Architect’s rendering of the site as it appears now (left), and of the site with the planned development (right). Image credit: LPC

Plan that will replace heavily altered three-story 1894 structure close to being approved; Commissioners asked to see some revisions. On July 19, 2016, Landmarks considered a proposal to redevelop a lot at 466 Columbus Avenue in the Upper West Side/Central Park West Historic District.  The site is occupied by a commercial building constructed in 1894. The building was altered in 1961, and a third story added. Further alterations designed by Gruzen Samton were approved by Landmarks in 2006. The applicants proposed to demolish the existing building and erect a new residential structure with a commercial base. The Roe Corporation owns the site and will be the developers.

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Court agreed DHS met their burden under the Fair Share Criteria.  In 2012 the Department of Homeless Services opened Freedom House, a 200-family homeless shelter at 316-330 West 95th Street in Manhattan’s Upper West Side on an emergency contract.  When the emergency contract expired, then-Comptroller John C. Liu declined to register the permanent contract.  A community group, Neighborhood In The Nineties, filed an Article 78 petition to enjoin the Comptroller from registering the contract.  Neighborhood argued their area, located in Manhattan Community Board 7, was over-saturated with support housing and to add more would violate the Fair Share Criteria.

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Fredrick Becker testifies before the Board of Standards and Appeals. Image credit: BSA

Variance was opposed by local community board, neighborhood groups.  On July 14, 2015 the Board of Standards and Appeals voted to grant a variance to the applicant, Manhattan Country School, for enlarging its new building.  The school currently occupies a five-story townhouse on 7 East 96th Street in Manhattan’s Upper East Side and intends to relocate to a four-story building with three mezzanines on 150 West 85th Street in the Upper West Side.  The renovation would divide the subject building’s double-height interior spaces, create a cutout for an interior courtyard, expand the sixth floor, construct a penthouse, and extend the rear yard egress stair.

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Rendering of Lucerne-Adjacent Development located at 203 West 79th Street, Manhattan. Image credit: Morris Adjmi/Curbed.

Consensus by Commissioners that proposed sixteen-story building is too tall for site currently hosting four-story structure.  On July 22, 2014, the Landmarks Preservation Commission considered a project at 203 West 79th Street in the Upper West Side/Central Park West Historic District.  The proposal called for the demolition of the existing building at the site, where four 19th-century rowhouses were combined into one building with a contemporary facade in the 1970s.  The new building would rise to 14 stories at the streetwall, matching the height of the abutting Lucerne Hotel, with two additional set back stories, plus an elevator bulkhead. (read more…)

BSA granted a two-year special permit to allow CrossFit NYC to operate in the cellar level of an existing 31-story mixed residential and commercial building. The building, located on the corner of Columbus Avenue and West 67th Street, Manhattan, is partially within a C4-7 zoning district and partially within an R8 zoning district. Neither zoning districts permit the use of physical culture establishments. The building owner and CrossFit NYC, the lessee, appealed to Board of Standards and Appeals for a special permit to allow the development of their gym in the cellar of the building. CrossFit NYC planned to use the gym to hold classes, instruction and programs for physical improvement, body building, weight reduction, and aerobics. (read more…)

West End-Collegiate HD Extension map. Image Credit: LPC.

Commissioners voted unanimously to approve district two years after initial hearing, though split on the inclusion of modern apartment complex. On June 25, 2013, the Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to approve an extension to the West End-Collegiate Historic District, encompassing 200 buildings. The extension more than doubles the size of the previously designated district, and lies to the north and to the south of the original district, between 70th and 79th Streets, and Riverside Drive and Broadway. The district is primarily residential, characterized by rowhouses and apartment buildings built in the period between the 1880s and the 1930s.

The first wave of development in the area saw the construction of single-family rowhouses, constructed in brownstone, limestone, and brick in a variety of architectural styles, including Beaux-Arts, Queen Anne, Renaissance Revival, and Romanesque Revival. In the 1890s, as apartment living lost its stigma among the upper class, the neighborhood saw the construction of several “French flats” or small, multi-family dwellings. Through the turn of the century to the turn of the 1930s, elevator apartment buildings dominated new construction.

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