proposed.
The battle mirrors a fight on the Upper East Side, where the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission recently asked developer Aby Rosen to revise his plans with architect Norman Foster for a modern residential tower atop a limestone building in that historic district.
In the Chelsea case, Community Board 4’s Committee on Preservation and Planning and its Landmarks Task Force will meet tomorrow to draft a resolution on the proposal. The community board will vote on it February 7.
The proposed structure would supplant a non-historic low-rise office building on Ninth Avenue between West 20th and West 21st streets. At 151 feet, it would be shorter than several nearby buildings outside the historic district, but still be more than twice the imposed height restrictions in the district.
At last night’s meeting, some opponents wore stickers that read, “75 Feet Is The Limit,” and clapped their hands and yelled “bravo” when community members took the stage to criticize the project.
The Brodsky Organization, a real estate developer, has agreed to pay the seminary $39 million — a deal contingent on the project’s approval — to develop the property. General Theological Seminary has arranged to repay the builder $24 million to erect a new five-story faculty and administrative office building. The remaining $15 million will cover some of the costs associated with restoration and repairs to the rest of the campus.
The seminary’s executive vice president for finance and operations, Maureen Burnley, said that if the project were approved, the institution would still need to raise $6 million.
“If we cannot use our development rights, we cannot continue to survive in Chelsea,” she said. “Some members of the community don’t seem to care if the seminary goes bankrupt or leaves — they categorically oppose anything above seven stories.”
In an interview with The Sun, a member of Chelsea’s Community Board 4, Robert Trentlyon, accused the seminary of “crying wolf,” saying there were other ways to raise the needed money. General Theological Seminary, one of 11 Episcopal seminaries nationwide, serves about 200 students. Some 120 seminarians and their families, in addition to 16 faculty members and administrators, reside on campus. Project opponents had suggested that the seminary sell its student housing to fund the repairs. Opponents also suggested that the seminary lease some of its street-level space to retailers.
Church officials said getting rid of student housing would erode its worship community, and that leasing to retailers would not bring in enough capital.
Mr. Trentlyon said that while he said he hopes the seminary will remain in the neighborhood, said there are other non-profit organizations that would be interested in purchasing and restoring the property without building a highrise. “I know for a fact that affordable housing developers would love to take over the whole block, developers who would preserve the buildings,” Mr. Trentlyon, who has lived in Chelsea for more than 40 years, said. “It’s not like if they left, they’d put an amusement park in there.”
Mr. Trentlyon, a member of Save Chelsea Historic District, said the seminary’s new proposal isn’t much of an improvement on the original, and would set a dangerous precedent for building towers in a historic district. “It still doesn’t fit in with the historic district,” he said. “You put something up that’s primarily glass and metal — and some brick — and its not contextual.”
A member of the Community Board’s Landmarks Task Force, Andrew Berman, called the proposed building a “glass monstrosity.” “I think this is part of a disturbing trend of groups trying to use exemptions to get around zoning,” said Mr. Berman, who is also the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.
A city zoning resolution can grant exemptions when doing so brings in money to preserve historic properties and the plan is appropriate for a historic district.
A Chelsea resident, Ejay Weiss, said he supports the project as a last resort to keep the seminary in the neighborhood. “Considering the buildings that are going up all over Chelsea, I think the seminary is doing the best to address the concerns of the community,” he said. “For the seminary, this seems like do-or-die.”