BSA approves 7-story SoHo residential building

Fire-damaged building in historic SoHo to be restored and increased in height. Morty Lipkis, owner of 44 Mercer Street, a 2,480-square-foot lot in SoHo, proposed to replace a vacant fire-damaged building zoned for manufacturing with a 102-foot tall, seven-story mixed-use building. The proposed building would serve residential and retail uses with 12,549- square-feet of floor space, requiring variances for use and rear yard size. The site’s current two-story structure abuts a rear building and offers … <Read More>


Extra floor allowed for small Chelsea building

BSA allowed seventh floor despite community board objection. Steve Edelson, the owner of 209 West 20th Street, a 2,309-square-foot lot in Chelsea, proposed to replace a vacant one-story garage with a seven-story, 7,090-square-foot residential building with twelve units. The seventh floor would exceed the R8B district’s 60-foot height limitation and provide one additional unit setback atop the structure.

Edelson argued that the site’s shallow 81-foot depth coupled with the district’s 30-foot rear yard requirement made … <Read More>


Owner withdraws application for mixed-use building

Community members protest overdevelopment. D’Angelo Properties, Inc. owns a Carvel ice cream store at 64-01 Grand Avenue in Maspeth. It sought to demolish the one-story structure and, with a bulk variance, construct a 4-storybuilding with a new Carvel, other retail, and community facility space on the ground level, with 15 residential units above.

D’Angelo’s application to BSA represented that a bulk variance was necessary to create a productive use of the property. Conforming retail uses, … <Read More>


Three-story residential building OK’ed

BSA reduced building size, but included parking for each unit. The owner of 114 Walworth Street in an M1-1 district of Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, sought a variance to construct a six-story, 47-unit residential building with 24 parking spaces on a vacant 17,500-square-foot lot with 175 feet of frontage on Walworth Street. The site, formerly occupied by residential buildings, has remained vacant since the buildings were demolished.

The applicant argued that Walworth Street’s narrow 50-foot width … <Read More>


Owner withdraws application to convert gym

Owner sought to convert gymnasium into residential units. Christodora House Association, owner of a fifteen-story residential building located at 601-603 East 9th Street at Avenue B in an R7-2 district of the East Village, sought a variance in August 2004 to convert an unused, interior gymnasium into four residential units.

In its application to BSA, Christodora represented that conversion was necessary because the unique location of the gym within the residential building and its double- … <Read More>


134 residential units approved on waterfront

Nineteenth century warehouse to be converted into condominiums. CPP Development LLC, owner of 109-09 15th Avenue, a 100,338-square-foot waterfront lot in an M2-1 district in College Point, Queens, sought a variance to convert and enlarge the existing three-story, masonry warehouse into a six-story, 134-unit residential building. CPP proposed to construct two rear yard additions to the existing 1856 warehouse, which was formerly occupied by the Chilton Paint Company, and remodel the first floor of the … <Read More>