BY JACKSON CHEN | A planned 32-story residential development near the corner of East 88th Street and Third Avenue has received a green light from the city’s Department of Buildings for its revised plans, but elected officials and a neighborhood advocacy group are not backing down.
Carnegie Hill Neighbors, joined by City Councilmember Ben Kallos, Borough President Gale Brewer, and State Senator Liz Krueger, have filed a zoning challenge to the DOB’s approval of a project it had halted seven months ago.
According to a DOB spokesperson, Joseph Soldevere, the agency recently approved amended plans for a 467-foot building — that reaches more than 523 feet with its bulkheads — submitted by DDG, a real estate development group based in Tribeca.
The project had been halted by a stop-work order on May 26, when the DOB concluded that DDG had created an unbuildable lot “for the sole purpose of evading zoning restrictions” that would have applied if the building had a frontage on East 88th Street. The stop-work order was based on a finding by George Janes, a zoning and land use consultant engaged by Carnegie Hill Neighbors, that the developer reduced the size of one of two adjacent lots it owns –– the lot it wasn’t building on –– from 30 feet by 22 feet to four feet by 22 feet.
Carnegie Hill Neighbors –– an organization dedicated to protecting the historic character of Upper East Side blocks from 86th to 98th Streets west of Third Avenue to Central Park — alerted elected officials, including Kallos, Krueger, and Brewer, of Janes’ conclusion that the new smaller zoning lot was created solely to establish a buffer between the much larger lot on which the building was actually planned and East 88th Street, where more stringent zoning restrictions exist than on Third Avenue. The elected officials, in turn, successfully pressed the DOB to reevaluate its position on the project, which led to the May stop-work order.
The DOB’s Soldevere said that DDG has now revised the size of the smaller of its two lots into a “a developable, 10’ by 22’ parcel.”
DDG’s new plans reduce the size of the proposed building by 1,200 square feet and include two exits on Third Avenue required by the DOB, which issued a new work permit on October 27. Though that approval enabled the stop-work order on the project to be lifted on December 21, Krueger’s office had discovered the new plans DDG filed with the DOB and alerted Carnegie Hill Neighbors, Kallos, and Brewer, and their challenge was filed within the required 45 days. As a result, their objections can still be heard.
The new challenge springboards off the original argument opponents made this spring, asserting that the widening of the second lot from four to 10 feet does not change the developer’s intention to skirt zoning regulations. As with a four-foot lot, the larger revised lot should still be considered part of the adjacent lot on which building is taking place given their contiguous nature and the common ownership of both, in the view of the project’s opponents.
“Widening the lot by six feet to make it a 10-foot-wide lot for the 22-foot frontage on East 88th Street does not alter our argument,” Carnegie Hill Neighbor’s president, Lo van der Valk, said in an email. “Clearly the owners need to redesign the building in a way that creates a legitimate streetwall on 88th Street that fully satisfies zoning requirements, even if doing so will lessen the profitability of the project.”
In a written statement, Brewer was adamant in characterizing the new plans as another sham on DDG’s part.
“It’s unbelievable,” she said. “This developer’s response to getting caught with its hand in the cookie jar is to just reach for the cookie again. This developer is trying to pretend this lot doesn’t have frontage on 88th Street and isn’t subject to 88th Street’s zoning rules. Nobody’s fooled, and we’re not going to let them ignore this neighborhood’s zoning and illegally build a tower halfway to the moon.”
According to the opponents’ zoning challenge, DDG’s actions would create a precedent for other developers to carve out similar “sliver lots” to avoid frontage on side streets that may include restrictive building regulations.
However, a DDG spokesperson said there is no maximum height limit or minimum lot size set forth for the project located in the commercial C1-9 zone where the building will be located. The spokesperson also pointed to other buildings similar in height nearby, including 201 East 86th Street at Third Avenue, a 459-foot building, and 360 East 88th Street at First Avenue, which is 462 feet tall.
“We are pleased that the Stop-Work Order has been lifted following the Department of Building’s comprehensive audit,” DDG said in an email statement. “We look forward to resuming construction and meeting our planned completion goal of 2018.”
According to Kallos, the timely filing of the opposition’s challenge won’t stall the construction process. He predicted that DDG will appeal their right to mount a challenge, either to the DOB commissioner or to the Board of Standards and Appeals. Kallos added the BSA typically responds within 75 days.
For its part, Carnegie Hill Neighbors said the group is prepared to pursue all its administrative remedies with the DOB and the BSA, while Kallos said the matter may ultimately end up in the courts.
“In all cases, I believe this ends in court,” Kallos said. “But in all cases, I believe we win because the law is very clear in this.”
Editor’s note: In the original posting of this story and in the print version, the article incorrectly stated that the 459-foot height of 201 East 86th Street and the 462-foot height of 360 East 88th Street were inclusive of mechanical bulkheads. In both cases, these heights do not include such bulkheads.
