Zero Hour Nears for Solow’s Massive East Side Project
MORE Commercial Breaks
Seven years after Consolidated Edison agreed to sell its 9.2-acre site south of the United Nations, a showdown over the land’s future appears to be drawing to a close, as a vote on the issue is expected at a City Council committee meeting on Thursday.
Councilman Daniel Garodnick, who represents the area, has been in constant talks recently with representatives of site owner Sheldon Solow, the developer who wants to erect seven buildings on the land at heights much taller than Mr. Garodnick and the surrounding community want to see.
Starting far apart on a number of issues on the $4 billion project—in addition to height, Mr. Garodnick wanted to change the use of a commercial building to residential and adjust some of the open-space design—Messrs. Garodnick and Solow seem to be coming down to the wire on hammering out an agreement. A zoning committee missed a vote on Tuesday on the issue, though a spokesperson for Mr. Garodnick said the vote is now slated for Thursday.
The Council must approve any zoning change, though it can impose changes of its own to an application. Without changing the zoning, Mr. Solow would be unable to develop any of the six residential buildings he desires.
If the Council votes down Mr. Solow’s application, the measure would mark a major defeat for a private developer in the land-use approval process.
While many developers drop out of the land-use process before it reaches the Council (it also must receive approval from the City Planning Commission), few, if any, have been handed a “no” vote by the Council.
The site is also unique for another reason: the land is likely Manhattan’s largest undeveloped, privately owned tract, magnifying the significance a “no” vote would have.
Mr. Garodnick’s office declined to comment on the talks with Mr. Solow’s East River Realty Company.
A spokesman for Mr. Solow, Michael Gross, said in a statement that the developer hopes for an agreement. “Over the past several days, both the City Council and Mr. Solow have worked cooperatively together so that the development can come to fruition,” Mr. Gross said.
Mr. Solow has refused to listen to the area residents who know this project must go ahead but not at this immense size.
If he would build 45 story buildings instead of 65 story buildings we would acept that as a compomise I believe.
the shadows of his project will kill the parks of Tudor City which contains the smallest park area in all of Manhattan.
It will also overload our school system as well as the police,fire,sanitation,medical,and traffic systems of our area bringing an estimated 10,000 more people to the area.
[I submitted a comment hours ago and for some reason it was never posted on this forum... Here is a new comment in a similar vein.]
Mr Garodnick is acting selfishly and short-sightedly. In lending his ear to a coalition of overwhelmingly elderly residents who complain vaguely about "shadows" and "traffic" and oppose any change to THEIR neighborhood in a spasm of NIMBYism in the middle of Midtown, he is harming the long-term interests of the city.
New, Class A office space is in very short supply relative to the rest of the world in New York, and when the market turns there will be an especially high need for it. Solow's land on the East River is prime for an iconic, inspiring architectural statement that could help build the Class A office stock. What is especially rare in this city is that it is currently a barren plot.
Because of the NIMBYism of a few Midtown residents who ironically don't want to live near tall buildings and Garodnick's irresponsible patronage of them, New Yorkers will get a handful of Houston-style lackluster, 35-story glass-box condos in place of tomorrow's Rockefeller Center. And when developers need that office space, they'll continue gutting beautiful old buildings like the Newsweek Building, or find space in Soho for them.
Garodnick's partisan politics and lack of understanding of basic economics are squandering what could be an inspiring, beautiful project -- and forcing developers to eat away at more of the city's historic buildings and neighborhoods because they aren't allowed to build offices on empty plots in Midtown Manhattan. It sounds eerily similar to Naples, Italy, where NIMBYism has meant an implosion of sanitation services for over a month. Well done, Dan.