Results tagged “development”

Yesterday we posted an old photo of a lone brownstone located somewhere in the East 60s, which in 1959 was about to be demolished for a future development. So where was the brownstone when it met its end? Our commenters figured it out... good job! The building was at 215 East 68th Street.

Congressman Fiorello LaGuardia once declared: "No greater monument to the life and activity of the Republic can be imagined than Governors Island as a national airport." Today the Daily News looks back at one of the ideas for the island that never quite came to be...

Though the real estate boom is over in Williamsburg, it's apparently still roaring in Greenpoint. A first time developer and former attorney to Donald Trump revealed his plan this week to construct a 47-story high rise on the waterfront that would tower over nearby North Brooklyn skyscrapers like the Edge and Northside Piers by 17 floors.

Today the City Planning Commission approved a controversial plan to turn the Kingsbridge Armory, a massive red-brick castle in the Bronx, into a mall that will include a large department store, shops and a movie theater. Outspoken opponents of the $310 million project include Bronx borough president Rubén Díaz Jr., who insists the developer should not get the green light unless future mall employees are guaranteed a living wage: "These jobs are not going to allow Bronx families to get themselves out of poverty." It's now up to the City Council to vote on the project.

The empty lot next to Museum of Modern Art on West 53rd Street will be a filled with a building one day, that's just a fact. How high will that building be? That's more debatable. After much noise was made about the proposed 1,250 feet/85 story Hines Tower (which some dubbed the MoMA monster) , the NYC Planning Commission voted yesterday to cut 200 feet off of the Jean Nouvel design; because another tall building in this city would just be overkill? Who knows. But the NY Times sheds some light on the thought process, noting that "Edith Hsu-Chen, the director of the Manhattan office of the Department of City Planning said that although the overall design of the building is 'exemplary,' the commission is concerned about its effect on the skyline, and does not feel that the top of the tower merits being in the zone of the Empire State Building’s iconic spire.”

In a highly contentious July decision, Brooklyn's Community Board 1 voted to convert a 31-acre area zoned for manufacturing on the border of Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant into 1,895 low-rise apartments—905 of which would charge below-market rate rents. Opponents say the buildings would be too small and accuse the city of awarding housing contracts to non-profits tied to influential Assemblyman Vito Lopez—the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and the Bushwick Ridgewood Senior Citizens Council—without putting the sites up for bid.

Back in July, following many years of debate over its future, some new plans for Pier 57 were unveiled.

Get ready to rumble: State Senator Bill Perkins (D-Harlem) says that his Senate committee, the Committee on Corporations, will hold a public meeting discuss development—or, rather, the slow pace of development—at the World Trade Center site. He told NY1, "We are literally still at ground zero when it comes to the monument and development of that site. It's a site that has local, national and international importance and it's important that we try to play a role in moving it along."

That empty lot next to MoMA on West 53rd Street isn't exactly aesthetically pleasing (unless there are prefab houses in it!), but would an 85 story tower be any better? Many fear that could be a reality, and are battling against the proposed development.

A number of Park Slope residents have been up in arms over a developer's plans to build three townhouses in addition to a previously announced project. Brownstoner reported that owner Ashwin Verma's admission that he's "no Donald Trump" and blaming "his inexperience for not knowing there was a Con Ed substation on 580 Carroll's site" sent residents at a rally against his project into a frenzy. Various neighbors' homes have been damaged by the construction work—one said, "My foundation was cracked. My retaining wall was cracked," while another complained about the aesthetics of the future building, telling the Daily News the apartment building by noted architect Enrique Norten "is actually ugly, and what it's going to look like doesn't belong here. It belongs in New Jersey." In the meantime, the Board of Standards and Appeals has delayed its decision on whether to give Verma a variance to build the additional structures.

A new rendering by the Municipal Art Society suggests that Bruce Ratner's $4.9 billion plan to build a Nets basketball arena and mixed-use towers in Brooklyn is a far cry from what was originally proposed, duh. No official renderings of the 22-acre site have been provided to the public since Ratner revealed that starchitect Frank Gehry's ambitious arena designs had been scrapped to cut costs, so MAS has stepped in to show what the area will look like in the coming years.

