Atrocities
New plans still say "teardown" for Chelsea's oldest house
In an April 19 public hearing, the Landmarks Preservation Commission asked 404 West 20th Street's new owner Ajoy Kapoor to return with a more appropriate proposal for altering it. Just released, the revised proposal will go before a public meeting of the Commission on Tuesday. The new design takes a little off the top and still appears to require virtual demolition of all but the façade of the house, the oldest in the Chelsea Historic District. Excerpted from the updated presentation by Kapoor's architect William Suk and aligned for comparison are, left-to-right, the section of the existing house, the earlier proposal and the current proposal. The new building would still be well over twice the actual area of the approximately 4,000 square foot existing house, thanks in large part to a huge new basement excavation which would in itself make retention of the existing house difficult. In ArchiTakes' opinion, both the form and substance of the existing house are lost in its proposed replacement.
A plaque long mounted to the front of 404 West 20th Street is missing since the house was bought last year by Kapoor. The plaque is thought to have been installed shortly after the 1970 landmark designation of the Chelsea Historic District in which the house stands. The building's historic distinction and rare surviving wood frame complicate Kapoor’s plans, which depend heavily on Suk's assurances to the Commission that the house is structurally deficient. At the April 19th hearing and in Suk's presentation materials, these weren't backed up with an independent engineer's report, and his claims mainly pointed to the kind of construction technology and deformation normally found in old frame houses. His broad statement that "this whole house is falling apart" was not questioned by the commissioners. "I wouldn't put a kid to bed in that house," one commissioner said. "It's patently unsafe not to mention the building is clearly falling apart." Another commissioner didn't call the house a threat to children but dishearteningly seemed to take condemnation as a foregone conclusion and spoke of a possible solution that would "give some deference at least to that original structure and record some memory of it as best can be done." Why wouldn't the Landmarks Preservation Commission just preserve the landmark that's standing there? Many experts might say that in leaning only two inches to one side after 186 years it exhibits stability rather than the instability Suk makes of it. Shouldn't the spatial ambition of Kapoor's proposal inspire a little more scrutiny of his suggestions that preserving the existing house is a lost cause?
404's existing (top) and proposed (bottom) main floor plans from William Suk's latest presentation are aligned for comparison above. They continue to make obvious the disappearance of the old house save for its facade. The historic side alley seen just above the existing plan is subsumed in the much larger proposal, which also expands into the rear yard. Despite this apparent removal of the existing house, the project was described on the calendar of the Commission's website as an application "to construct additions and excavate the rear yard," and introduced as such in the public hearing. Although Community Board 4's advisory letter to the Commission and several public speakers in the public hearing criticized the house's proposed virtual replacement, Chair Srinavasan asked Kapoor's counsel, Valerie Campbell, "How much of the building will be retained?” The Chair did not challenge Campbell's answer that, “in trying to stabilize the building and to bring it up to code, there is a significant amount of work that has to be done to the building.” Campbell otherwise spoke in the hearing of measures needed to ensure the house's "preservation" or "longevity." She is described on the website of her firm, Kramer Levin, as a former General Counsel of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
In a 1965 photo, 404's brick front is temporarily painted, while sunlight picks out its contrasting wood clapboard siding. A tiny alley exposes this evidence of the house’s frame construction, along with its historic pitched roof. A young Lesley Doyel stands in front. Her family bought the house that year after renting an apartment in it since 1952. Ms. Doyel is a longtime community activist and founder of the advocacy group, Save Chelsea. She and her husband Nick Fritsch sold the house to Ajoy Kapoor last year, having reason to be confident that its location in the Chelsea Historic District assured its preservation. According to the website of the Landmarks Preservation Commission: "If your building is in a historic district, it's regulated the same way as an individual landmark."
404's wood siding has been a staple of Chelsea walking tours for decades. "I remember being shown the side of that house in an architecture class way back in my NYU days," said Wendy Solem, a neighbor who called the house's possible fate "truly heartbreaking." Joyce Gold, who runs Joyce Gold History Tours of New York, said she has been leading groups to the house for 35 years and that it lets her "raise the subject of when wood could be used, and when it couldn’t." In response to major fires, construction of wood houses was progressively banned in zones extending northward as the city grew. By 1849 the ban reached 32nd Street. Surviving wood-frame houses such as this one are very rare in Manhattan, but this only scratches the surface of 404's significance to those who live in and visit the city and have an interest in exploring its roots.
Images from the latest submission compare the existing alley (left) with its still-proposed infill (right), now with its recessed face in wood siding. The alley would be commemorated with a bizarre and inexplicable shallow clapboard niche imitative of the existing historic side wall. The historic side wall itself would be lost along with views of the house's period pitched roof. Current zoning doesn't allow creation of side yards less than eight feet wide, but pre-existing ones like 404's two-foot seven-inch alley are grandfathered. The alley can legally remain provided no addition to the house is built within eight feet of its side property line. Filling in the alley would eliminate this restriction on additions, while preserving it would still allow a substantial rear extension and preserve the visibility of the house's pitched roof seen through the alley, not to mention views of its historic wood siding. At one point in the public hearing, the Commission mistook the width of the building lot for twenty rather than twenty-five feet, and the width of the allowed addition zone -- if the alley were retained -- for twelve rather than seventeen feet. This appeared to generate sympathy for Kapoor's proposal to fill in the side yard. The Chair and commissioners were not corrected by William Suk, or Kapoor's counsel, Valerie Campbell.
The Commission didn't voice recognition of the significance of the narrow alleyway itself. Chair Srinavasan dismissed it as a "quirk," saying "I can't get all romantic about that side yard" and stating that she could "support" filling it in. Yet romance has little to do with it. Research uncovers plenty of justification for preserving it as a once-pervasive but now unique feature of the Chelsea Historic District.
Wood-frame buildings are colored yellow, brick buildings pink and commercial ones green on Plate 73, featuring Chelsea, of the 1854 Perris Map of New York. This insurance atlas also used a system of dots and symbols to convey a structure's vulnerability and allow fire insurance companies to set rates without visiting buildings. 404 West 20th Street is seen just below the north arrow that's to the right of the original twin buildings of the largely-open General Theological Seminary block.
Plate 73 shows scores of yellow-coded frame houses in Chelsea with narrow side yards providing street access to back buildings. Many are visible in this detail of West 21st and 22nd Streets west of Eighth Avenue. These were often modest homes of self-employed tradesmen, which would in time give way to brick rowhouses filling the width of their lots. Sometimes the back buildings came first and were left accessible to the street by passages running next to or through later houses built at the street line. A few of the lots visible above still have only "back" buildings. The map is a snapshot of Chelsea in a moment of transition from village to city neighborhood. The prevalence of this arrangement was specific to Chelsea, as noted in Thomas Janvier's 1894 city history, In Old New York, which describes "conspicuous features of what once was Chelsea Village":
. . . even a few of the more modest remnants of that earlier period, the little wooden houses wherein dwelt folk of a humbler sort, still may be seen here and there: standing back shyly from the street in deep yards and having somewhat the abashed look of aged rustics confronted suddenly with city ways. But many more of these timber-toed veterans--true Chelsea pensioners--lie hidden away in the centres of the blocks, and may be found only by burrowing through alleyways beneath the outer line of prim brick houses of a modern time. Notably, on both sides of Twentieth Street, between the Seventh and Eighth avenues, these inner rows of houses may be found; and west of Eighth Avenue on the northern side of the way. But one may rest assured that wherever, in any of the blocks hereabouts, an alleyway opens there will be found an old wooden house or a whole row of old wooden houses."
404 West 20th Street's narrow alley is the sole survivor in the Chelsea Historic District, one of only four left in all of Chelsea, and the only one adjoining a wood frame house.





No. 404, the oldest house in the Chelsea Historic District, was built in 1829-30 for Hugh Walker on land leased from Clement Clarke Moore for forty dollars per year. The lease stated that if, during the first seven years, a good and substantial house was erected, being two stories or more, constructed of brick or stone, or having a brick or stone front, the lessor would pay the full value of the house at the end of the lease. . . . The original clapboard of one sidewall is still visible on the east side of the house.
Moore might have settled for less than an all-brick or stone building in resignation to the lot's still-open surroundings at the northern city outskirts, land appealing to "folk of a humbler sort," to get the ball rolling on Chelsea's development. In stipulating a brick or stone face, this starter house would at least contribute to the dignity and property value he hoped to see at the centerpiece block of his new community. It's unclear whether his tenant Hugh Walker lived in or used a back building before building the brick-faced house for which Moore reimbursed him, on the model Janvier describes. 404's brick face may indeed have helped convince Cushman to develop his impressive row next door a few years later. The more humble character displayed behind its brick face makes it the indispensable first page of Chelsea’s domestic history.

. . . developed the rather sophisticated restrictions that Moore imposed on his lots when private house construction began in earnest in the mid-1830's. These covenants not only included prohibitions against stables and rear buildings, but also required tree planting. Clearly Moore and Wells were taking pains to create a first-class residential district.
Chelsea's early frame houses, alleys and back buildings would indeed fade away as the village became Moore's intended city neighborhood of genteel brick rowhouses, before they were subdivided into apartments for waterfront workers, before they declined in the era of urban flight, before they were rediscovered largely by gay pioneers, before the influx of a few hundred galleries, and before the High Line made it the real-estate jackpot now threatening the layered history and resonance that make it uniquely and richly Chelsea. Update: In a July 26, 2016, public meeting, the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved a revised proposal which will still replace 404 West 20th Street with a much larger house, fill in its side yard and preserve only its street façade. Commissioner Michael Devonshire alone spoke and voted against the proposal, for "obliterating" the historic house. More posts on this block of Chelsea: Buying Michael Bolla's Chelsea Mansion for Dummies Losing Ground at Chelsea Square The Seminary Block of West 20th StreetNew plans still say "teardown" for Chelsea's oldest house
In an April 19 public hearing, the Landmarks Preservation Commission asked 404 West 20th Street's new owner Ajoy Kapoor to return with a more appropriate proposal for altering it. Just released, the revised proposal will go before a public meeting of the Commission on Tuesday. The new design takes a little off the top and still appears to require virtual demolition of all but the façade of the house, the oldest in the Chelsea Historic District. Excerpted from the updated presentation by Kapoor's architect William Suk and aligned for comparison are, left-to-right, the section of the existing house, the earlier proposal and the current proposal. The new building would still be well over twice the actual area of the approximately 4,000 square foot existing house, thanks in large part to a huge new basement excavation which would in itself make retention of the existing house difficult. In ArchiTakes' opinion, both the form and substance of the existing house are lost in its proposed replacement.
A plaque long mounted to the front of 404 West 20th Street is missing since the house was bought last year by Kapoor. The plaque is thought to have been installed shortly after the 1970 landmark designation of the Chelsea Historic District in which the house stands. The building's historic distinction and rare surviving wood frame complicate Kapoor’s plans, which depend heavily on Suk's assurances to the Commission that the house is structurally deficient. At the April 19th hearing and in Suk's presentation materials, these weren't backed up with an independent engineer's report, and his claims mainly pointed to the kind of construction technology and deformation normally found in old frame houses. His broad statement that "this whole house is falling apart" was not questioned by the commissioners. "I wouldn't put a kid to bed in that house," one commissioner said. "It's patently unsafe not to mention the building is clearly falling apart." Another commissioner didn't call the house a threat to children but dishearteningly seemed to take condemnation as a foregone conclusion and spoke of a possible solution that would "give some deference at least to that original structure and record some memory of it as best can be done." Why wouldn't the Landmarks Preservation Commission just preserve the landmark that's standing there? Many experts might say that in leaning only two inches to one side after 186 years it exhibits stability rather than the instability Suk makes of it. Shouldn't the spatial ambition of Kapoor's proposal inspire a little more scrutiny of his suggestions that preserving the existing house is a lost cause?
