Designations include Lord & Taylor store and Eberhard Faber Pencil Co. complex. On October 30, 2007, Landmarks voted unanimously to designate seven individual buildings and one new historic district.

In Manhattan, Landmarks designated the Lord & Taylor flagship store in Midtown, the Manhattan House in the Upper East Side, and two federal-era rowhouses in the Lower East Side. The Lord & Taylor store dates back to 1914 and is an example of the Italian Renaissance Revival style. 4 CityLand 111 (Aug. 15, 2007). At the hearing, Landmarks Chair Robert B. Tierney referred to it as “another landmark hidden in plain sight.” Commissioner Margery Perlmutter enthusiastically supported designation of the Manhattan House, a white-brick apartment building on East 66th Street, stating that the International-Style building set the standard for contemporary architecture. Landmarks also designated two federal-era rowhouses at 511 and 513 Grand Street in the Lower East Side. (more…)

Bruce Schaller, DOT’s Deputy Commissioner for Planning and Sustainability, stands on the front-lines in the battle over the City’s congestion pricing plan. Hand-picked by Mayor Bloomberg a month after the City announced its intention to charge vehicles entering or leaving Manhattan below 86th Street, Mr. Schaller must present and implement a plan that satisfies City, state, and federal officials.

As a transportation consultant, he analyzed the impact of East River bridge tolls for the Straphanger Campaign, advised transit authorities in Chicago and Austin as well as NJ Transit and the LIRR. Mr. Schaller also served as a director of the Taxi & Limousine Commission and deputy director of the Transit Authority. He earned a reputation as a congestion pricing guru through a series of op-eds as well as an extensive report he drafted for the Manhattan Institute on the subject. (more…)

When asked to discuss current trends coming out of City Planning, David Karnovsky, General Counsel since 1999, offered to start the conversation with the matters sitting on his desk. From Broadway’s first air rights sale, to a new community board planning tool, to implementation of City Planning’s complex rezoning plans, the conversation revealed developing trends. Karnovsky, a Harvard Law School graduate, joined City Planning after serving as Special Counsel to the Deputy Mayor of Operations in the Giuliani administration and ten years with the Law Department working on the Charter revision, the Fulton Fish Market, and the adult use zoning text.

Legitimate Theater. With the August 2006 approval of the air rights transfer from Broadway’s Hirschfeld Theatre, the first since the 1998 code amendment creating the Broadway air rights plan, Karnovsky found himself contemplating “what is legitimate theater?” The ’98 text requires two things to complete the transfer: the Broadway building must remain a legitimate theater, and the theater owner must pay into a theater fund managed by a not-for-profit. With the Hirschfeld application underway, City Planning had no definition of legitimate theater, no established theater fund and no not-for-profit. (more…)

Redesign will feature a glass cube in the center of the plaza and a more accessible public space. On June 23, 2005, the City Council approved a text amendment to the Special Midtown District allowing renovations to the General Motors building plaza, located at 767 Fifth Avenue between East 59th and East 58th Streets. The text amendment was necessary to alter the street wall and retail continuity requirements, which require that larger developments be built at the street wall.

The most prominent feature in the plaza’s redesign will be the construction of a 32-foot transparent glass cube in the center of the plaza fronting Fifth Avenue. The cube will contain an elevator and a glass stairway and will serve as an entryway to a 25,000-square-foot underground retail space. Other renovations to the Fifth Avenue frontage include regrading the plaza to lower its overall height, and adding two reflecting pools, tables and chairs, trees and planters, and a wide stone ledge around its perimeter for added seating. Renovations will also take place on the Madison Avenue side of the building, which will lose its open area when the retail space is extended out to the property line. (more…)