Hey, guess what? Over a year after missing the July 1, 2008 deadline to turn over the World Trade Center site to developer Larry Silverstein, now the Port Authority says the site will be ready! The Daily News reports, "Agency brass say that within the next two months, they'll turn over 'construction-ready land' to the developer - and stop paying him $300,000-a-day in late fees they've paid for more than a year. The handover of the World Trade Center parcel will start the clock ticking on a contractual deal that requires Silverstein to construct the Church St. buildings within five years - or else."

In the latest round of World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein vs. World Trade Center owner Port Authority, Reuters reports that the PA has "rejected the use of more public money to guarantee financing for two private office towers" at Ground Zero. Apparently Silverstein only wants to put $75 million in equity into the two towers, which are estimated to cost $4.2 billion. The PA released the letter it sent Silverstein, which includes, "You demand that the public take on the risk that you and the private sector will not take. It is unrealistic of Silverstein Properties to demand this extraordinary level of public subsidy, and it is not going to happen." Silverstein had previously rejected the PA's demand that he raised $625 million towards the project. The slow pace of progress—not to mention rising costs—have raised suggestions that some buildings be scrapped or drastically downsized and Silverstein has threatened to take the matter into arbitration, which could delay construction even more.

On Tuesday night, Brooklyn's Community Board 1 voted 23-12 to convert a 31-acre area zoned for manufacturing on the border of Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant into 1,895 low-rise apartments. But the highly controversial plan for the so-called Broadway Triangle still faces bitter opposition from community groups who say they were cut out of the planning process. Opponents complain that the city awarded housing contracts to non-profits tied to influential Assemblyman Vito Lopez—the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and the Bushwick Ridgewood Senior Citizens Council—without putting the sites up for bid. Marty Needelman, a Broadway Triangle Community Coalition lawyer, says the project excludes Hispanic and African-American groups, and his group will file a lawsuit accusing the city of violating anti-discrimination laws. Opponents actually want the buildings to be much taller than the planned eight stories; Needelman says the height cap is a sop to the area's Orthodox Jewish families, who can't use elevators on the Sabbath. He tells the Daily News, "The people who voted yes sold their soul to a corrupt deal." For more on the controversy, Brooklyn Paper takes an in-depth look.

While Williamsburg sits stagnant in a confused state of purgatory, the abandoned and stalled luxury condos have become a haven for one group: the gutter punks. The Daily News gives the group a two-story treatment today, saying the "heroin-addict hobos from around the country are overrunning" the area. And as with every other newcomer to the Brooklyn neighborhood, they're hated by those who came before them.

This week NY Mag takes a harrowing look at the Williamsburg condo implosion—harrowing, that is, if you're a developer who's losing your shirt because nobody's buying the luxury units you started building before the economic collapse. The in-depth article highlights how the city's requirement that all new buildings, no matter how small, devote 20 percent of their units to affordable housing, backfired.

Despite protest from Coney Island residents who say they need more affordable housing, the City Planning Commission voted 12-0 today to approve a controversial rezoning plan for the area. The proposal would rezone Coney Island to encourage the development of towers up to 27 stories tall, expand retail spaces, add 4,500 new housing units (800 of which would be affordable units), and create a new 27-acre indoor-outdoor amusement and entertainment district.

Will the battle for Coney Island ever end? The NY Post reports on the latest between developer Joe Sitt (current owner of the land) and Mayor Bloomberg (wannabe owner of the land). Sitt has finally spoken publicly, saying "that his 10½ acres of beachfront property is no longer for sale and that he, not the city, should be rebuilding the rundown seaside area," adding emphatically, "We don't want to sell, we want to build." The city doesn't think Sitt is qualified, preferring to rezone and develop the 47 acres itself, but Sitt claims his $92 million investment now holds a pricetag closer to $150 million, about $45 million off from what the city offered earlier this year. Sitt's been sitting on the land for about three years now, and claims "the city's overall rezoning plan is so flawed that it makes it unlikely for either his redevelopment proposal or the city's to succeed"—the plan is being voted on by the city Planning Board later this month. Can't we all just agree on something that will make this a reality?