404's existing (top) and proposed (bottom) main floor plans from William Suk's latest presentation are aligned for comparison above. They continue to make obvious the disappearance of the old house save for its facade. The historic side alley seen just above the existing plan is subsumed in the much larger proposal, which also expands into the rear yard. Despite this apparent removal of the existing house, the project was described on the calendar of the Commission's website as an application "to construct additions and excavate the rear yard," and introduced as such in the public hearing. Although Community Board 4's advisory letter to the Commission and several public speakers in the public hearing criticized the house's proposed virtual replacement, Chair Srinavasan asked Kapoor's counsel, Valerie Campbell, "How much of the building will be retained?” The Chair did not challenge Campbell's answer that, “in trying to stabilize the building and to bring it up to code, there is a significant amount of work that has to be done to the building.” Campbell otherwise spoke in the hearing of measures needed to ensure the house's "preservation" or "longevity." She is described on the website of her firm, Kramer Levin, as a former General Counsel of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
In a 1965 photo, 404's brick front is temporarily painted, while sunlight picks out its contrasting wood clapboard siding. A tiny alley exposes this evidence of the house’s frame construction, along with its historic pitched roof. A young Lesley Doyel stands in front. Her family bought the house that year after renting an apartment in it since 1952. Ms. Doyel is a longtime community activist and founder of the advocacy group, Save Chelsea. She and her husband Nick Fritsch sold the house to Ajoy Kapoor last year, having reason to be confident that its location in the Chelsea Historic District assured its preservation. According to the website of the Landmarks Preservation Commission: "If your building is in a historic district, it's regulated the same way as an individual landmark."
404's wood siding has been a staple of Chelsea walking tours for decades. "I remember being shown the side of that house in an architecture class way back in my NYU days," said Wendy Solem, a neighbor who called the house's possible fate "truly heartbreaking." Joyce Gold, who runs Joyce Gold History Tours of New York, said she has been leading groups to the house for 35 years and that it lets her "raise the subject of when wood could be used, and when it couldn’t." In response to major fires, construction of wood houses was progressively banned in zones extending northward as the city grew. By 1849 the ban reached 32nd Street. Surviving wood-frame houses such as this one are very rare in Manhattan, but this only scratches the surface of 404's significance to those who live in and visit the city and have an interest in exploring its roots.
Images from the latest submission compare the existing alley (left) with its still-proposed infill (right), now with its recessed face in wood siding. The alley would be commemorated with a bizarre and inexplicable shallow clapboard niche imitative of the existing historic side wall. The historic side wall itself would be lost along with views of the house's period pitched roof. Current zoning doesn't allow creation of side yards less than eight feet wide, but pre-existing ones like 404's two-foot seven-inch alley are grandfathered. The alley can legally remain provided no addition to the house is built within eight feet of its side property line. Filling in the alley would eliminate this restriction on additions, while preserving it would still allow a substantial rear extension and preserve the visibility of the house's pitched roof seen through the alley, not to mention views of its historic wood siding. At one point in the public hearing, the Commission mistook the width of the building lot for twenty rather than twenty-five feet, and the width of the allowed addition zone -- if the alley were retained -- for twelve rather than seventeen feet. This appeared to generate sympathy for Kapoor's proposal to fill in the side yard. The Chair and commissioners were not corrected by William Suk, or Kapoor's counsel, Valerie Campbell.
The Commission didn't voice recognition of the significance of the narrow alleyway itself. Chair Srinavasan dismissed it as a "quirk," saying "I can't get all romantic about that side yard" and stating that she could "support" filling it in. Yet romance has little to do with it. Research uncovers plenty of justification for preserving it as a once-pervasive but now unique feature of the Chelsea Historic District.
Wood-frame buildings are colored yellow, brick buildings pink and commercial ones green on Plate 73, featuring Chelsea, of the 1854 Perris Map of New York. This insurance atlas also used a system of dots and symbols to convey a structure's vulnerability and allow fire insurance companies to set rates without visiting buildings. 404 West 20th Street is seen just below the north arrow that's to the right of the original twin buildings of the largely-open General Theological Seminary block.
Plate 73 shows scores of yellow-coded frame houses in Chelsea with narrow side yards providing street access to back buildings. Many are visible in this detail of West 21st and 22nd Streets west of Eighth Avenue. These were often modest homes of self-employed tradesmen, which would in time give way to brick rowhouses filling the width of their lots. Sometimes the back buildings came first and were left accessible to the street by passages running next to or through later houses built at the street line. A few of the lots visible above still have only "back" buildings. The map is a snapshot of Chelsea in a moment of transition from village to city neighborhood. The prevalence of this arrangement was specific to Chelsea, as noted in Thomas Janvier's 1894 city history, In Old New York, which describes "conspicuous features of what once was Chelsea Village":
. . . even a few of the more modest remnants of that earlier period, the little wooden houses wherein dwelt folk of a humbler sort, still may be seen here and there: standing back shyly from the street in deep yards and having somewhat the abashed look of aged rustics confronted suddenly with city ways. But many more of these timber-toed veterans--true Chelsea pensioners--lie hidden away in the centres of the blocks, and may be found only by burrowing through alleyways beneath the outer line of prim brick houses of a modern time. Notably, on both sides of Twentieth Street, between the Seventh and Eighth avenues, these inner rows of houses may be found; and west of Eighth Avenue on the northern side of the way. But one may rest assured that wherever, in any of the blocks hereabouts, an alleyway opens there will be found an old wooden house or a whole row of old wooden houses."
404 West 20th Street's narrow alley is the sole survivor in the Chelsea Historic District, one of only four left in all of Chelsea, and the only one adjoining a wood frame house.





No. 404, the oldest house in the Chelsea Historic District, was built in 1829-30 for Hugh Walker on land leased from Clement Clarke Moore for forty dollars per year. The lease stated that if, during the first seven years, a good and substantial house was erected, being two stories or more, constructed of brick or stone, or having a brick or stone front, the lessor would pay the full value of the house at the end of the lease. . . . The original clapboard of one sidewall is still visible on the east side of the house.
Moore might have settled for less than an all-brick or stone building in resignation to the lot's still-open surroundings at the northern city outskirts, land appealing to "folk of a humbler sort," to get the ball rolling on Chelsea's development. In stipulating a brick or stone face, this starter house would at least contribute to the dignity and property value he hoped to see at the centerpiece block of his new community. It's unclear whether his tenant Hugh Walker lived in or used a back building before building the brick-faced house for which Moore reimbursed him, on the model Janvier describes. 404's brick face may indeed have helped convince Cushman to develop his impressive row next door a few years later. The more humble character displayed behind its brick face makes it the indispensable first page of Chelsea’s domestic history.

. . . developed the rather sophisticated restrictions that Moore imposed on his lots when private house construction began in earnest in the mid-1830's. These covenants not only included prohibitions against stables and rear buildings, but also required tree planting. Clearly Moore and Wells were taking pains to create a first-class residential district.
Chelsea's early frame houses, alleys and back buildings would indeed fade away as the village became Moore's intended city neighborhood of genteel brick rowhouses, before they were subdivided into apartments for waterfront workers, before they declined in the era of urban flight, before they were rediscovered largely by gay pioneers, before the influx of a few hundred galleries, and before the High Line made it the real-estate jackpot now threatening the layered history and resonance that make it uniquely and richly Chelsea. Update: In a July 26, 2016, public meeting, the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved a revised proposal which will still replace 404 West 20th Street with a much larger house, fill in its side yard and preserve only its street façade. Commissioner Michael Devonshire alone spoke and voted against the proposal, for "obliterating" the historic house. More posts on this block of Chelsea: Buying Michael Bolla's Chelsea Mansion for Dummies Losing Ground at Chelsea Square The Seminary Block of West 20th StreetThe Chelsea Market Deal, brought to you by ULURP
From right to left, Amanda Burden, Christine Quinn, Mayor Bloomberg and Boss Tweed reprise Thomas Nast's ring of passed blame around Chelsea Market in a flyer that's started appearing on Chelsea streets.
On October 19th, I and others met with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to discuss Jamestown Properties’ proposed rezoning of Chelsea Market, aimed at adding over a quarter-million square feet of office space to the historic complex. I twice asked Speaker Quinn just how she saw the proposal making sense on zoning basics of use, bulk or environmental impact. She would only say that she hadn’t completed her review, but then still had no answer when we met six days later, just before the City Council's land-use committee voted to support the proposal, surely with Quinn's endorsement. Only Speaker Quinn could have stopped the project, but she advanced it in the face of overwhelming community resistance and without being able to say how it was good zoning.
If Speaker Quinn is already beholden to real estate interests in her expected run for mayor next year, she promises to bring to that office a fourth term of the Bloomberg administration’s worst feature; a pro-development, anti-oversight bias. In this New York, real estate runs politics and deals trump zoning. In a New York Times article on the Council's Chelsea Market vote, David Chen wrote that in remaining “conspicuously quiet about the issue” and failing even to attend a public hearing on it, Quinn “left little doubt . . . that she had been the driving force behind the deal.” It's pretty official when the Times calls it a deal.
Speaker Quinn had no answers about the Chelsea Market plan’s zoning merits because there are none. So how was the proposal approved? By a system that promises more of the same. Speaker Quinn’s and the City Council’s votes are part of ULURP, the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure that’s supposed to let the public and city officials participate in reviewing and approving development. In theory, the review process begins when a project is certified by the Department of City Planning. In practice, certification by the Department guarantees a project will go forward, rendering ULURP pointless except to provide a retroactive veneer of democratic process. Only one project in recent memory has been certified and not built, and that was under atypical circumstances. City officials and community board members who weigh in under ULURP can’t vote an unqualified “no” on a project without being ostracized for refusing to play ball and losing the chance to earn give-backs. On the Chelsea Market proposal, for example, Community Board 4 voted “no, unless” Jamestown funded off-site affordable housing. Several of Chelsea Market’s ULURP participants told me that voting the flat “no” in their heart would be futile and waste a chance to salvage some community benefit. After ULURP, City Planning can count such forced hands as raised in support. The system is perfectly rigged to cloud responsibility and foster deals. Projects may be scaled back during ULURP, but developers can pad their projects in anticipation. The Chelsea Market proposal has been scaled back slightly, creating an illusion of a functioning review process that Speaker Quinn and the Department of City Planning can cheaply trumpet.
Officials involved in ULURP seem desperate for any tweak or offset to deflect community criticism and make them appear to have done right by the public, while approving projects regardless of merit like the political animals they are. In meetings I and other community members had with Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Speaker Quinn during their respective turns at ULURP deliberation, we were pressed from the start to tell what concessions or give-backs would satisfy us. Both Stringer and Quinn were more interested in making the project palatable to us than hearing why it shouldn’t be built. The Borough President and members of his impressive land-use staff, who are a credit to him, grasped the proposal’s lack of merit and its motivation in greed to cash in on views over the High Line. Despite this worthy analysis, ULURP’s political reality apparently prevented the Borough President's flat rejection. At least he acknowledged the lunacy of building over the High Line, voting “no, unless” Jamestown’s addition was shifted to the Ninth Avenue end of Chelsea Market and scaled back. If City Planning was really interested in such informed ULURP input, it wouldn’t have ignored the detailed and compelling substance of the Borough President’s recommendations. City Planning left most of the addition over the High Line in its own later recommendations.
