As you may remember, the owner of the lot at 51 Little West 12th Street (between the Brass Monkey and the High Line) has asked for a zoning variance to build a grossly inappropriate 14-story, 203′ tall luxury residential sliver tower on this low-rise street.  The decision whether to grant this variance will be made by the Board of Standards and Appeals, which held its first hearing on this application last December. The BSA will hold a second hearing this coming TUESDAY, February 24th.

At the first hearing, the BSA expressed a great deal of skepticism about the application and told the applicant to come back with a design for a smaller tower. The applicant has now done so – the new design is 10 stories and 153′ tall. This is obviously an improvement, but a 153′ tall luxury residential sliver tower would still be completely inappropriate at this location. 

If you are concerned about this unsuitable development in our community, here are two things you can do. First, write a brief  message to the BSA asking that they deny this application:
Use this form on the BSA website.
Reference calendar # 2025-22-BZ, and use any or all of the points mentioned below.

Second, you can attend and speak briefly at the BSA hearing:
Tuesday, February 24th, meeting starts at 10:00 AM
Instructions for participating in person or via zoom here.
This item is 3rd on the agenda so it will probably be heard in the late morning, but it’s not possible to know for sure.

Save Gansevoort has submitted additional written testimony to the BSA opposing this application. Please read it if you would like detailed information about our concerns.

We believe the applicant has not met the criteria necessary to be granted a residential zoning variance in this Manufacturing (and commercial) District.  These criteria include: the site must have unique conditions that create an economic hardship to the developer (these conditions cannot be self-imposed), the variance must not “alter the essential character” of the surrounding district, and the applicant must prove the requested variance is the minimum necessary to make a reasonable economic return on the property.

In your message, you can make some or all of the following points:

• The applicant argues that the site’s vacancy makes it unique. The vacancy results from a demolition order that the Department of Buildings issued in 2009 because the applicant’s building on the site was structurally unstable. The applicant claims this structural instability was caused by the construction of the adjoining Standard Hotel, and therefore was not self-imposed. However, the applicant has provided no evidence to support this claim, and  the applicant has not explained the multiple DOB violations that indicate the structural instability was due to the applicant’s unpermitted and incomplete construction of a 4th floor on top of the building, and to inadequate maintenance.

• The applicant claims that a residential variance would not alter the essential character of the district in part because 13 buildings in the district already contain residential uses. However, New York City’s official land use map shows that at least 7 of these 13 buildings in fact contain no residential uses.

• The two primary BSA precedents that the applicant cites (at 128 West 26th Street and 132 West 26th Street) state that residential use variances were appropriate at these locations  because the surrounding area was already highly residential (in fact, 40% of the sites within a 400′ radius were residential). This is simply not the case with 51 Little West 12th Street—the entire M1-5 district in which it is located is almost exclusively non-residential.

• The applicant’s Economic Analysis fails to account for the unique and extraordinary strengths of 51 Little West 12th Street’s location. It is directly across the street from the planned future entrance to the Whitney Museum, immediately adjacent to the High Line, one block from the Hudson River Park and Little Island, and across the street from the Gansevoort Market Historic District, one of New York City’s most fashionable landmark districts. None of the office or restaurant comparables on which the analysis bases its conclusions reflect the value of such a location.

• *IF* despite all of the above the BSA decides to grant the requested residential variance, it should insist that the visual obtrusiveness of the building be reduced. The ornamental arrowhead that tops the building and adds nearly 20′ to its height should be removed. The height of the 20′ tall first floor and the 20′ tall third floor should be reduced. The large unenclosed space at the base of the tower should be enclosed, which would both add to the value of the ground-floor restaurant and reduce the amount of bulk available for the upper floors.

The owner of the vacant lot at 51 Little West 12th Street (between the Brass Monkey and the High Line) is asking for zoning variance to build a 14-story, 203′ tall luxury residential sliver tower. Community Board 2 recommended denial of this application several months ago. The application will be heard by the Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA), which makes the actual decision,  this coming Tuesday.

There are two things you can do. First, send a  message to the BSA asking that they deny this application. You can use this “one-click” message created by Village Preservation here.