Just a week after announcing it was ditching plans for the Brooklyn Nets Arena from world-renowned architect Frank Gehry and instead taking a more pedestrian and less expensive approach, developer Forest City Ratner has confirmed to the NY Times that Gehry will no longer be involved with any part of the Atlantic Yards. Joe DePlasco, spokesman for Bruce Ratner, said, "We do not anticipate that Mr. Gehry will be designing any of the individual buildings." Why? Because Gehry's designs, though dazzling in 2005, are expensive (which is exactly what Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff was worried about last year!).

Now that Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner has kicked renowned architect Frank Gehry's design for the (potential) future home of the Brooklyn Nets aside for a less expensive design by way of Kansas firm Ellerbe Becket, it's time for politicians to weigh in. Mayor Bloomberg said he understood the economic realities that Ratner was facing; the Post reports that he said on his radio show, "I think Ratner came to the conclusion, in this day and age, you just cannot finance something as complex to build. There's no such thing as a straight wall with Frank. Frank is into curves."

Savor those views! The Brooklyn Paper reports that yesterday "a key City Council committee backed—by a surprisingly wide margin—DUMBO developer Jed Walentas’s controversial bid to build a 17-story tower next to the Brooklyn Bridge, hours after Speaker Christine Quinn reportedly had given her OK." The land-use committee voted 17-4 in support of the Dock Street Development, saying it's in the best interest of the community. While it will include affordable housing and a middle school, some suspicions arose recently, with the release of an internal email, about whether or not another site was ever considered. Queens lawmaker Tony Avella is one of the many opponents who spoke out against the bridge-blocking development, saying, “People are going to go by and say, ‘Who the heck allowed this building to get built?’” And following the vote, DUMBO's Neighborhood Alliance president, Gus Sheha, declared, “It’s clear that this committee today sold the Brooklyn Bridge.” Sigh. The full council will vote next week, and here's a look at the future.

State Senators held a public hearing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn on Friday to get a sense of where things stand for developer Bruce Ratner's $4.2 billion dollar dream of building a Nets arena and mixed-use towers on a 22-acre site that includes part of the MTA railyards. But it was difficult to get a sense of just how FUBAR the controversial project actually is, in part because the meeting was packed with hundreds of jeering construction workers wearing hard hats and "Atlantic Yards Now" buttons. At one point State Senator Bill Perkins futilely begged for silence, telling the crowd, "I think if we could eliminate some of the whistling and shouting..." But he was drowned out by cries of "Go, home Bill!"

After months of speculation, the MTA announced that the Long Island Rail Road improvements proposed at the Atlantic Yards development will be less grand than planned. Instead of nine rails, there will be seven, and the MTA is also expecting less money from developer Bruce Ratner. The Post reports that the MTA "allowed Ratner to renegotiate because the national credit crunch was making it difficult to finance the 22-acre plan to build an NBA arena and 16 office and residential towers in Prospect Heights." To refresh your memory, back in 2005, Ratner won the MTA's land—called the Vanderbilt Rail Yard—after bidding $100 million, which was $50 million less than a rival bid (the land is appraised at over $200 million). It's unclear how much Ratner will end up paying the MTA (rumor is $50 million!); Atlantic Yards Report has details of the State Senate meeting where MTA interim CEO Helena Williams spoke. And Ratner, who hopes to break ground later this year, is downsizing other parts of his plan.

Last week, the players with stakes in Ground Zero development—the Port Authority, developer Larry Silverstein, Mayor Bloomberg, NY Governor Paterson, NJ Governor Corzine, Assembly Speaker Silver among them—met at Gracie Mansion to discuss the stalemate (and bickering) over the World Trade Center rebuilding progress. What they agreed on was, the Post reported, "to order their aides to come up with an agreement by the next summit on June 11." Um, great. The NY Times had an editorial yesterday about the stalemate, declaring that instead of helping Silverstein build (aka fund) two towers, "The authority should instead be focusing on what it has already committed to: building the substructure for the 16-acre site, the Calatrava PATH terminal and the tallest tower. The authority’s designers have also come up with an interim proposal to build multistory bases for some of Mr. Silverstein’s towers. Those could house retail shops until the market needs more skyscrapers."

