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The Yimby article confirms it’s a Ramsa design but also calls the renderings outdated. Either way, it’ll be something decent.
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it says its Isaac & Stern not Robert AM Stern
The article credits Robert Stern multiple times. We’ll see.
Certainly looks like a RAMSA building to me. Hope they do not diverge much from this rendering if at all.
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I like the rendering shown. I think it will make a nice addition to the UWS if it is built pretty much as depicted.
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that’s weird, when I first read it it says Isaac stern and now it says RAMSA…
too lazy to use the marker feature but you can see the bio
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https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/mermaid-inn-site-developer-nortco-takes-wassel-corp-court
Relations between the developer of the Mermaid Inn’s longtime Upper West Side site and a neighboring building appear to be on the rocks.
Nortco Development is seeking to build an 18-story, 37-unit condo tower on a large property that includes the restaurant’s former home at 570 Amsterdam Ave. near West 88th Street.
But the landlord of the next-door building, 566 Amsterdam Ave., has allegedly for months thwarted efforts to let Nortco install scaffolding over No. 566’s roof to protect it during the project as required by city code, according to a petition filed Thursday in Manhattan state Supreme Court.
In addition, the owner, New Jersey-based Wassel Corp., a firm linked to the Manoukian family, is supposedly demanding Nortco pay a steep amount of special fees to access its property, the petition claims.
Nortco, which is asking the court to force Wassel to grant access, already sued Wassel in November for similar reasons. But the new suit goes further than the first in accusing Wassel of a deliberate “scheme to defraud” in order to block the project.
Wassel, which could not be reached by press time, has not yet filed a response to the suit. And Amanda Nelson, the attorney with Cozen O’Connor who appears to be representing Wassel behind the scenes, did not return a call for comment by press time.
The filings suggest that Wassel is worried that the scaffolding would limit access for fire safety reasons on the north side of its building, a 5-story, prewar, mixed-use walkup that has 16 apartments.
The dispute may boil down to how much Nortco is willing to shell out to get at the air above the roof. Months ago the developer, whose principal is Rony Nortman, agreed to pay $39,000 for access and also set up an escrow account that Wassel could tap to pay for any building inspectors or attorneys it needed to hire because of Nortco’s project, court filings show.
But Wassel apparently recently escalated its demands and now wants a fee of $150,000, based on the petition. The landlord also appears to have submitted invoices for hires that are “unreasonable,” Nortco claims.
Nortco has already demolished the Mermaid Inn site and three other structures that once stood on the block between West 87th and West 88th streets. It also appears to have lined up the necessary building permits for its development, but it can’t move forward until the Wassel dust-up is resolved.
jealousy and greed
These sums are not that big.
