Landmarks approved a revised proposal for the Leonard Street site despite community opposition. On July 17, 2012, Landmarks approved developer Steven Schnall’s revised proposal to replace two one-story garages at 15 Leonard Street in the Tribeca West Historic District with a residential building. The nine-story, 108-foot building would rise seven stories at the streetwall, with a set-back, two-story penthouse. In February 2008, Landmarks approved a different plan to replace the garages with a seven-story building, but the project stalled and the property was sold.
At the proposal’s public hearing in May 2012, Wayne Turett, of Turett Collaborative Architects, presented Schnall’s plan. The building would have a 75-foot-wide, one-story base, with the 60-foot-wide upper floors aligned to the eastern lot line. This would create a 15-foot shaft to provide access to light and air to a neighboring building to the west as required by a property easement. The building’s front facade would be framed in painted metal and feature an asymmetrical, staggered pattern of translucent channel glass with loft sized windows. The penthouse would be clad in a lighter shade of painted metal. The building’s sidewalls would be clad in gray brick. Four garage entrances, made of a mixture of opaque and translucent glass panels, would be built at the ground level, with a central recessed pedestrian entrance in the middle. A steel-and-glass (read more…)