Amended text needed for 85-unit apartment building, 150-space garage to be built on SoHo parking lot. United American Land, LLC applied for a text amendment and three special permits to allow a 137,000-square-foot, mixed-use development on a lot at 311 West Broadway within Manhattan’s SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District. The 28,200-square-foot site currently contains a 206-space parking lot and a two-story building.

Before applying to City Planning, United sought Landmarks approval. Landmarks suggested that United eliminate one penthouse completely from the design and setback a second proposed penthouse to avoid a “wedding cake” appearance, 2 CityLand 43 (April 15, 2005), so United redesigned the building to obtain the same amount of floor area. United’s second proposal sought to build 85 residential units in two wings separated by a courtyard and a 150-space public parking garage below ground. The nine-story wing on West Broadway would include local retail and service shops on the ground floor with residential units above. The eight-story wing on Wooster Street would be purely residential. The new design, approved by Landmarks, required a text amendment. (read more…)

Eighty residential units, ground-floor retail and parking garage to replace SoHo parking lot. The developer Albert Laboz sought Landmarks approval for the construction of a nine-story, 110 ft. metal and glass building at 311 West Broadway in the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District on a through-block lot with frontage on both Wooster Street and West Broadway. The building, designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects to replace the existing at-grade parking lot, included eight stories along the West Broadway streetwall with a single-story glass setback, a central courtyard, and seven stories along the Wooster Street streetwall with a single-story glass setback. Gwathmey Siegel had modified its original proposal, which included several layers of setbacks at the roof. The building would include eighty, 1,200 square-foot residential units, street-level retail on West Broadway and a 150-space parking garage, which would compensate for the parking lost with the building’s development.

Landmarks approved, finding that the overall massing of the building related to the buildings along West Broadway and Wooster Street, that the glass material on the one-story setback blended into the surroundings, and that the metal and glass modernist design recalled the evolution of the materials used in the historic district.

The development requires a special permit from the Planning Commission to allow residential use on the ground floor along Wooster Street. Laboz’s application for a special permit is pending with the Planning Department.

LPC: 311 West Broadway (COFA# 05-5520) (February 16, 2005) (Howard Zipser, Stadtmauer Bailkin Biggins, LLC; Albert Laboz, United American Land Co.; Robert Siegel, Gwathmey Siegel & Assoc. Architects). CITYADMIN