Permission to build above the High Line was clearly set in stone from the start, as witnessed by its survival though a review process that sometimes spotlighted its zoning folly. If this was one side of a deal that had to be honored, the other was Jamestown’s payout of about $17 million into a High Line maintenance fund. To those who see Jamestown’s proposal as simply wrong, no give-backs can make it right. Accepting them would be like allowing wrongdoing on Wall Street for a cut of the action. To the extent that Friends of the High Line was in on the ground floor of such a deal, it can be said to have encouraged zoning abuse for financial gain. It shares both spoils and blame with Jamestown. City Planning created some cover for this in September, when it diverted $4.7 million of Jamestown’s payout into affordable housing, answering Community Board 4’s earlier approval condition. (Housing experts say such funding promises often grease zoning changes through without ever producing new affordable units.) To some, this diversion of funds only reinforced the impression of a deal by seeming to explain the earlier surprise appropriation of $5 million to the High Line by the City Council in June’s city budget agreement. In July, Matt Katz of DNAinfo wrote that “The move has some park advocates questioning why the city is set to spend on the High Line such a large part of its $105 million, 2013 appropriations for 142 park projects — when the taxpayer money could go to other city parks that have greater infrastructure needs and fewer wealthy donors.” Factoring in this gift from Speaker Quinn’s City Council, the High Line’s $17 million side of the deal should be preserved.
What else but a deal could explain Robert Hammond’s perverse cheerleading for Jamestown’s tower over the High Line? His park would have earned just as big a payout if Jamestown built its whole project at the far end of Chelsea Market, where it wouldn’t rob the High Line of sunlight, sky views and open space, and would sensibly be closer to subways and Google's headquarters. Jamestown critically needed Hammond as a spokesman, which he must have agreed to be from the start. He dutifully told whoppers for Jamestown at the City Planning ULURP hearing on July 25th, testifying that “The High Line was designed to interact with neighborhood buildings, even changes in the skyscape that take place around it.” (Never mind that the skyline immediately around Chelsea Market was deliberately sculpted by existing zoning to complement the current height of Chelsea Market at a critical location.) City Planning Chair Amanda Burden beamed at Hammond as he explained, “People love architectural variations around the High Line. We don’t think they’ll detract from the experience of being on the High Line at all.” As for shadows Jamestown’s tower will cast on the High Line, Hammond said people seek shade underneath the High Line as it is. (Never mind that the tower will cast its longest shadows in colder months, putting most of the park’s Tenth Avenue Square grandstand feature in shadow when warming sunlight would increase its use.) Hammond even said High Line visitors won’t see Jamestown’s tower because the grandstand faces away from it, paying Jamestown’s design the highest praise it's earned to date.
Robert Hammond is a folk hero and the apple of Amanda Burden’s eye for having conceived of the High Line, but its success now has many legitimate fathers. These include talented architects and dedicated advocates like Ed Kirkland, who helped create the park and was the primary author of the Special West Chelsea District zoning which protects High Line open space and reduces the height of new development as it approaches historic surroundings. In a recent New York Times profile, the 87 year-old Mr. Kirkland said of Jamestown’s proposal, “I promise that there is no reason for this to happen except financial reasons that benefit Jamestown. It does not do the city or Chelsea any good. It’s bad for the High Line . . .” There’s no better authority; for fifty years, no one has given as much of himself as Mr. Kirkland to Chelsea’s preservation and planning. "If I wasn’t used to the city, I would be outraged," he added in a public forum on October 18th.
The High Line was also created with over a hundred million dollars in public funding, making stakeholders of all New Yorkers. Although Robert Hammond doesn’t seem to appreciate the value of others’ High Line contributions, he’s been uniquely entrusted to barter them. He also seems unaware of the backlash that may come of the ugly spectacle he’s created: Jamestown shoving past the public to hog prime space on a High Line it sees as a money-trough. The damage isn’t limited to the High Line. Chelsea’s residential character and historic authenticity will suffer, and the neighborhood made more like Times Square, a place of office towers and tourists, avoided by New Yorkers. Like Chelsea Market’s historic sensitivity, the rest of Chelsea is forgotten under the reigning High Line mania. Hammond’s failed 2009 attempt to have neighboring blocks taxed for High Line operating costs still rankles in Chelsea. In a public meeting on Jamestown's plan last year, Community Board 4’s Corey Johnson voiced a growing neighborhood mood, repeating, “I resent having the High Line used against us.”
Most New Yorkers I speak to are still unaware of what’s planned for Chelsea Market, but it’s coming soon, in 3D. There will be many a “who let that happen?” Frank Lloyd Wright claimed his buildings were portraits of his clients. Has Jamestown's architect, David Burns of STUDIOS Architecture, made his Chelsea Market design a group portrait of those behind the project? Maybe he's a better architect than we think.
ULURP promises more ugly pictures. As Speaker Quinn’s lack of answers attests, the process isn’t about responsible planning, but deals. ULURP reform cries out to be made an issue in the upcoming mayoral campaign. After what she's condoned at Chelsea Market, it’s not a cause Quinn can claim. After so bitterly letting down her own council district, one wonders just what she can claim to the rest of New York.
While Chelsea Market is a lost cause, it may be a big enough outrage to rally change, like Penn Station’s demolition, which was just as foolishly justified by the promise of jobs.
The entire Special West Chelsea District is already zoned C or M, allowing office construction throughout. The district is one of the most underdeveloped parts of Manhattan. Jamestown could build here, but that wouldn’t enrich property it already owns, Chelsea Market, which lies just outside the existing district boundary at lower right. Only three sites in the Special District are now eligible for the High Line Improvement Bonus. They are shown shaded at the bottom of the district map above. The one on the right has already been developed as the Caledonia apartment building. The one at lower left is the parking lot site shown in the photo below. Jamestown wants Chelsea Market brought into the Special District to exploit the bonus, which is described in text accompanying this map on City Planning’s website:
In recognition of the unique condition of the High Line between West 16th and 19th streets, where it broadens and crosses over 10th Avenue, adjacent development on these blocks could receive additional floor area through . . . restoration, remediation, and implementation of the High Line open space . . . at perhaps its most prominent location.
Jamestown will turn this bonus from a reward for cultivating open space into a reward for seizing it from the park “at perhaps its most prominent location."
The Chelsea Market Deal, brought to you by ULURP
From right to left, Amanda Burden, Christine Quinn, Mayor Bloomberg and Boss Tweed reprise Thomas Nast's ring of passed blame around Chelsea Market in a flyer that's started appearing on Chelsea streets.
On October 19th, I and others met with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to discuss Jamestown Properties’ proposed rezoning of Chelsea Market, aimed at adding over a quarter-million square feet of office space to the historic complex. I twice asked Speaker Quinn just how she saw the proposal making sense on zoning basics of use, bulk or environmental impact. She would only say that she hadn’t completed her review, but then still had no answer when we met six days later, just before the City Council's land-use committee voted to support the proposal, surely with Quinn's endorsement. Only Speaker Quinn could have stopped the project, but she advanced it in the face of overwhelming community resistance and without being able to say how it was good zoning.
If Speaker Quinn is already beholden to real estate interests in her expected run for mayor next year, she promises to bring to that office a fourth term of the Bloomberg administration’s worst feature; a pro-development, anti-oversight bias. In this New York, real estate runs politics and deals trump zoning. In a New York Times article on the Council's Chelsea Market vote, David Chen wrote that in remaining “conspicuously quiet about the issue” and failing even to attend a public hearing on it, Quinn “left little doubt . . . that she had been the driving force behind the deal.” It's pretty official when the Times calls it a deal.
Speaker Quinn had no answers about the Chelsea Market plan’s zoning merits because there are none. So how was the proposal approved? By a system that promises more of the same. Speaker Quinn’s and the City Council’s votes are part of ULURP, the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure that’s supposed to let the public and city officials participate in reviewing and approving development. In theory, the review process begins when a project is certified by the Department of City Planning. In practice, certification by the Department guarantees a project will go forward, rendering ULURP pointless except to provide a retroactive veneer of democratic process. Only one project in recent memory has been certified and not built, and that was under atypical circumstances. City officials and community board members who weigh in under ULURP can’t vote an unqualified “no” on a project without being ostracized for refusing to play ball and losing the chance to earn give-backs. On the Chelsea Market proposal, for example, Community Board 4 voted “no, unless” Jamestown funded off-site affordable housing. Several of Chelsea Market’s ULURP participants told me that voting the flat “no” in their heart would be futile and waste a chance to salvage some community benefit. After ULURP, City Planning can count such forced hands as raised in support. The system is perfectly rigged to cloud responsibility and foster deals. Projects may be scaled back during ULURP, but developers can pad their projects in anticipation. The Chelsea Market proposal has been scaled back slightly, creating an illusion of a functioning review process that Speaker Quinn and the Department of City Planning can cheaply trumpet.
Officials involved in ULURP seem desperate for any tweak or offset to deflect community criticism and make them appear to have done right by the public, while approving projects regardless of merit like the political animals they are. In meetings I and other community members had with Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Speaker Quinn during their respective turns at ULURP deliberation, we were pressed from the start to tell what concessions or give-backs would satisfy us. Both Stringer and Quinn were more interested in making the project palatable to us than hearing why it shouldn’t be built. The Borough President and members of his impressive land-use staff, who are a credit to him, grasped the proposal’s lack of merit and its motivation in greed to cash in on views over the High Line. Despite this worthy analysis, ULURP’s political reality apparently prevented the Borough President's flat rejection. At least he acknowledged the lunacy of building over the High Line, voting “no, unless” Jamestown’s addition was shifted to the Ninth Avenue end of Chelsea Market and scaled back. If City Planning was really interested in such informed ULURP input, it wouldn’t have ignored the detailed and compelling substance of the Borough President’s recommendations. City Planning left most of the addition over the High Line in its own later recommendations.
Permission to build above the High Line was clearly set in stone from the start, as witnessed by its survival though a review process that sometimes spotlighted its zoning folly. If this was one side of a deal that had to be honored, the other was Jamestown’s payout of about $17 million into a High Line maintenance fund. To those who see Jamestown’s proposal as simply wrong, no give-backs can make it right. Accepting them would be like allowing wrongdoing on Wall Street for a cut of the action. To the extent that Friends of the High Line was in on the ground floor of such a deal, it can be said to have encouraged zoning abuse for financial gain. It shares both spoils and blame with Jamestown. City Planning created some cover for this in September, when it diverted $4.7 million of Jamestown’s payout into affordable housing, answering Community Board 4’s earlier approval condition. (Housing experts say such funding promises often grease zoning changes through without ever producing new affordable units.) To some, this diversion of funds only reinforced the impression of a deal by seeming to explain the earlier surprise appropriation of $5 million to the High Line by the City Council in June’s city budget agreement. In July, Matt Katz of DNAinfo wrote that “The move has some park advocates questioning why the city is set to spend on the High Line such a large part of its $105 million, 2013 appropriations for 142 park projects — when the taxpayer money could go to other city parks that have greater infrastructure needs and fewer wealthy donors.” Factoring in this gift from Speaker Quinn’s City Council, the High Line’s $17 million side of the deal should be preserved.
