Luxury apartments approved once developer reduced the height and size. Red Brick Canal LLC sought approval to construct an 11-story, 25,025-square-foot residential and commercial building at 482 Greenwich Street, a lot with frontage along Greenwich and Canal Streets at the border of Tribeca and SoHo in Manhattan. The project site, a 3,136-square-foot, trapezoidshaped lot located in a commercial zone (C6-2A), currently contains an unused gas station which will be demolished. The City had rezoned the lot from manufacturing (M1-6) in 2003 as part of the Hudson Square rezoning.

Red Brick’s project failed to comply with floor area, height, yard, lot coverage, curb cut and garage size requirements, necessitating variances. Red Brick, represented by Deirdre Carson, argued that the lot’s small size, its unconventional shape, its location within a flood plain, and the need to remediate the soil made an as-of-right project infeasible. Red Brick added that, due to the odd shape of the lot, the units would have greater wall space than floor space, which would diminish the units’ value. (read more…)