Just make the 20 floors apartments for illegals. We’ll see how those UWS progressives can be against that.
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Crawdad—Don’t be sure a reversal is coming. You may be right but I wouldn’t place a large bet on it. If the trial judge declines to stay the order pending appeal a decision may come quickly, at least in part. I look forward to reading the court opinion.
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The misrepresentation of these people as being the ‘community’ and therefore representing the voice of the community is completely false: they are a highly vocal minority of people who have excess amounts of time, and a limited amount of common sense. We never get a true consensus of the community because ‘normal’ people are working, living, involved in positive enjoyable activities; not joining the local grievance committee and sundry malcontents in their neighborhood. YIMBY’s are the antidote to these type of people: the operative word being YES - positive people.
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I think talking about NIMBYS and YIMBYS in the case of 200 Amsterdam is largely irrelevant. Who cares about claims that some may have made about representing the community. The only really important thing is whether any legal claims they have made in this particular case have some force. If they do then the building owners should loose regardless of who is seeking the court ruling. I for one am simply going to avoid making comments lambasting anyone and carefully watch what happens. Since there are worthy arguments on both sides that seems the wiser choice to me.
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Taking 20 floors off of floors already constructed and cladding installed, how stupid! If they want that to happen they should just send the NIMBY’s themselves to tear it down by hand. They wanna bring themselves more pain, might as well have them deal with their own pain
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My main issue is how full of disingenuous the NIMBYs are about why they are fighting this project. They are defending their own apartments’ value by attempting to block superior developments, but they lie through their teeth about it “blocking the light” or “noise pollution” when every block around it is full of noisy repair jobs on hulking, zoning-flaunting nightmare buildings from the 60s.
That is why, no matter how good their case is, I hope they lose. It is also wrong for the city to punish the developer if they made the mistake of giving them a permit in the first place.
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I care not, as I said, about the stated reasons. But I do care about the merits. And you are correct that the sloth of the city in deciding the dispute is a problem. But also note that the developer in a partial settlement partially is to blame for giving the city time by agreeing to bear the cost of a loss if they were ordered to partially demolish. That probably was not wise. I hope they have good risk insurance.
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My stance on this matter is the same. The DOB needs to make the right decision initially and that decision should be considered final even if they fucked up intially. There should be civil penalties towards the DOB but not the developers. The DOB needs to make the right ruling. We don’t want pits or half constructed towers marring our cityscape because the courts allow an appeal.
Also, ironically, this tower is apparently very popular among UWS buyers. The fault here lies with the DOB. Don’t punish UWS buyers or the developers.
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Let’s be real, the NIMBYs have a good argument in this case. However this building is a gem, and it’s almost complete. It would be counter productive now to chop off such a massive portion of the building
For reference, the tower and it’s gerrymandered plot
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I don’t care if they shorten it but I think they need to be reimbursed if they have to demolish. It would only be fair.
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Unfortunately the litigation will go on for years. If the building permit is actually revoked after appeals, the developers and/or their insurance company will certainly sue the city for a taking caused by inexcusable delays by the city. Even if the developers win on appeal, they still might bring a taking case for the costs associated with the delays. If the plaintiffs win, that alone will take a long time to resolve in the state courts. If the permit is revoked pending appeal, we have a mostly built hulk sitting on the UWS. If it’s not revoked pending appeal, would you as developer go ahead and finish the building given what is on the table or would you mothball the place? In short, this is now a major mess regardless of what happens next. It’s hard to cast specific blame. The city was irresponsibly slothful in handling the permitting process and maybe inept in granting the permit in the first place. The courts were equally slothful and shamefully unwilling to speed up the processing of the dispute. The problem was started by the developer’s strange and risky from the outset zoning lot configuration. And the locals, right or wrong, filed a suit and also failed, as far as I know, to strongly and repeatedly urge everyone to move quickly. It’s a Rube Goldberg case. Nothing good will come of it in the short term regardless of your position on the best legal result.
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Plus a prior judge warned them they were building at their own peril. You’re right. This will take a long time to resolve. I feel sorry for the people that put down deposits.
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Right stache. I assume they will all get their dollars back now unless the project goes bankrupt, in which case they just line up as creditors. I would never try to buy in a building under a potentially powerful legal challenge. Somebody gave these folks terrible advice. And the developers probably took too big a chance as well.
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I admire the developer, SJP. They built 11 Times Square on spec going into a recession and still it emerged a success. They have real guts.
To me, despite whatever the gerrymandering done to create the site the DOB giving the ok should have been the final word unless some corruption could be proved. The city needs housing desperately and any efforts that make the process for building more difficult should be condemned.
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SideStreet: I too think the city behaved badly, and not only by taking so long to do everything about this project. They also have been letting projects through with other questionable features like the ridiculously tall “utility” spaces. They have been stretching the zoning rules for quite some time and, at least in this case, they may end up paying the price. Both the developer and the city should have known that doing this sort of thing was going to ruffle feathers and that being somewhat careful was the way to go to get new housing built. (And yes indeed we sure do need more apartments.) But nope. And now we get a major snafu. Oy.
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I’ll be very upset if they tear this beauty down. I think it looks way better than I feared it would.
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I agree! and it looks particularly good from columbus circle IMO!
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Shortening a building like this would be a nightmare. Moving all the mechanical stuff at the top… including the elevator motors?! I mean I’m sure there’s technically a way to do it, but it would require some really unusual engineering, and be incredibly expensive.
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They should only let it happen if Olive Freud and co. foot the bill…
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It won’t happen, but if it did, NYC taxpayers would foot the bill, because NYC approved the project. The city would basically be liable for every building built under zoning lot mergers over the last 50 years.
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