What else but a deal could explain Robert Hammond’s perverse cheerleading for Jamestown’s tower over the High Line? His park would have earned just as big a payout if Jamestown built its whole project at the far end of Chelsea Market, where it wouldn’t rob the High Line of sunlight, sky views and open space, and would sensibly be closer to subways and Google's headquarters. Jamestown critically needed Hammond as a spokesman, which he must have agreed to be from the start. He dutifully told whoppers for Jamestown at the City Planning ULURP hearing on July 25th, testifying that “The High Line was designed to interact with neighborhood buildings, even changes in the skyscape that take place around it.” (Never mind that the skyline immediately around Chelsea Market was deliberately sculpted by existing zoning to complement the current height of Chelsea Market at a critical location.) City Planning Chair Amanda Burden beamed at Hammond as he explained, “People love architectural variations around the High Line. We don’t think they’ll detract from the experience of being on the High Line at all.” As for shadows Jamestown’s tower will cast on the High Line, Hammond said people seek shade underneath the High Line as it is. (Never mind that the tower will cast its longest shadows in colder months, putting most of the park’s Tenth Avenue Square grandstand feature in shadow when warming sunlight would increase its use.) Hammond even said High Line visitors won’t see Jamestown’s tower because the grandstand faces away from it, paying Jamestown’s design the highest praise it's earned to date.
Robert Hammond is a folk hero and the apple of Amanda Burden’s eye for having conceived of the High Line, but its success now has many legitimate fathers. These include talented architects and dedicated advocates like Ed Kirkland, who helped create the park and was the primary author of the Special West Chelsea District zoning which protects High Line open space and reduces the height of new development as it approaches historic surroundings. In a recent New York Times profile, the 87 year-old Mr. Kirkland said of Jamestown’s proposal, “I promise that there is no reason for this to happen except financial reasons that benefit Jamestown. It does not do the city or Chelsea any good. It’s bad for the High Line . . .” There’s no better authority; for fifty years, no one has given as much of himself as Mr. Kirkland to Chelsea’s preservation and planning. "If I wasn’t used to the city, I would be outraged," he added in a public forum on October 18th.
The High Line was also created with over a hundred million dollars in public funding, making stakeholders of all New Yorkers. Although Robert Hammond doesn’t seem to appreciate the value of others’ High Line contributions, he’s been uniquely entrusted to barter them. He also seems unaware of the backlash that may come of the ugly spectacle he’s created: Jamestown shoving past the public to hog prime space on a High Line it sees as a money-trough. The damage isn’t limited to the High Line. Chelsea’s residential character and historic authenticity will suffer, and the neighborhood made more like Times Square, a place of office towers and tourists, avoided by New Yorkers. Like Chelsea Market’s historic sensitivity, the rest of Chelsea is forgotten under the reigning High Line mania. Hammond’s failed 2009 attempt to have neighboring blocks taxed for High Line operating costs still rankles in Chelsea. In a public meeting on Jamestown's plan last year, Community Board 4’s Corey Johnson voiced a growing neighborhood mood, repeating, “I resent having the High Line used against us.”
Most New Yorkers I speak to are still unaware of what’s planned for Chelsea Market, but it’s coming soon, in 3D. There will be many a “who let that happen?” Frank Lloyd Wright claimed his buildings were portraits of his clients. Has Jamestown's architect, David Burns of STUDIOS Architecture, made his Chelsea Market design a group portrait of those behind the project? Maybe he's a better architect than we think.
ULURP promises more ugly pictures. As Speaker Quinn’s lack of answers attests, the process isn’t about responsible planning, but deals. ULURP reform cries out to be made an issue in the upcoming mayoral campaign. After what she's condoned at Chelsea Market, it’s not a cause Quinn can claim. After so bitterly letting down her own council district, one wonders just what she can claim to the rest of New York.
While Chelsea Market is a lost cause, it may be a big enough outrage to rally change, like Penn Station’s demolition, which was just as foolishly justified by the promise of jobs.
The entire Special West Chelsea District is already zoned C or M, allowing office construction throughout. The district is one of the most underdeveloped parts of Manhattan. Jamestown could build here, but that wouldn’t enrich property it already owns, Chelsea Market, which lies just outside the existing district boundary at lower right. Only three sites in the Special District are now eligible for the High Line Improvement Bonus. They are shown shaded at the bottom of the district map above. The one on the right has already been developed as the Caledonia apartment building. The one at lower left is the parking lot site shown in the photo below. Jamestown wants Chelsea Market brought into the Special District to exploit the bonus, which is described in text accompanying this map on City Planning’s website:
In recognition of the unique condition of the High Line between West 16th and 19th streets, where it broadens and crosses over 10th Avenue, adjacent development on these blocks could receive additional floor area through . . . restoration, remediation, and implementation of the High Line open space . . . at perhaps its most prominent location.
Jamestown will turn this bonus from a reward for cultivating open space into a reward for seizing it from the park “at perhaps its most prominent location."
Buying Michael Bolla's Chelsea Mansion for Dummies
A Daily News article on Michael Bolla’s restoration of 436 West 20th Street said "the house was raised 8 inches to become more level.” It appears to be tied to the house next door by a shared party wall. If Bolla raised his house without considering this, it might explain his house's cracked and sloping façade.
436 West 20th Street, the 1835 Chelsea row house that real estate broker Michael Bolla “restored” and marketed as Chelsea Mansion is for sale. When ArchiTakes first reported on the project's violations, Bolla swore to a judge that he'd been defamed and trumpeted legal action aimed at me in an obliging press. The press failed to report that he never sued.
ArchiTakes finds Bolla's row house still has issues at the Department of Buildings that any potential buyer should know about. Drawings have been filed to answer the Department's objections from an April 7, 2010, audit, but construction hasn't been modified to match these drawings.
One Building Department objection addressed the new windows Bolla installed in the house’s party wall with its neighbor. Drawings filed in response on April 7, 2011, show the windows as sprinklered, 3/4-hour fire-rated, and a model that's steel-framed. If this change has been made, the windows would violate Bolla’s earlier approval from the Landmarks Commission, which is for wood-framed windows. ArchiTakes found no application on file at the Department of Buildings to install sprinklers in the house.
Another Department of Buildings audit objection referred to an apparent building enlargement at the fourth floor and attic, where Bolla built a mezzanine within a raised rear roof. The objection calls for filing an Alteration Type 1 application if this is the case, a higher level than the Type 2 application Bolla filed for what it lists as $75,000 of interior renovation. Filing an Alteration Type 1 would require Bolla to obtain a Certificate of Occupancy for the house and make the potentially substantial modifications that might entail. (Converting the house to single-family use would do the same.) An Alteration Type 1 would also mean that Bolla’s work couldn't be inspected and signed-off as legal by his architect, but would be subject to Department of Buildings inspection. Bolla’s architect answered the Department's objection about enlargement by filing new drawings that simply don't show the mezzanine, although it's actually still there and serving as a bedroom. His actions suggest that the Department’s self-certification program, which trusts in the integrity of state-licensed professionals, amounts to letting the fox guard the hen house. The New York Times called self-certification "an honor system instituted to save money during the Giuliani administration" in a feature on architect Robert Scarano, viewed by many as the poster child of the program's abuse.
To dismiss an objection by the Department of Buildings about the penthouse mezzanine Bolla installed under a raised rear roof, his architect Gary Silver filed this drawing nearly a year ago on November 2, 2011, which shows the mezzanine removed and a high ceiling in its place, at right. Silver must sign off that actual construction matches this drawing, unless a new buyer wants to take that one on. The mezzanine appears to remain in use as a bedroom, as viewed from a nearby building. Bolla's website describes the penthouse as currently rented.
Bolla’s alterations won’t be finally accepted by the Department of Buildings until his architect, Gary Silver, signs off that he has made an inspection and found that construction matches the drawings he filed. As things stand, this is a tall order. The Department's online Building Information System shows that Silver hasn't signed off, and that the project's work permit renewal would have expired in January. I have informed the Building Department’s Manhattan Borough Commissioner in person of the discrepancy between the house’s currently filed documents and its built reality.
The status of the party wall windows is a public safety concern, as this type of window affects potential fire spread between two properties, not to mention the safety of Bolla's tenants. His new penthouse windows are only a few feet above the roof of the adjacent 19th century row house and its egress stair's skylight. Technically, the current building code doesn't allow windows in lot-line walls, but what it calls "protected openings," which must be fire-resistance rated. Earlier codes which may apply allow windows but require them to be fire-resistance rated. (See below.) Until they are inspected and certified, there's no way to know that they are protected with code compliant ratings. A complaint was made to the Department of Buildings about these windows on December 15th, 2010. According to the house’s records in the Department’s online Building Information System, an inspector who visited the house on March 8, 2011, in response to the complaint was unable to gain access, and inspectors were likewise unable to gain access on three later dates. Each time, inspectors posted an LS-4, which the Department’s website describes as “a legal notice that directs property representatives to contact DOB to arrange for an inspection.” Inspectors were likewise unable to gain access on two visits, one last week, in response to a complaint of filed drawings not matching actual construction. They again posted LS-4s, bringing the total to six.
If you think Bolla couldn’t hear the doorbell over the din of hammers and saws speeding his building into code compliance, you’re sadly mistaken. In the same period when inspectors were not let in, others were. Bolla told the press he was renting the penthouse with its “mezzanine floor” bedroom to composer Claire van Kampen and her husband, actor Mark Rylance, in an AM New York piece titled, “NYC's wealthy, leery of buying, embrace super-pricey rentals.” The lot-line windows that still haven’t been signed-off on appear prominently in advertisements for the house on both Bolla’s and Prudential Douglas Elliman’s websites along with descriptions of the river view they are claimed to provide. As of this writing, Bolla’s website says the penthouse is rented.
Potential buyers who visit 436 West 20th Street should know the house comes with very big strings attached to the Department of Buildings that won’t be cut with the sale of the house. It might be worth asking why Bolla hasn’t tied them off himself in so much time and now wants to pass them off to a new owner. Typically, the lender for any buyer needing a mortgage will check the house's Department of Buildings data, where unfinished business in the public record and the absence of a Certificate of Occupancy would be red flags.
Not long after Bolla’s legal action aimed at me was covered in the New York Post, I was contacted by Patricia Henrichs, his former business partner in Luxury Lofts & Homes, who wanted to meet. Ms. Henrichs, who passed away last year, offered encouragement and her belief that Bolla wasn't good for his word. She said she had long handled apartment rentals in 436 for its former owner, Frances Gaar, and arranged Bolla's purchase of it. Ms. Henrichs said Bolla promised the dying Ms. Gaar that he would preserve her house, as has been reported in the New York Times. She saw Bolla's subsequent alterations as a betrayal of her old client's dying wish, and was dumbfounded when Bolla sent out an antique chandelier for cleaning and it came back looking more replaced than cleaned. Ms. Henrichs claimed to have confronted Bolla, reminding him she’d been looking at the original chandelier for years and wasn’t fooled. She also said she had feared Bolla would short her on her finder's fee, after watching him make less than full payment to others on the excuse of poor service. She claimed to have obtained her own full payment from Bolla's investment partner, whom she trusted more.
“We heard the same stories,” Lesley Doyel and her husband Nick Fritsch told ArchiTakes. “Pat said Bolla had specifically promised Frances Gaar he’d keep the chandeliers with the house.” The two were old friends and next door neighbors of Ms. Henrichs on the same block of West 20th Street where 436 stands. Ms. Doyel is co-president of the community advocacy group, Save Chelsea. The couple told ArchiTakes:
Prior to Mr. Bolla's renovation, we were asked by him to write a letter of support to the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission. We wrote the letter in good faith, thinking it was to be a serious and thorough job. We were subsequently astonished and aghast at the condition in which his restoration appears to have left the house, with facade cracks visible even at a distance.