Back in March, the economy forced developer Bruce Ratner to scale back plans for a 76-story Frank Gehry-designed building called Beekman Tower to just a 38- (or 40-) story structure. Now, the NY Times reports that a deal between Ratner's company and labor unions will help save "as much as 20 percent on labor costs" and allow construction to resume at Beekman Tower. Forest City Ratner executive MaryAnne Gilmartin said, "We’re thrilled to be going back to work. It’s a great project and a great building." Beekman Tower, which will be the tallest residential building in the city at 867 feet, was originally planned as a condominium, but FCR made it a rental (given the economy). Gilmartin also said, The savings we achieved go a long way toward insulating the project from any dip in rents or any protracted period of time required to lease up the building. We’re really bullish on this building."

As embattled developer Bruce Ratner—who just won't let go of his $4.2 billion dream to build a Nets basketball arena, office towers and thousands of apartments in Prospect Heights— continues to stagger around like a zombie who refuses to believe he's dead, the project's celebrated architect Frank Gehry is becoming increasingly uninvolved.

The Dock Street drama continues, and this time it's not about the view. Last night at a 5-hour City Council hearing "politicians focused on charges that the School Construction Authority improperly colluded with the project’s developer," the Brooklyn Paper reports. Apparently there were some questionable internal emails leading some to believe the city's school building agency didn't consider other sites. The paper says the SCA Vice President Ross Holden sent out an email that indicated he was only humoring Dock Street opponent David Yassky, leading the Councilman to believe he was would look at other potential sites for the middle school. The email read, “Now I know that if we don’t do the Walentas project that we don’t really want to do anything else over there, but I think we have to follow up on this just so we can say that the Walentas project is such a good deal." Meanwhile, the agency was unable to answer questions about how much money they would actually save by moving in to the Dock Street development. Despite having many local and celebrity opponents, like Helen Hunt, Gary Sinise, and Ken Burns, Jed Walentas told the paper he still believes his project will pass a full Council vote. To be continued...

After a state appellate court rejected a lawsuit stopping his Atlantic Yards project, developer Bruce Ratner says that ground will be broken sometime this year (maybe this summer, maybe this fall). He told the NY Times, "I’m honestly overjoyed. This is a weight off my back." A group of property owners in the footprint of the massive project had claimed eminent domain was improperly used to obtain land; the appellate court unanimously rejected the challenge, finding, "It cannot be said that the public benefits which the Atlantic Yards project is expected to yield are incidental or pretextual in comparison to the benefit that will be bestowed upon the project’s private developer." Still, the opponents, who believe Ratner will profit much more than the public will benefit (and who have helped stall the plans for two years), vow to take their case to the Court of Appeals. The Daily News notes, "The decision allows Ratner to qualify for tax-free bonds to build the arena and the go-ahead to purchase the MTA-owned rail yard on which it will be built."

The economic crisis has left plans for revitalizing Harlem's 125th Street in limbo at best. According to the Post, "At least 14 projects along 10 blocks of 125th Street have been delayed, mothballed, killed or downgraded as a much-heralded development boom fails to materialize on uptown's iconic main street... Dozens of often bitter mom-and-pop businesses -- including neighborhood staples like Bobby's Happy House, M&G Diner and Manna's Soul Food -- were booted for high-rises that never rose." The city offered ambitious plans for the area, requiring the neighborhood to be rezoned (with divided sentiment). Last December, a proposed Major League Baseball-anchored 21-story tower was scrapped, and lawsuits are holding up other projects. One business owner told the Post, "This is the grand letdown," and blamed the city for relying on big business and not local ones, "All they know is corporate America, and corporate America is kaput now. It's us little guys that got kicked out, that are unique and specialized, that bring people to New York."

The Daily News has been investigating former Bronx Borough President and new director of White House urban policy Adolfo Carrion Jr.'s dealings with developers lately. Today, the News wonders whether there's a connection between the renovation work architect Hugo Subotovsky did on Carrion's City Island home and Carrion's approval of a huge taxpayer-subsidized development—designed by Subotovsky— in the Bronx. At the time of his home renovation (basically installing a balcony onto the second floor), the News reports, "Carrión had at least $15,000 in credit card debt, was paying off two mortgages worth more than $500,000 and had $5,000 in revolving credit from Chase bank." Carrion hasn't revealed how much the renovation cost and declined to show the News copies of the checks used to pay for the work, leading the News to remind us, if it was an unreported gift, it "could be seen as Carrión using his position to benefit himself financially, a violation of the law. It could also be unreported income."