Following last Wednesday’s Community Board hearing, we now know a lot more about the proposed super-tall tower the city wants to build just north of the Whitney. It would indeed be around 60 stories tall (and about 600 feet high, if not higher). That’s around 3.5 times as tall as the existing Whitney building, and 2.5 times the height of the Standard Hotel. Village Preservation has posted an excellent summary of the hearing; you can find it here.
Video of the entire hearing can be viewed here.
We believe the most important new information is the proposed site plan and the extremely rushed schedule the City has set for sending out a Request for Proposals (RFP) for interested developers to bid on the project.
First, the site plan: see image below, taken from the City’s presentation. The area reserved for housing is the yellow/orange corner at the top of the diagram. The rationale for this project is that the city is facing an affordable housing crisis. But, amazingly, only a very small portion of the undeveloped area—around 15-20%—is set aside for housing (and the city plans at least half of this housing to be luxury market-rate apartments). The reason so little area is devoted to housing is that the Whitney wants to have the option of nearly tripling its existing size, and the Friends of the High Line wants to significantly add to its existing space, including an indoor venue for all-weather four-season programming. The left-over space was then allocated to housing. The site plan was developed by the city in close collaboration with the Whitney and the Friends of the High Line, but with no input whatsoever from the community.
Having completed the site plan, the City is only now “engaging” with the community, via last week’s CB2 hearing and two upcoming public hearings—one this coming Thursday, which conflicts with the full board CB2 hearing, and one on January 7th. But the City also announced that it will send out a RFP (Request for Proposals) in January, inviting developers to bid on the project. On this schedule, the chances of making any changes to the site plan as a result of the “community engagement” are essentially zero.
There are two reasons the proposed tower would be so high. First, the City is proposing to build all the housing within a very small portion of the lot. Second, the City is insisting that the “affordable” housing must be paid for entirely with the profits from market rate luxury apartments within the building.
The result is a huge super-tall building in which at least 50% (and legally it could be up to 75%) of the apartments will be unaffordable luxury units. And note that this percentage may refer just to the number of apartments; since the market-rate luxury units will doubtless be larger than the “affordable” units, the percentage of square footage within the building devoted to market-rate apartments rather than “affordable” apartments will likely be far greater. Finally, the “affordable” apartments will be anything but. Affordability is defined as affordable to a person earning 60% of the median income of the surrounding region, which includes Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties. Since this region is fairly wealthy, and the income calculation includes home-owners (who tend to be wealthier than renters), the rent for these “affordable” apartments will still be very high.
The site plan in its current form is not acceptable. Neither is the city’s insistence on building not-really-affordable housing paid for by creating even more unneeded luxury housing. Unfortunately, both of these things will be very difficult if not impossible to change after the RFP is released. Therefore, it’s essential that the city postpone the RFP until after there has been meaningful consultation with the community.
Please attend the Community Board 2 full-board meeting this coming THURSDAY:
Thursday, December 19th, 6:30 PM
You can attend either in-person or via zoom.
You can also submit written comments.
For more information and to register, please go here.
(note that whether you attend via zoom or in person, before 4pm on Thursday you need to separately register to speak via the link at the bottom of the page).
Urge that CB2 ask the City to delay issuing the Request for Proposals until there has been time for adequate community input and for that input to be incorporated into the Gansevoort Square plans!