Bolla's alterations have left the house nearly unrecognizable from the back, where the rear slope of its traditional gable roof has been tilted up until effectively flat to squeeze in the fourth floor mezzanine missing in the current filed drawings. Historically incongruous air conditioning units and their support steel have been mounted above the historic roof peak. Its botched street façade has stood cracked for so long it received a "failure to maintain" violation from the Department of Buildings last August. Bolla's work earned multiple Landmarks violations and two failed audits from the Department of Buildings. Nonetheless, he referred to himself “ . . . as a preservationist, as an architect . . .” in a news item about his much publicized financial rescue of a Lower East Side Judaica store earlier this year. (The store was soon quietly replaced by a clothing boutique.) Anyone can call himself a preservationist, but architects have to be licensed. It comes as no surprise that Bolla isn’t listed as such on the verification page of the New York State Office of the Professions. Bolla’s way with the truth is at least consistent, whether to a judge, the press, city oversight agencies, or - if Ms. Henrichs was to be believed - individuals who place trust in him. ArchiTakes will be back soon with a closer look at his world, where some in real estate and PR exploit the press and courts, and attack free speech and public participation in government. We'll also continue our look at Bolla, who in August chaired an event on business ethics at the Aish Center on the Lower East Side. He'll be honored at the Center's annual gala on November 13th, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, as he was at the Carlebach Shul's annual gala on June 19th. Bolla's recently emerging persona as savior of the Jewish Lower East Side corresponds with his marketing campaign for the neighborhood's Madison-Jackson condo development as a catalyst for Jewish culture. Meanwhile, 436 West 20th Street can be yours for $19 million, complete with “original chandeliers of Czechoslovakian crystal dating from 1830,” according to the website of Prudential Douglas Elliman, where Bolla is a managing director. Elliman's website says ". . . Bolla brings an in-depth understanding and experience in dealing with NYC Department of Buildings . . ."

Buying Michael Bolla's Chelsea Mansion for Dummies
A Daily News article on Michael Bolla’s restoration of 436 West 20th Street said "the house was raised 8 inches to become more level.” It appears to be tied to the house next door by a shared party wall. If Bolla raised his house without considering this, it might explain his house's cracked and sloping façade.
436 West 20th Street, the 1835 Chelsea row house that real estate broker Michael Bolla “restored” and marketed as Chelsea Mansion is for sale. When ArchiTakes first reported on the project's violations, Bolla swore to a judge that he'd been defamed and trumpeted legal action aimed at me in an obliging press. The press failed to report that he never sued.
ArchiTakes finds Bolla's row house still has issues at the Department of Buildings that any potential buyer should know about. Drawings have been filed to answer the Department's objections from an April 7, 2010, audit, but construction hasn't been modified to match these drawings.
One Building Department objection addressed the new windows Bolla installed in the house’s party wall with its neighbor. Drawings filed in response on April 7, 2011, show the windows as sprinklered, 3/4-hour fire-rated, and a model that's steel-framed. If this change has been made, the windows would violate Bolla’s earlier approval from the Landmarks Commission, which is for wood-framed windows. ArchiTakes found no application on file at the Department of Buildings to install sprinklers in the house.
Another Department of Buildings audit objection referred to an apparent building enlargement at the fourth floor and attic, where Bolla built a mezzanine within a raised rear roof. The objection calls for filing an Alteration Type 1 application if this is the case, a higher level than the Type 2 application Bolla filed for what it lists as $75,000 of interior renovation. Filing an Alteration Type 1 would require Bolla to obtain a Certificate of Occupancy for the house and make the potentially substantial modifications that might entail. (Converting the house to single-family use would do the same.) An Alteration Type 1 would also mean that Bolla’s work couldn't be inspected and signed-off as legal by his architect, but would be subject to Department of Buildings inspection. Bolla’s architect answered the Department's objection about enlargement by filing new drawings that simply don't show the mezzanine, although it's actually still there and serving as a bedroom. His actions suggest that the Department’s self-certification program, which trusts in the integrity of state-licensed professionals, amounts to letting the fox guard the hen house. The New York Times called self-certification "an honor system instituted to save money during the Giuliani administration" in a feature on architect Robert Scarano, viewed by many as the poster child of the program's abuse.
To dismiss an objection by the Department of Buildings about the penthouse mezzanine Bolla installed under a raised rear roof, his architect Gary Silver filed this drawing nearly a year ago on November 2, 2011, which shows the mezzanine removed and a high ceiling in its place, at right. Silver must sign off that actual construction matches this drawing, unless a new buyer wants to take that one on. The mezzanine appears to remain in use as a bedroom, as viewed from a nearby building. Bolla's website describes the penthouse as currently rented.
Bolla’s alterations won’t be finally accepted by the Department of Buildings until his architect, Gary Silver, signs off that he has made an inspection and found that construction matches the drawings he filed. As things stand, this is a tall order. The Department's online Building Information System shows that Silver hasn't signed off, and that the project's work permit renewal would have expired in January. I have informed the Building Department’s Manhattan Borough Commissioner in person of the discrepancy between the house’s currently filed documents and its built reality.
The status of the party wall windows is a public safety concern, as this type of window affects potential fire spread between two properties, not to mention the safety of Bolla's tenants. His new penthouse windows are only a few feet above the roof of the adjacent 19th century row house and its egress stair's skylight. Technically, the current building code doesn't allow windows in lot-line walls, but what it calls "protected openings," which must be fire-resistance rated. Earlier codes which may apply allow windows but require them to be fire-resistance rated. (See below.) Until they are inspected and certified, there's no way to know that they are protected with code compliant ratings. A complaint was made to the Department of Buildings about these windows on December 15th, 2010. According to the house’s records in the Department’s online Building Information System, an inspector who visited the house on March 8, 2011, in response to the complaint was unable to gain access, and inspectors were likewise unable to gain access on three later dates. Each time, inspectors posted an LS-4, which the Department’s website describes as “a legal notice that directs property representatives to contact DOB to arrange for an inspection.” Inspectors were likewise unable to gain access on two visits, one last week, in response to a complaint of filed drawings not matching actual construction. They again posted LS-4s, bringing the total to six.
If you think Bolla couldn’t hear the doorbell over the din of hammers and saws speeding his building into code compliance, you’re sadly mistaken. In the same period when inspectors were not let in, others were. Bolla told the press he was renting the penthouse with its “mezzanine floor” bedroom to composer Claire van Kampen and her husband, actor Mark Rylance, in an AM New York piece titled, “NYC's wealthy, leery of buying, embrace super-pricey rentals.” The lot-line windows that still haven’t been signed-off on appear prominently in advertisements for the house on both Bolla’s and Prudential Douglas Elliman’s websites along with descriptions of the river view they are claimed to provide. As of this writing, Bolla’s website says the penthouse is rented.
Potential buyers who visit 436 West 20th Street should know the house comes with very big strings attached to the Department of Buildings that won’t be cut with the sale of the house. It might be worth asking why Bolla hasn’t tied them off himself in so much time and now wants to pass them off to a new owner. Typically, the lender for any buyer needing a mortgage will check the house's Department of Buildings data, where unfinished business in the public record and the absence of a Certificate of Occupancy would be red flags.
Not long after Bolla’s legal action aimed at me was covered in the New York Post, I was contacted by Patricia Henrichs, his former business partner in Luxury Lofts & Homes, who wanted to meet. Ms. Henrichs, who passed away last year, offered encouragement and her belief that Bolla wasn't good for his word. She said she had long handled apartment rentals in 436 for its former owner, Frances Gaar, and arranged Bolla's purchase of it. Ms. Henrichs said Bolla promised the dying Ms. Gaar that he would preserve her house, as has been reported in the New York Times. She saw Bolla's subsequent alterations as a betrayal of her old client's dying wish, and was dumbfounded when Bolla sent out an antique chandelier for cleaning and it came back looking more replaced than cleaned. Ms. Henrichs claimed to have confronted Bolla, reminding him she’d been looking at the original chandelier for years and wasn’t fooled. She also said she had feared Bolla would short her on her finder's fee, after watching him make less than full payment to others on the excuse of poor service. She claimed to have obtained her own full payment from Bolla's investment partner, whom she trusted more.
“We heard the same stories,” Lesley Doyel and her husband Nick Fritsch told ArchiTakes. “Pat said Bolla had specifically promised Frances Gaar he’d keep the chandeliers with the house.” The two were old friends and next door neighbors of Ms. Henrichs on the same block of West 20th Street where 436 stands. Ms. Doyel is co-president of the community advocacy group, Save Chelsea. The couple told ArchiTakes:
Prior to Mr. Bolla's renovation, we were asked by him to write a letter of support to the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission. We wrote the letter in good faith, thinking it was to be a serious and thorough job. We were subsequently astonished and aghast at the condition in which his restoration appears to have left the house, with facade cracks visible even at a distance.
Bolla's alterations have left the house nearly unrecognizable from the back, where the rear slope of its traditional gable roof has been tilted up until effectively flat to squeeze in the fourth floor mezzanine missing in the current filed drawings. Historically incongruous air conditioning units and their support steel have been mounted above the historic roof peak. Its botched street façade has stood cracked for so long it received a "failure to maintain" violation from the Department of Buildings last August. Bolla's work earned multiple Landmarks violations and two failed audits from the Department of Buildings. Nonetheless, he referred to himself “ . . . as a preservationist, as an architect . . .” in a news item about his much publicized financial rescue of a Lower East Side Judaica store earlier this year. (The store was soon quietly replaced by a clothing boutique.) Anyone can call himself a preservationist, but architects have to be licensed. It comes as no surprise that Bolla isn’t listed as such on the verification page of the New York State Office of the Professions. Bolla’s way with the truth is at least consistent, whether to a judge, the press, city oversight agencies, or - if Ms. Henrichs was to be believed - individuals who place trust in him. ArchiTakes will be back soon with a closer look at his world, where some in real estate and PR exploit the press and courts, and attack free speech and public participation in government. We'll also continue our look at Bolla, who in August chaired an event on business ethics at the Aish Center on the Lower East Side. He'll be honored at the Center's annual gala on November 13th, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, as he was at the Carlebach Shul's annual gala on June 19th. Bolla's recently emerging persona as savior of the Jewish Lower East Side corresponds with his marketing campaign for the neighborhood's Madison-Jackson condo development as a catalyst for Jewish culture. Meanwhile, 436 West 20th Street can be yours for $19 million, complete with “original chandeliers of Czechoslovakian crystal dating from 1830,” according to the website of Prudential Douglas Elliman, where Bolla is a managing director. Elliman's website says ". . . Bolla brings an in-depth understanding and experience in dealing with NYC Department of Buildings . . ."

Is the City Building Google a High Line Skybox?
Shown in gold at top are Jamestown Properties’ proposed additions to Chelsea Market: 90,000 square feet at Ninth Avenue and 240,000 square feet at Tenth Avenue above the High Line, which is shown in green. Below is what Jamestown’s proposal might look like, give or take a floor, if it were really about needed office space and not about raiding the High Line’s light, air and sky views. Call it Scheme B. Either option would require a zoning change to increase Chelsea Market’s floor area by 330,000 square feet, but Jamestown’s would need a zoning change that would perversely allow construction within the footprint of a public park. City approval of Jamestown’s proposal is nonetheless thought to be a done deal.
There’s no reason to build above the historic market complex at all when there are vacant and underdeveloped lots right across 15th Street, and when Hudson Yards – just 14 blocks to the north - is zoned for 26 million square feet of new office space. Scheme B is submitted only to expose how far Jamestown is bending over backward to seize High Line open space from park-goers. Scheme B would add onto only the east end of Chelsea Market, completing the street wall above the one-story Buddakan Restaurant, and setting back at the level of the existing Ninth Avenue cornice line and existing side street rooflines.
