Two-building project would create 217 units of affordable housing. On February 16, 2011, the City Planning Commission approved a proposal by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to allow Phipps Houses to develop a 217-unit mixed-use affordable housing project in the Melrose section of the Bronx. The site comprises ten lots on a block generally bounded by East 163rd Street to the north, East 162nd Street to … <Read More>
Community board wanted developer to exclude bars from mixed-income housing project. On February 16, 2011, the City Planning Commission approved Bruce Terzano’s plan to redevelop the southeast corner of a block bounded by South 2nd and South 3rd Streets and Kent and Wythe Avenues in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The proposal included constructing a six-story building with 61 market-rate apartments and ground floor commercial space, and a smaller six-story building with eighteen affordable apartments.
To facilitate the … <Read More>
BSA approval needed before converting landmarked Times Square office building to a hotel. In September 2010, Highgate Holdings LLP sought an alteration permit to convert the former Knickerbocker Hotel at 1466 Broadway in Times Square to a 395-room hotel. The Knickerbocker Hotel, originally owned by John Jacob Astor IV, operated from 1906 until the prohibition era, when it was converted to office space. In 1979, BSA approved a plan to convert the Knickerbocker into a … <Read More>
Permissible uses for vacant two-story building on Crosby Street expanded to include restaurant and bar. The owner of a vacant two-story building at 54 Crosby Street in SoHo applied to BSA for a use variance to permit a bar or restaurant on the building’s ground floor. The 4,535 sq.ft. building sits on a lot twenty feet wide and is built to less than half of the available floor area. The building was formerly used as … <Read More>
Rule amendment would expand staff-level approval authority for some types of window and sign alterations. On March 1, 2011, Landmarks held a public hearing on proposed amendments to the rules pertaining to construction work on properties under Landmarks’ jurisdiction. Landmarks proposed the changes to streamline the application review process, codify current practices and policies, and address inconsistencies. Chair Robert B. Tierney stated that the proposal was partially intended to remove from the calendar issues that … <Read More>
First- and second-floor interiors of four-story Manufacturers Trust Company Building designated. On February 15, 2011, Landmarks designated, as an interior landmark, the first two floors of the Manufacturers Trust Company Building at 510 Fifth Avenue in Midtown, Manhattan. Landmarks designated the former bank building’s fourstory glass and aluminum exterior as an individual City landmark in 1997. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed the Modernist structure, which opened as a bank in 1954, … <Read More>