Developer Seeks To Ease Restrictions in Far West Village
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Celebrity French architect Christian de Portzamparc disclosed designs last week for a modern, glass cluster of townhouses in the far West Village that a developer hopes will sway area residents to allow an exception to restrictive zoning. Those changes are likely to take effect when the city planning commission votes on September 26.
Last year the developer, Coalco, run by Russian tycoon Vasily Anisimov, paid $21 million for designer Diane von Furstenberg’s two buildings on West 12th Street, which house her flagship store, studios, and residence. At the time, it was the highest price ever paid in the neighborhood on a square-foot basis, according to the developer.
Now the managing partner of Coalco, Edward Baquero, said that the impending downzoning, which will limit building height to 80 feet, will lower property value by one-third and make development unfeasible.
“We paid up. Suddenly, we lost a third of our rights,” Mr. Baquero told The New York Sun. “You say, ‘Wait a minute, that doesn’t happen in this country.'”
Mr. Baquero said Coalco was unaware of the possibility of down zoning until April 2005.
If they had known ahead of time about the potential for more restrictive zoning, Mr. Baquero said, “Any sober person would not pay that much for the property.”
But the city’s plan to downzone appeared in the press as early as October 2004, according to the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman, whose organization led the effort to downzone, citing booming development and a changing neighborhood character.
“If you buy a piece of property and know the community is negotiating with the city for rezoning, then you know there is a risk involved,” Mr. Berman said.
Mr. Berman said neighbors had recently met with the developers and looked at Mr. de Portzamparc’s plans. While he praised Coalco’s responsiveness to neighbors’ concerns and welcomed further dialogue, Mr. Berman said the preservation group was not yet willing to abandon its long fight for down zoning of the site.
Ms. von Furstenberg, the site’s former owner, will stay as a tenant of Coalco until March, when she plans to move her operations to a nearby West Village site. She testified in favor of the Coalco development at a city planning hearing Wednesday.
She told the Sun on Friday that the de Portzamparc design represents a better alternative to buildings that would inevitably be constructed, even under more restrictive zoning laws.
“You have the choice between a very unattractive building, between eight to 10 floors, which is what somebody will end up doing, or you have the possibility of doing something special,” Ms. von Furstenberg said in a telephone interview.
A neighbor who lives directly across the street from the proposed development, Stephen Achilles, an architect for Pei Partnership Architects, called Mr. de Portzamparc’s design “delightful and important.” He said that property value was also an important factor.
“In addition to my own architectural enthusiasm, it is as plain as the nose on my face. A building like that across the street will benefit everyone in my building,” Mr. Achilles said.
Mr. de Portzamparc is a winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize, awarded annually to one architect.
Dozens of West Village residents appeared at the city planning hearing Wednesday to ask for an accelerated schedule for downzoning, discourage rollbacks of the proposed changes, and protest the size of planned developments at the Superior Ink building on West Street by the Related Companies, and the Whitehall Storage facility on Charles Street by the Witkoff Group.
Mr. Berman, the preservationist, said it is unlikely that city planning will limit the developments of Related or Witkoff, two prolific New York developers that he said routinely get “the royal treatment.”
“I do feel sympathy for the Coalco folks, Mr. Berman said. “Clearly they are not getting the same accommodation from the city as Related and Witkoff are getting.”