Scheme B has these advantages:
New office space would be closer to subway lines and Google’s new headquarters across Ninth Avenue
Construction wouldn’t be inefficiently split between sites at opposite ends of an 800-foot long block
None of the new construction would be built over the interior court that now brings natural light to Chelsea Market’s retail concourse
The cost of cantilevering part of a tower over the High Line would be avoided
No appreciable shadows would be cast on the High Line, and it wouldn’t be robbed of light and air
The shape of Chelsea Market’s neighboring Caledonia apartment building, sculpted by zoning to step down to the existing height of Chelsea Market at Tenth Avenue, wouldn’t become a multimillion dollar irrelevancy
Scheme B would provide all the dubious benefits - none of which actually warrants a zoning change - which Jamestown claims for its own scheme: creating jobs, letting current tenants grow in place, and increasing customer traffic for Chelsea Market’s retailers. The High Line would still get its full payout from Jamestown, a contribution of about $19 million dollars, from a formula based on the total square footage of the building addition. Scheme B would also respect Jamestown’s phony case that its proposal spares mid-block character by directing area toward the avenues. Even if Chelsea Market had a low-rise mid-block context rather than a 25-story housing project on one side and hulking loft buildings on the other, avoiding the middle of the block to build over a park is like swerving to miss a dog and running over its owner. Clearly, something other than responsible urban planning is behind the city’s certification of Jamestown’s proposal, which is consistently based on such ridiculous and plainly self-serving arguments. Everything points to a back room deal between a few key players: Robert Hammond, co-founder and president of Friends of the High Line, is apparently desperate for the $19 million Jamestown would pay into a High Line maintenance fund in return for the floor area bonus it needs to add onto Chelsea Market. This follows on his failed effort to have the community close the gap in the park’s operating costs with a tax on those living near the High Line. Hammond is now reduced to letting an opportunistic Jamestown gouge the park and the community just to keep the High Line in fresh paint. His support for Jamestown’s proposal gives it all the credibility - and perhaps all the viability - it has. If this is his financial plan for the park, one has to wonder how long it’ll be until the next fire sale. Amanda Burden, the City Planning Commission chair, must surely view the High Line as a major piece of her legacy. She may so identify Hammond with the park as to deem its resources his to parlay. This would be a big assumption, given that $112.2 million in city funding and $20.3 million from the federal government built most of the park, according to the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s website. The High Line open space Jamestown would privatize and cash in on was enriched with tax dollars as part of a public process intended to create a park. Jamestown Properties sold Google its new headquarters, the full-block building at 111 Eighth Avenue, for $1.9 billion and then bought out its partners in ownership of Chelsea Market, where Google also has offices, across Ninth Avenue. Jamestown, first and foremost an investment firm, would have a gold mine in space over the High Line that might be turned into office floors with views up and down New York’s hottest new attraction and over the Hudson. It has a ready, deep-pocketed tenant in Google. Jamestown’s promotional material suggests that its tenant needs more space: “As Google looks to occupy 100% of 111 Eighth Avenue, and Chelsea Market’s office floors remain fully leased, Jamestown is looking to capture the neighborhood’s dynamic growth and ensure that current Chelsea Market tenants have the option to grow within the complex.” Jamestown’s frequent reference to an emerging multi-block “technology corridor” might well be code for a Google campus stretching from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson. Google is the 800-pound gorilla in Chelsea. When Sergey Brin cut the ribbon on his company’s new Chelsea Market offices in 2008, he shared scissors with no less than Senator Chuck Schumer. Google is catnip to politicians, especially the tech-smitten Bloomberg administration. As reported in a recent New York Times article by David Chen about Jamestown’s plans:A Bloomberg spokeswoman, Julie Wood, called the proposal “an important economic development project,” saying it would prompt additional development along the High Line, and attract more technology firms to a neighborhood that is already home to Google’s New York City headquarters and that will be the temporary home of Cornell’s new applied sciences school.
Google might not only afford the top-dollar rent on space above the High Line, but use views from it to further its well known practice of luring talent with perks. Don’t look for the City Planning Commission to reshape Jamestown’s proposal into anything like Scheme B. Clearly, responsible zoning isn’t the issue. There’s every appearance that the deal, from the start, has been about selling off a prime piece of High Line open space. If not, why would City Planning even have certified Jamestown’s proposal to build above the park? Powerful parties get what they want. Anyone naïve enough to ask whatever happened to democracy gets a horse laugh. If Google’s name opened doors for this, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture: city government complicit in taking a public amenity from its people to dangle before a private corporation it holds in higher regard. Google wouldn’t have to do any evil to get its private High Line skybox. That would all be taken care of. If memory serves, when a corporation threatened to leave the city unless it got a tax break in the 1980s, Mayor Koch replied: “Go ahead. When you leave New York, you’re going nowhere.” If this city isn’t a big enough draw for Google, our leaders shouldn’t respond by making it less attractive to everyone else. Technically, Jamestown’s proposal is still in the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, known by the dyspeptic acronym, ULURP. In practice, the review process is a charade of public participation, a rigged game serving mainly to dignify deals already sealed by the time the “review process” is triggered by City Planning certification. As proof, only one project in memory has been certified but not built: a redevelopment of the Bronx’s Kingsbridge Armory, rejected in 2009 under atypical circumstances. Although local community boards get to weigh in on projects during ULURP, resignation reigns. Board members feel that if they flatly oppose a project, it will get built anyway and they’ll lose a place at the table to bargain for concessions or offsets, so they vote “no, unless” or “yes, if” concessions are made. These typically amount to side deals, like Community Board 4’s vote to reject Jamestown’s plan unless off-site affordable housing is provided. This vote opened the door for Chelsea’s City Council Member, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, to support the proposal without overruling a flat “no” vote by her board. Speaker Quinn is the only one whose vote can now kill Jamestown’s proposal. Chelsea residents feel betrayed by their Community Board's vote and are outraged at having their neighborhood made more like Times Square to benefit the High Line and corporate fat cats. Speaker Quinn is caught between responsibility to her constituents and a pro-business stance essential to her campaign for mayor. Maybe there’s a third way: vote against Jamestown’s proposal without conditions, pointing to solid land-use reasons and the many ways in which Jamestown’s proposal is egregious, deceptive and predatory. It’s not like there’s any lack of evidence. Is no business bad enough that opposing it would mean Quinn is anti-business? Would she rather be known for betraying her constituents and letting rich corporations pillage the public realm?
Is the City Building Google a High Line Skybox?
Shown in gold at top are Jamestown Properties’ proposed additions to Chelsea Market: 90,000 square feet at Ninth Avenue and 240,000 square feet at Tenth Avenue above the High Line, which is shown in green. Below is what Jamestown’s proposal might look like, give or take a floor, if it were really about needed office space and not about raiding the High Line’s light, air and sky views. Call it Scheme B. Either option would require a zoning change to increase Chelsea Market’s floor area by 330,000 square feet, but Jamestown’s would need a zoning change that would perversely allow construction within the footprint of a public park. City approval of Jamestown’s proposal is nonetheless thought to be a done deal.
There’s no reason to build above the historic market complex at all when there are vacant and underdeveloped lots right across 15th Street, and when Hudson Yards – just 14 blocks to the north - is zoned for 26 million square feet of new office space. Scheme B is submitted only to expose how far Jamestown is bending over backward to seize High Line open space from park-goers. Scheme B would add onto only the east end of Chelsea Market, completing the street wall above the one-story Buddakan Restaurant, and setting back at the level of the existing Ninth Avenue cornice line and existing side street rooflines.
Scheme B has these advantages:
New office space would be closer to subway lines and Google’s new headquarters across Ninth Avenue
Construction wouldn’t be inefficiently split between sites at opposite ends of an 800-foot long block
None of the new construction would be built over the interior court that now brings natural light to Chelsea Market’s retail concourse
The cost of cantilevering part of a tower over the High Line would be avoided
No appreciable shadows would be cast on the High Line, and it wouldn’t be robbed of light and air
The shape of Chelsea Market’s neighboring Caledonia apartment building, sculpted by zoning to step down to the existing height of Chelsea Market at Tenth Avenue, wouldn’t become a multimillion dollar irrelevancy
Scheme B would provide all the dubious benefits - none of which actually warrants a zoning change - which Jamestown claims for its own scheme: creating jobs, letting current tenants grow in place, and increasing customer traffic for Chelsea Market’s retailers. The High Line would still get its full payout from Jamestown, a contribution of about $19 million dollars, from a formula based on the total square footage of the building addition. Scheme B would also respect Jamestown’s phony case that its proposal spares mid-block character by directing area toward the avenues. Even if Chelsea Market had a low-rise mid-block context rather than a 25-story housing project on one side and hulking loft buildings on the other, avoiding the middle of the block to build over a park is like swerving to miss a dog and running over its owner. Clearly, something other than responsible urban planning is behind the city’s certification of Jamestown’s proposal, which is consistently based on such ridiculous and plainly self-serving arguments. Everything points to a back room deal between a few key players: Robert Hammond, co-founder and president of Friends of the High Line, is apparently desperate for the $19 million Jamestown would pay into a High Line maintenance fund in return for the floor area bonus it needs to add onto Chelsea Market. This follows on his failed effort to have the community close the gap in the park’s operating costs with a tax on those living near the High Line. Hammond is now reduced to letting an opportunistic Jamestown gouge the park and the community just to keep the High Line in fresh paint. His support for Jamestown’s proposal gives it all the credibility - and perhaps all the viability - it has. If this is his financial plan for the park, one has to wonder how long it’ll be until the next fire sale. Amanda Burden, the City Planning Commission chair, must surely view the High Line as a major piece of her legacy. She may so identify Hammond with the park as to deem its resources his to parlay. This would be a big assumption, given that $112.2 million in city funding and $20.3 million from the federal government built most of the park, according to the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s website. The High Line open space Jamestown would privatize and cash in on was enriched with tax dollars as part of a public process intended to create a park. Jamestown Properties sold Google its new headquarters, the full-block building at 111 Eighth Avenue, for $1.9 billion and then bought out its partners in ownership of Chelsea Market, where Google also has offices, across Ninth Avenue. Jamestown, first and foremost an investment firm, would have a gold mine in space over the High Line that might be turned into office floors with views up and down New York’s hottest new attraction and over the Hudson. It has a ready, deep-pocketed tenant in Google. Jamestown’s promotional material suggests that its tenant needs more space: “As Google looks to occupy 100% of 111 Eighth Avenue, and Chelsea Market’s office floors remain fully leased, Jamestown is looking to capture the neighborhood’s dynamic growth and ensure that current Chelsea Market tenants have the option to grow within the complex.” Jamestown’s frequent reference to an emerging multi-block “technology corridor” might well be code for a Google campus stretching from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson. Google is the 800-pound gorilla in Chelsea. When Sergey Brin cut the ribbon on his company’s new Chelsea Market offices in 2008, he shared scissors with no less than Senator Chuck Schumer. Google is catnip to politicians, especially the tech-smitten Bloomberg administration. As reported in a recent New York Times article by David Chen about Jamestown’s plans:A Bloomberg spokeswoman, Julie Wood, called the proposal “an important economic development project,” saying it would prompt additional development along the High Line, and attract more technology firms to a neighborhood that is already home to Google’s New York City headquarters and that will be the temporary home of Cornell’s new applied sciences school.