Second, you can attend and speak briefly at the BSA hearing:
Tuesday, December 9th, meeting starts at 10:00 AM
Instructions for participating in person or via zoom here.
The application will likely be heard in the early afternoon; if we can get more specific information about the time we will update this post. If you wish to submit your own written testimony, you can use the BSA form here (the calendar number for this application is 2025-22-BZ).

Save Gansevoort has submitted extensive written testimony to the BSA opposing this application. Please read it if you would like detailed information about our concerns. Here is a general overview:

• The applicant claims the site presents unique hardships in part because it is a narrow lot not held in common ownership with an adjacent lot. We question whether lack of common ownership is a “physical” and “inherent” characteristic that can be used to meet the required uniqueness finding. Also, since an adjacent lot was for sale at the time the applicant purchased the subject lot in 1985 and the applicant apparently chose not to purchase it, the lack of common ownership may be self-imposed.

• The site’s vacancy is an essential part of the applicant’s claim that the site presents unique hardships. The vacancy results from a late-2009 DOB order to demolish an unstable existing building on the site. However, multiple DOB violations issued from 2007 through 2009 strongly indicate the building’s instability was caused by lack of maintenance and illegal construction by the applicant, suggesting that the vacancy is self-imposed.

• The sub-surface landfill and high water table present on this site are typical of every lot in the M1-5 district west of Washington Street, along with significant additional areas east of Washington Street. These hardships are not unique to this site.

• The BSA precedents cited by the applicant all involve situations significantly different from those of the subject lot.

• The applicant’s reasonable return calculations completely fail to take into account the unique and extraordinary strengths of the subject lot’s location. None of the office comparables feature an equivalent location, and none of them feature new construction. The restaurant comparables provided by the applicant are particularly odd—two of them are not even restaurants. Finally, use of the site for a boutique hotel, a potentially profitable as-of-right (with special permit) use, is not analyzed.

• The applicant’s Neighborhood Character Study fails to take into account that the proposed building’s 7.02 FAR is radically out-of-scale with the FAR of other buildings in the area. The proposed 7.02 FAR is a 40.4% increase over the as-of-right FAR (for buildings without community facilities). As a result, the proposed building is a 203′ tall sliver tower—an architectural form that exists nowhere else in this M1-5 district.

• The Neighborhood Character Study’s conclusion that residential use is appropriate at this location is based on an incorrect claim that there are 13 buildings containing residential uses in the area surrounding the site. In fact, at least half of the “residential” buildings listed in the study do not contain residential uses. Furthermore, the fact that the applicant lived illegally on the site for some period between 1985 and 2009 should not be used as a justification for allowing the site to be converted to future residential use.

This should be great! Organized by Village Preservation, this is the only forum for mayoral candidates that will focus on development and preservation issues. Save Gansevoort is a co-sponsor.

This virtual forum will take place on Monday, March 24th, at 6:00 PM.

To learn more and to register, go here.

The New York City Economic Development Corporation, the city entity spearheading the Gansevoort Square development, is holding two “public engagement” meetings on their plan to develop a 600-foot super-tall tower just north of the Whitney Museum in the Gansevoort Market. The meetings will be this coming Tuesday and Wednesday, January 7th and January 8th. The presentations at both meeting should be identical.

The City is rushing to invite developers to bid on this project (called a Request for Proposals) by late January. Demand that the City delay this Request for Proposals until there has been time for genuine community input and for that input to be incorporated into the plans. The current plan to build a giant tower containing as much as 75% luxury market-rate apartments is unacceptable on this city-owned lot. The City should focus on constructing a smaller building with 100% permanent affordable housing. And the site plan, which forces all of the housing into a supertall tower in one corner of the lot, is also not acceptable. The City negotiated this site plan with the Whitney and the Friends of the Highline with no community involvement; it may meet the needs of these two institutions, but it does not meet the needs of the community. The two meetings will be:

Tuesday, January 7th, 6:30 PM
Pier 57, Daffodil Classroom, also accessible via Zoom.

Wednesday, January 8th, 5:00 PM
Zoom only

To register for either (or both) sessions, go here.

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!

