Paul Selver testifies before the Board of Standards and Appeals. Image credit: BSA

BSA found no reasonable return with a conforming use of the property.  On December 9, 2014 the Board of Standards and Appeals voted to grant the applicant, 290 Dyckman Properties, LLC, three waivers to allow conversion of a former manufacturing building into a self-storage facility.  The building is located at 290 Dyckman Street in Inwood, Manhattan, at the corner of Dyckman Street and Henshaw Street.  The building is two stories covering a lot area of 17,287 square feet, with one hundred feet of frontage along Dyckman Street and one hundred sixty-nine feet of frontage along Henshaw Street.  The proposal would convert the building to a self-storage facility with 34,529 square feet of floor area and 760 storage units.

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Naming Carl Weisbrod CPC Chair was only one of many major land-use appointments by Mayor De Blasio. Image Credit: Mayor’s Office.

Mayor de Blasio has re-structured the City’s land use administrative hierarchy to further his affordable housing agenda. On July 22, 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio nominated Margery Perlmutter to serve as Chair of the Board of Standards and Appeals. This was the Mayor’s latest appointment  to City land-use positions, all of which will bear heavily on the Mayor’s expansive affordable housing agenda, a ten-year plan designed to preserve some 200,000 units of affordable housing. (read more…)

Extension encompasses 135 properties bordering the east and west sides of the original historic district. On May 11, 2010, Landmarks voted to designate the SoHo-Cast Iron District Extension. The extension includes 135 properties and consists of two subsections bordering the eastern and western sides of the original 1973 SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District. The eastern subsection includes portions of Crosby and Centre Streets between Houston and Canal Streets, and the western subsection includes buildings on the west side of West Broadway.

The area is characterized by store and loft buildings that were built after the Civil War and helped transform the residential neighborhood to an active commercial zone in the late nineteenth century. Architectural styles displayed in the district include Second Empire, Renaissance Revival, and Italianate. (read more…)