Google might not only afford the top-dollar rent on space above the High Line, but use views from it to further its well known practice of luring talent with perks. Don’t look for the City Planning Commission to reshape Jamestown’s proposal into anything like Scheme B. Clearly, responsible zoning isn’t the issue. There’s every appearance that the deal, from the start, has been about selling off a prime piece of High Line open space. If not, why would City Planning even have certified Jamestown’s proposal to build above the park? Powerful parties get what they want. Anyone naïve enough to ask whatever happened to democracy gets a horse laugh. If Google’s name opened doors for this, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture: city government complicit in taking a public amenity from its people to dangle before a private corporation it holds in higher regard. Google wouldn’t have to do any evil to get its private High Line skybox. That would all be taken care of. If memory serves, when a corporation threatened to leave the city unless it got a tax break in the 1980s, Mayor Koch replied: “Go ahead. When you leave New York, you’re going nowhere.” If this city isn’t a big enough draw for Google, our leaders shouldn’t respond by making it less attractive to everyone else. Technically, Jamestown’s proposal is still in the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, known by the dyspeptic acronym, ULURP. In practice, the review process is a charade of public participation, a rigged game serving mainly to dignify deals already sealed by the time the “review process” is triggered by City Planning certification. As proof, only one project in memory has been certified but not built: a redevelopment of the Bronx’s Kingsbridge Armory, rejected in 2009 under atypical circumstances. Although local community boards get to weigh in on projects during ULURP, resignation reigns. Board members feel that if they flatly oppose a project, it will get built anyway and they’ll lose a place at the table to bargain for concessions or offsets, so they vote “no, unless” or “yes, if” concessions are made. These typically amount to side deals, like Community Board 4’s vote to reject Jamestown’s plan unless off-site affordable housing is provided. This vote opened the door for Chelsea’s City Council Member, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, to support the proposal without overruling a flat “no” vote by her board. Speaker Quinn is the only one whose vote can now kill Jamestown’s proposal. Chelsea residents feel betrayed by their Community Board's vote and are outraged at having their neighborhood made more like Times Square to benefit the High Line and corporate fat cats. Speaker Quinn is caught between responsibility to her constituents and a pro-business stance essential to her campaign for mayor. Maybe there’s a third way: vote against Jamestown’s proposal without conditions, pointing to solid land-use reasons and the many ways in which Jamestown’s proposal is egregious, deceptive and predatory. It’s not like there’s any lack of evidence. Is no business bad enough that opposing it would mean Quinn is anti-business? Would she rather be known for betraying her constituents and letting rich corporations pillage the public realm?
High Noon at Chelsea Market
The west end of Chelsea Market's concourse incorporates the historic Nabisco complex's train shed. About eighty feet of its distinctive clerestory window strip would be blocked by courtyard infill from Jamestown Properties' proposed addition of a third of a million square feet of office space above it and the High Line. Jamestown's proposal requires a zoning change that would only hurt Chelsea Market, the High Line and the community. The proposal is slated for city certification on March 26th. While this would technically begin the city's review process, experience says certification would all but guarantee an addition to Chelsea Market, almost certainly including the cash-cow-in-the-sky office addition above the High Line that's driving everything. By the time a project is certified, back-room handshakes have typically secured its ultimate approval. The subsequent "review process" merely affords limited opportunities for damage control and concession-seeking by the community.
It's thought that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who also represents Chelsea, is the one person whose opposition could stop certification. Speaker Quinn is reportedly torn between constituents' opposition to the project and her own mayoral ambitions, which might be helped by support from a pro-development business community. Her office has asked community members how the proposal might be made more palatable, apparently in pursuit of a sweet spot between opposed interests. Viewing the project as inevitable, Community Board 4 has even publicly presented its own modifications to Jamestown's proposal that might "benefit" the community. Refusing to play with Quislings, the community group Save Chelsea has held all along that Jamestown's proposal is irredeemable and should simply be rejected. No doubt, other developers who would cash in on the High Line are watching how all this plays out. This week, all eyes are on Speaker Quinn. Her actions won't just have a major impact on Chelsea, but on how she defines herself as a potential leader for all New York, and whether she can stand out against the business-as-usual backdrop of real estate running politics in New York.
If Amanda Burden's fingerprints aren't all over Jamestown's proposal, the City Planning Commission Chair should know that's what people say. Respected in the architectural community for her discernment, Burden's perceived affiliation with this turkey is a real puzzle. As this model photo shows, the office addition looks like a giant rooftop air conditioning unit with a building attached. Bad as it is, the architecture can't touch the ugliness of the urban planning, which would pervert zoning to place private enrichment over public good. The project's overwhelming motivation is also apparent in this photo: cashing in on protected views of the Hudson over the small park in the foreground and up and down the length of New York's hottest new attraction, the High Line.
What's wrong with this picture, which looks like Jamestown's model? Plopping a modern box on a historic building is so wrongheaded it made the dust jacket flap of a book on additions, as an example of how not to do it. Marcel Breuer's panned design for a glass box above Grand Central is oblivious to the way "one building affects the meaning of another when their expressions are combined and interact," in the words the late architect Paul Byard. Jamestown's model is on view at the west end of the Chelsea Market concourse. Look for yourself. You don't need an architect to tell you it's wrong.
The west end of Chelsea Market is no Grand Central, but it is an authentic, integral part of the High Line, built with it and expanding on its rugged machine-age art deco vocabulary. Jamestown dismisses this architecture by pointing out that it replaced part of Nabisco's original 1892 structure. Nonetheless, the entire block is listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places and begs to be left alone. A zoning change will allow the diminishment of this historic complex into a base for architectural cluelessness. Additional floor area rights aren't needed here, with vacant lots awaiting development right across 15th Street, Ground Zero developments struggling to lure tenants with incentives, and the nearby Hudson Yards area now zoned for 26 million square feet of new office space.
To encourage preservation of light and open space near the High Line, the Special West Chelsea Zoning text allows transfer of development rights away from the park not just to adjacent lots, as is usual, but to remote sites within the District. Sherwood Equities has reportedly just sold such rights to the owner of a distant site for $500 a square foot, a premium that no doubt reflects how far the High Line has increased local property values. Imagine what property smack on top of the High Line might be worth, and you're on to Jamestown's formula: just reverse those pesky arrows in the zoning text illustration and pile right on the High Line; buy support for this unconscionable plan with a payout to the High Line of services within Chelsea Market and $17 million in maintenance funds. The cost is nothing next to the windfall. Joshua David and Robert Hammond are rightly folk heroes for envisioning the High Line and fighting to make it real. In return for Jamestown's promises, they are also now its only credible ambassadors. They should take this role seriously, because they're all the fig leaf Jamestown has, and many see them as advocating against Chelsea's character. Some see them as working against the best interests of the High Line as well, which may be about to pass from golden age to lost innocence. As reported in a DNA Info article, a recent public forum on Jamestown's proposal drew dozens of community members to the podium in opposition, while only the High Line's Vice President for Planning & Design spoke in favor.
A block north of Tenth Avenue Square, the wedge of space between the High Line and Tenth Avenue is slated to become "18th Street Plaza." Text accompanying this image in the book Designing the High Line (published by Friends of the High Line) states: "A prominent street-level public plaza will become an iconic hub for the neighborhood, linking the High Line to the life of the street. A grand stair doubles as an inviting seating element, while a new elevated snack bar, cantilevered from the High Line, frames the edge of the site." The view above shows this feature from its elevated snack bar, looking back toward Tenth Avenue Square's viewing window, seen at left in the foreground of Chelsea Market. The ensemble would form a centerpiece for the High Line on a civic scale, its nearest thing to a Bethesda Fountain. Jamestown's proposed addition to Chelsea Market would be a prominent presence here.
Shown in gold above, Jamestown's tower over Chelsea Market would displace open sky as the focus of the 18th Street Plaza's grand stair. "Views to the sky" and "view corridors" are stated concerns of the Special West Chelsea District zoning, which specifically requires that "the High Line shall remain open and unobstructed from the High Line bed to the sky . . ." Jamestown sees this as irrelevant to part of the High Line already covered by Chelsea Market, but the rule clearly wasn't meant to protect views only for prone stargazers.
A picture of design success, the High Line's popular Tenth Avenue Square grandstand feature is due north of Chelsea Market, seen at rear in this photo. Jamestown's addition would cast it entirely into shadow for part of each day during the coldest few months of the year. The project's Environmental Assessment Statement says "the High Line path areas function similar to public sidewalks, which the CEQR
ArchiTakes' study of approximate shadows at noon on November 1st shows existing conditions at left and Jamestown's Chelsea Market addition, in gold, and its shadows at right. Tenth Avenue Square is at bottom. At left is the Caledonia apartment building, sculpted by the Special West Chelsea District zoning to step down toward Chelsea Market's existing height and "optimize conditions on the High Line and along West 16th Street," in the words of the District's zoning text. Jamestown's tower would render the Caledonia's multimillion dollar form irrelevant and destroy the space it defines, in the name of "directing floor area toward the avenues" and "establishing lower heights on the mid-block to protect character." Gotta protect that rare mid-block character, come hell or High Line. Jamestown also claims contextualism in aligning its addition's lowest setback with the top of the building across Tenth Avenue, seen at upper right. This just incidentally makes for office space with unimaginably lucrative views. That the open space above Chesea Market was meant as a public amenity is crystal clear in the zoning's insistence that the Caledonia defer to it. This space is an integral part of a deliberate, successful park design that the public paid for and owns. Jamestown would exploit the value generated by public process and funding, taking space from the people it was created for, and renting it out for big bucks to reward private investors in a fund that bundles Chelsea Market with a building uptown and another in San Francisco. Chelsea, your zoning is but the third leg of Jamestown's investment strategy. Joshua David and Robert Hammond should remember that when the sky above Chelsea Market is gone, it's gone for good. How long will Jamestown's 17 million dollar sub-tithe to the High Line maintenance fund last? People are rightfully outraged that things have gotten this far, and city officials should know they're operating in broad daylight. It's to be hoped that Speaker Quinn represents her people, puts the populism that's in the air behind her sails, and does everything possible to keep Jamestown's greed-not-need zoning scam from certification.
Sign the petition against the Chelsea Market zoning change
More of what you can do now
More on Chelsea Market:
The Chelsea Market Deal, brought to you by ULURP - November 4, 2012
Is the City Building Google a High Line Skybox? - July 5, 2012
Jamestown's Shady Plan for Chelsea Market - November 22, 2011
What New Zoning Could Mean for Chelsea Market - May 31, 2011
Saving Chelsea Market - March 22, 2011
Other Chelsea News
High Noon at Chelsea Market
The west end of Chelsea Market's concourse incorporates the historic Nabisco complex's train shed. About eighty feet of its distinctive clerestory window strip would be blocked by courtyard infill from Jamestown Properties' proposed addition of a third of a million square feet of office space above it and the High Line. Jamestown's proposal requires a zoning change that would only hurt Chelsea Market, the High Line and the community. The proposal is slated for city certification on March 26th. While this would technically begin the city's review process, experience says certification would all but guarantee an addition to Chelsea Market, almost certainly including the cash-cow-in-the-sky office addition above the High Line that's driving everything. By the time a project is certified, back-room handshakes have typically secured its ultimate approval. The subsequent "review process" merely affords limited opportunities for damage control and concession-seeking by the community.
It's thought that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who also represents Chelsea, is the one person whose opposition could stop certification. Speaker Quinn is reportedly torn between constituents' opposition to the project and her own mayoral ambitions, which might be helped by support from a pro-development business community. Her office has asked community members how the proposal might be made more palatable, apparently in pursuit of a sweet spot between opposed interests. Viewing the project as inevitable, Community Board 4 has even publicly presented its own modifications to Jamestown's proposal that might "benefit" the community. Refusing to play with Quislings, the community group Save Chelsea has held all along that Jamestown's proposal is irredeemable and should simply be rejected. No doubt, other developers who would cash in on the High Line are watching how all this plays out. This week, all eyes are on Speaker Quinn. Her actions won't just have a major impact on Chelsea, but on how she defines herself as a potential leader for all New York, and whether she can stand out against the business-as-usual backdrop of real estate running politics in New York.