Our local elected officials—Assemblymember Deborah Glick, State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, and City Councilmember Erik Bottcher—have sent an excellent joint letter to Boldyn Networks (owner of CityBridge) asking that they withdraw their applications for LinkNYC 5G towers at 100 Horatio Street and 100 Jane Street, both adjacent to Washington Street. The letter also again asks that LinkNYC 5G towers not be sited within or close-by our  community’s historic districts. Please see the PDF attached below.

A big thank-you to all three officials, along with their staffs, for their help fighting these towers!

Village Preservation has sent an excellent letter to Mayor Adams asking some probing questions about the massive development that the City is planning for the meatpacking district. Among other things, why isn’t the city pushing for 100% affordable housing at this city-owned site? Well worth a read…

The Adams administration has proposed a massive new development for the block currently occupied by the meatpacking coop (the area directly north of the Whitney Museum, bounded by Little West 12th St. on the north, West Street to the West, and Washington Street to the east, and the Whitney museum on the south). The new development will be called “Gansevoort Square.”

The existing two-story brick coop building will be torn down, and would be replaced by a 600 unit apartment tower, along with 11,200 sq/ft of open public space and possibly 45,000 sq/ft of space for the Whitney, the Friends of the High Line, and/or other non-profit organizations.

Very few details are available, and as always the devil will be in the details. The city claims that “up to 300” units of the new housing will be “affordable,” but of course this could end up meaning little or no affordable housing, and “affordable” is not defined. The block will have to be rezoned, since the current zoning does not allow for residential use, and it’s possible that the city might take advantage of the new vastly expanded building heights that would be allowed by the proposed “City of Yes” zoning changes to allow a super-tall building at this site.

A few other thoughts:
The loss of the last meatpacking businesses in the neighborhood is deeply unfortunate. They are the last authentic connection to the area’s history as a wholesale food market, and a beacon of genuinely useful business activity amidst a flood of over-priced luxury restaurants and boutiques.

The Whitney’s lease agreement guarantees them the right of first refusal when and if the space occupied by the meatpacking coop becomes available.

This block is owned by the city, and there is a deed restriction dating back to the donation of the land by the Astor family that basically mandates it must be used for food-related market uses. Presumably the city has figured out a way of removing this restriction.

This is a large block, but conceivably changing the zoning for just this single block might constitute “spot zoning,” which is illegal. Is it possible that the city will use this as an excuse to try to rezone a larger area of the meatpacking district?

Since this land is city-owned, if the city wants to allow residential use why isn’t it pushing for a significantly larger percentage of genuinely affordable apartments? Why

There will be a community review process which will likely start early next year. Whether this process will allow for genuine community input or whether it will simply result in recommendations that are then ignored by the Adams administration and the City Planning Commission remains to be seen. As always, stay tuned.

New York Magazine has an article about this proposal.

And here’s the official announcement touting the development from the Adams administration.

This past Tuesday a crew with jackhammers dug up the foundation for the 100 Horatio Street 5G tower. They confirmed that they were removing the foundation and repaving the site with fresh concrete. The foundation for the 100 Jane Street tower has also been removed.

We have received no communication from Boldyn Networks, but they appear to be walking away from these locations. This follows the FCC rejecting Boldyn’s appeal of the State Historic Preservation Office’s findings that these towers would have adverse effects on the adjacent Greenwich Village Historic District and Gansevoort Market Historic District. These proposed towers have previously risen from the dead, but this particular battle now seems to be over. It’s been a long fight.

This may help set a precedent against siting 5G towers so close to historic districts. At a minimum, it may make Boldyn leery of attempting to do so in the future.

Boldyn previously withdrew or suspended their applications for two other West Village 5G towers, at 445 West Street and 771 Greenwich Street.

A huge thank you to the New York State Hi storic Preservation Office, State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, Assemblymember Deborah Glick, City Councilmember Erik Bottcher, Rep. Jerry Nadler, Village Preservation (which has worked particularly hard on this issue), the Municipal Art Society, the Historic Districts Council, the Landmarks Conservancy and every single person who sent letters and comments!!!

UPDATE 10/17/24: Declarations of victory may be premature—Boldyn has informed us that despite paving over the tower foundations they have not yet made the decision to withdraw these applications, and may continue their attempts to construct towers at these sites. As always, stay tuned…