Developer plans two hotels with 354 rooms on platform above Amtrak. SCW West LLC applied for a special permit to allow development of two hotels on a platform to be built over two active, below-grade Amtrak rail lines and a vacant through-lot located west of 10th Avenue in Manhattan. The special permit sought to include the platform’s area into the calculation of lot area. SCW proposed a 12-story, 118-foot tall, 203-room hotel on West 43rd Street and a 9-story, 90-foot tall, 151-room hotel on West 44th Street. The 20,000-square-foot site lies partially within a residential zone and the Special Clinton District preservation area, but may be developed entirely for hotel use since over half of it is within, and the remainder lies adjacent to, a manufacturing zone.

At a September 13, 2006 public hearing, no speakers appeared in opposition; however, Community Board 4 voted against the special permit, noting that the design was too commercial and that floor area should be shifted from the 12-story hotel to the 9-story hotel, allowing both buildings to conform to neighborhood character. The board opposed the hotels’ plans to accept tour bus bookings and the inclusion of parking, arguing that it would create congestion. Anthony Borelli, speaking for Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, spoke in favor of the proposal and commended SCW for its willingness to work with the community.

The Commission approved, commenting that the hotels would not impede use of the rail line and Clinton’s streets could accommodate the project’s traffic, especially since neither hotel would include banquet halls or meeting facilities. Amtrak must still approve the platform’s structural design and its ventilation system.

ULURP Process
Lead Agency: DCP,Con.Neg.Dec.
Comm.Bd.: MN 4,Den’d, 32-0-1
Boro. President: App’d

CPC: 505-513 West 43rd Street (C 060334 ZSM – special permit) (Oct. 11, 2006). CITYADMIN

Council Member Lanza and City Planning push forward Prince’s Bay down-zoning. On October 11, 2006, the Planning Commission approved a proposal to down-zone an 172-acre portion of Prince’s Bay, Staten Island and to adopt text amendments to restrict future development on an additional 830 acres. Council Member Andrew Lanza withdrew his original rezoning application in 2005 when opposition called it too restrictive and claimed it would interfere with a potential senior housing development on the Mt. Loretto site, a large tract of land owned by the Archdiocese of New York.

A majority of the 172-acre area to be down-zoned retains the original 1961 R3-2 zoning, which allows multi-family buildings as well as detached and semi-detached homes. The new proposal seeks to restrict future development to one and two-family detached homes on 40-foot lots (R3X). The second zoning change would impact the 22- acre former Camp St. Edwards site, currently under development. The proposal would match the current construction, changing the zoning to limit development to single-family homes with a minimum of 5,700- square-foot lots (R3X to R1-2).

Site includes former United States Navy base. On October 25, 2006, the City Council approved the comprehensive redevelopment plan for Staten Island’s Homeport, the 35-acre former United States Navy base located in Stapleton and owned by the City since 1995.

City Planning and the New York City Economic Development Corporation proposed five linked applications, including zoning map and text amendments, to achieve the plan recommended by Mayor Bloomberg’s Task Force on Homeport Redevelopment, a group of elected officials, community representatives, business owners, and residents formed in 2003 to develop a plan for the area’s redevelopment. The Task Force envisioned a waterfront esplanade running the length of the site and a mix of uses, including residential units, ground-floor retail, a sports complex, farmers market and a large economic generator, such as a movie studio or office complex. The final proposal included the 35-acre Homeport site and 18 mostly privately-owned lots west of Front Street, the city street forming the edge of Stapleton.

In the first months of 2006, Council Member Tony Avella, Chair of the Subcommittee on Zoning & Franchises, introduced proposed legislation to change the make up of BSA, require NYPD arrests for any illegal demolition, and curb the illegal construction that residents say is driven by a rush to beat a down-zoning. CityLand asked Avella about his proposed land use initiatives and his career.

Public Service. When asked about land use issues within his 20-year career in politics, Avella quickly corrects the question, substituting “public service” for “politics.” After graduating from Hunter College CUNY in Manhattan, Avella started jobs in government, serving as aides to Council Speaker Peter Vallone, Sr. and Mayor Koch, and chief of staff for State Senators Toby and Leonard Stavinsky. Avella credits his volunteer work on community organizations and as Chair of Queens Community Board 7’s Land Use and Transportation Committees as providing a “unique perspective” to his current role. Explaining that he worked on the Koch administration’s Zoning Resolution revisions; Avella added that he recognized early on that abuses to the zoning code had a significant impact on quality of life issues.

Manhattan’s first green roof, installed in 1998, sits on top of the 1902 Georgian townhouse at 122 East 38th Street in Murray Hill, the home of Earth Pledge, a New York based nonprofit that promotes green building technologies. Founded by Theodore Kheel to support the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio, Earth Pledge now sponsors the Greening Gotham program, an initiative to get New York City developers, building owners, and government officials behind green roof installation. Leslie Hoffman, Earth Pledge’s Executive Director, spoke with CityLand about the city’s standing, its policy and turning affordable housing green.

Why Green. Hoffman began as a minimum wage carpenter in Maine, became a general contractor and moved on to design green building projects. She holds a degree in Architecture and Design from Colorado College, has co-authored green technology books and even runs an organic coffee farm. Hoffman explained that green roofs are fundamentally lightweight, engineered systems of insulation, drainage, soil, and vegetation constructed on top of a traditional roof. It’s an “an elegant solution to common urban problems,” Hoffman declared, listing green roofs’ ability to boost insulation, cool buildings, reduce energy use by 10 to 30 percent, lower area air temperature, absorb 80 percent of storm water lessening runoff, and protect the roof from weather cycles and UV rays. Installation adds about $10 per square foot, but Hoffman points out that a green roof can last for 50 years where traditional roofs need replacement after only 15. The Greening Gotham program envisions a network of green roofs stretching across the city’s skyline, which advocates and researchers believe could diminish the “urban heat island effect,” a term used to describe the fact that the city is 3 to 6 degrees hotter on summer days than its surrounding suburbs.

Community claimed the FEIS flawed, the project was a nuisance and a Bronx facility would be more economical. In June 2005, Sanitation obtained final City approval for construction of a marine transfer station on the site of an inactive waste transfer station at East 91st Street and the East River. The approval was part of a citywide proposal to make each borough responsible for the export of its own waste. Sanitation’s proposal to reactivate the site, which it closed in 1999, faced severe opposition and the City Council voted it down, forcing Mayor Bloomberg to veto the denial. 2 CityLand 86 (July 15, 2005); 2 CityLand 52 (May 15, 2006).

Local residents, business owners and ACORN, a national community organization, challenged the City’s approval, alleging that the City illegally segmented the environmental review by not studying impacts on final freight destinations, failed to consider the transfer station’s impacts when operating at maximum capacity within the FEIS, and clashed with the City’s own policies to create a residential district around East 91st Street. The residents also alleged that the marine transfer station’s noise, odor and air pollution impacts would create a public and private nuisance. The residents argued that, if the City relaxed its policy of making each borough self-reliant, it would be more economical to use an existing truck-to-rail waste transfer station operated by a private company in the Bronx.