If Amanda Burden's fingerprints aren't all over Jamestown's proposal, the City Planning Commission Chair should know that's what people say. Respected in the architectural community for her discernment, Burden's perceived affiliation with this turkey is a real puzzle. As this model photo shows, the office addition looks like a giant rooftop air conditioning unit with a building attached. Bad as it is, the architecture can't touch the ugliness of the urban planning, which would pervert zoning to place private enrichment over public good. The project's overwhelming motivation is also apparent in this photo: cashing in on protected views of the Hudson over the small park in the foreground and up and down the length of New York's hottest new attraction, the High Line.
What's wrong with this picture, which looks like Jamestown's model? Plopping a modern box on a historic building is so wrongheaded it made the dust jacket flap of a book on additions, as an example of how not to do it. Marcel Breuer's panned design for a glass box above Grand Central is oblivious to the way "one building affects the meaning of another when their expressions are combined and interact," in the words the late architect Paul Byard. Jamestown's model is on view at the west end of the Chelsea Market concourse. Look for yourself. You don't need an architect to tell you it's wrong.
The west end of Chelsea Market is no Grand Central, but it is an authentic, integral part of the High Line, built with it and expanding on its rugged machine-age art deco vocabulary. Jamestown dismisses this architecture by pointing out that it replaced part of Nabisco's original 1892 structure. Nonetheless, the entire block is listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places and begs to be left alone. A zoning change will allow the diminishment of this historic complex into a base for architectural cluelessness. Additional floor area rights aren't needed here, with vacant lots awaiting development right across 15th Street, Ground Zero developments struggling to lure tenants with incentives, and the nearby Hudson Yards area now zoned for 26 million square feet of new office space.
To encourage preservation of light and open space near the High Line, the Special West Chelsea Zoning text allows transfer of development rights away from the park not just to adjacent lots, as is usual, but to remote sites within the District. Sherwood Equities has reportedly just sold such rights to the owner of a distant site for $500 a square foot, a premium that no doubt reflects how far the High Line has increased local property values. Imagine what property smack on top of the High Line might be worth, and you're on to Jamestown's formula: just reverse those pesky arrows in the zoning text illustration and pile right on the High Line; buy support for this unconscionable plan with a payout to the High Line of services within Chelsea Market and $17 million in maintenance funds. The cost is nothing next to the windfall. Joshua David and Robert Hammond are rightly folk heroes for envisioning the High Line and fighting to make it real. In return for Jamestown's promises, they are also now its only credible ambassadors. They should take this role seriously, because they're all the fig leaf Jamestown has, and many see them as advocating against Chelsea's character. Some see them as working against the best interests of the High Line as well, which may be about to pass from golden age to lost innocence. As reported in a DNA Info article, a recent public forum on Jamestown's proposal drew dozens of community members to the podium in opposition, while only the High Line's Vice President for Planning & Design spoke in favor.
A block north of Tenth Avenue Square, the wedge of space between the High Line and Tenth Avenue is slated to become "18th Street Plaza." Text accompanying this image in the book Designing the High Line (published by Friends of the High Line) states: "A prominent street-level public plaza will become an iconic hub for the neighborhood, linking the High Line to the life of the street. A grand stair doubles as an inviting seating element, while a new elevated snack bar, cantilevered from the High Line, frames the edge of the site." The view above shows this feature from its elevated snack bar, looking back toward Tenth Avenue Square's viewing window, seen at left in the foreground of Chelsea Market. The ensemble would form a centerpiece for the High Line on a civic scale, its nearest thing to a Bethesda Fountain. Jamestown's proposed addition to Chelsea Market would be a prominent presence here.
Shown in gold above, Jamestown's tower over Chelsea Market would displace open sky as the focus of the 18th Street Plaza's grand stair. "Views to the sky" and "view corridors" are stated concerns of the Special West Chelsea District zoning, which specifically requires that "the High Line shall remain open and unobstructed from the High Line bed to the sky . . ." Jamestown sees this as irrelevant to part of the High Line already covered by Chelsea Market, but the rule clearly wasn't meant to protect views only for prone stargazers.
A picture of design success, the High Line's popular Tenth Avenue Square grandstand feature is due north of Chelsea Market, seen at rear in this photo. Jamestown's addition would cast it entirely into shadow for part of each day during the coldest few months of the year. The project's Environmental Assessment Statement says "the High Line path areas function similar to public sidewalks, which the CEQR
ArchiTakes' study of approximate shadows at noon on November 1st shows existing conditions at left and Jamestown's Chelsea Market addition, in gold, and its shadows at right. Tenth Avenue Square is at bottom. At left is the Caledonia apartment building, sculpted by the Special West Chelsea District zoning to step down toward Chelsea Market's existing height and "optimize conditions on the High Line and along West 16th Street," in the words of the District's zoning text. Jamestown's tower would render the Caledonia's multimillion dollar form irrelevant and destroy the space it defines, in the name of "directing floor area toward the avenues" and "establishing lower heights on the mid-block to protect character." Gotta protect that rare mid-block character, come hell or High Line. Jamestown also claims contextualism in aligning its addition's lowest setback with the top of the building across Tenth Avenue, seen at upper right. This just incidentally makes for office space with unimaginably lucrative views. That the open space above Chesea Market was meant as a public amenity is crystal clear in the zoning's insistence that the Caledonia defer to it. This space is an integral part of a deliberate, successful park design that the public paid for and owns. Jamestown would exploit the value generated by public process and funding, taking space from the people it was created for, and renting it out for big bucks to reward private investors in a fund that bundles Chelsea Market with a building uptown and another in San Francisco. Chelsea, your zoning is but the third leg of Jamestown's investment strategy. Joshua David and Robert Hammond should remember that when the sky above Chelsea Market is gone, it's gone for good. How long will Jamestown's 17 million dollar sub-tithe to the High Line maintenance fund last? People are rightfully outraged that things have gotten this far, and city officials should know they're operating in broad daylight. It's to be hoped that Speaker Quinn represents her people, puts the populism that's in the air behind her sails, and does everything possible to keep Jamestown's greed-not-need zoning scam from certification.
Sign the petition against the Chelsea Market zoning change
More of what you can do now
More on Chelsea Market:
The Chelsea Market Deal, brought to you by ULURP - November 4, 2012
Is the City Building Google a High Line Skybox? - July 5, 2012
Jamestown's Shady Plan for Chelsea Market - November 22, 2011
What New Zoning Could Mean for Chelsea Market - May 31, 2011
Saving Chelsea Market - March 22, 2011
Other Chelsea News
Jamestown's Shady Plan for Chelsea Market
Last Sunday's sunshine made the High Line's "Tenth Avenue Square" a pleasant place to relax, even in late November. The popular grandstand feature would be cast into shadow at the hour this photo was taken if Jamestown Properties builds its planned office tower over Chelsea Market. The effect would be particularly damaging to a park highlight meant for lingering rather than strolling.
Designed by James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the High Line is more than a critical and popular phenomenon. It's one of New York's most successful large-scale design initiatives since Rockefeller Center. In an era when any visionary large project is almost impossible to coordinate and execute, the High Line is nothing short of miraculous. Certainly, all that separates it from designated landmark status is the minimum required passage of time. The park is not only the work of talented private sector firms, but of the Department of City Planning, which created a Special West Chelsea Zoning District around the High Line intended "to ensure that light, air and views are preserved along the proposed High Line open space." These words are so central to the Special District's purpose that they appear as often as twice per page in its zoning text. As anyone who's walked the High Line knows, light, space and sky are to its elevated structure what grass and trees are to Central Park's paths. The open space carved out by the Special District's zoning is of a single design with the High Line. To change it would be to alter a landmark.
Jamestown Properties proposes to have Chelsea Market brought into the Special West Chelsea District as a mechanism to allow addition of a third of a million square feet above Chelsea Market, a result that couldn't be more hostile to the Special Disrict's purpose. As the real estate investment fund company that owns Chelsea Market, Jamestown would interpret the Special District's provisions to its own ends, primarily to build a high-rise tower above the High Line and cash in on its top-dollar views. A key piece of Jamestown's zoning strategy is its claim that Chelsea Market is entitled to the specific zoning provisions granted the site of the Caledonia apartment building just across 16th Street, apparently on the simplistic grounds that what's good for one block must be good for the next. Let's take a look.
The image at left shows the Caledonia apartment building and across 16th Street, Chelsea Market in its current form. The Caledonia was deliberately shaped by Special District zoning to step down toward the High Line and the historic Market complex just outside the District. At right, in gold, is the new zoning envelope Jamestown has proposed for Chelsea Market once it's included in the Special District. Jamestown proposes to fill most of this envelope's 250-foot tall volume at the Tenth Avenue end of the Market with an office tower that would make the zoning-sculpted form of the very substantial Caledonia irrelevant and cast part of the High Line into shadow, particularly at mid-day during the colder months of the year. The park's Tenth Avenue Square grandstand feature is seen to the lower left of the Caledonia in these images.
The Caledonia is a linchpin for any evaluation of Jamestown’s proposal on urban planning merits. Occupying the southernmost lot in the Special West Chelsea District, it appears in the lower left corner of this model of the District from the Department of City Planning website. Chelsea Market is seen to its left in white, under "16th St," along with a glimpse of the green High Line crossing Tenth Avenue. The District customizes zoning to surrounding streetscapes and to the High Line on the blocks over which it passes from 16th to 30th Streets. Lower heights are allowed within the District where it approaches the lower-scale Chelsea Historic District, seen in white to the left of 23rd Street. Higher buildings are allowed farther away from historic buildings and to the north, where the District approaches the anticipated high-rise development of the Hudson Yards. The Caledonia’s considerable height is an exception, allowed only because the building was already in construction under earlier, higher zoning when the Special District was created in 2005. The Department of City Planning nonetheless engaged the Caledonia in the Special District, shaping its unfinished form to complement the High Line. Despite its unusual height, the Caledonia was stepped down in a way that's consistent with the lower heights allowed throughout the Special District for lots near the the High Line or historic areas. In addition to protecting High Line open space, a stated goal of the Special District zoning is to "provide a transition to the lower-scale" surrounding historic architecture of Chelsea. Completion of both the Caledonia and this section of the High Line has realized this goal. Jamestown's proposal would undo its achievement.
After considering a maximum height of 220 feet for the Caledonia's lot, the City Planning Commission allowed 250 feet expressly so the project could realize its full zoning area, mainly in a higher tower away from Chelsea Market, and still step down to a contextual “base” of 120 feet near the High Line and Chelsea Market. The Special District zoning text states:
"The Commission believes that the proposed base height of 120 feet adjacent to the High Line is appropriate and is consistent with the loft buildings that occupy the other three corners of the West 16th Street intersection with Tenth Avenue. At the same time, the Commission believes that an addition to the base height along West 16th Street would, in combination with the very high streetwall of the Chelsea Market Building on the south side of 16th Street, compromise the pedestrian experience. The Commission therefore accepts the modification that would establish the maximum building height of 250 feet within Subarea I."
Although the Caledonia’s great height was effectively grandfathered from previous zoning six years ago, Jamestown would now exploit it as a precedent, reaching back through time to make a grab for the taller zoning the Caledonia had before there ever was a High Line or a Special West Chelsea District. The zoning text allowed the Caledonia to be 250 feet high so it could build that tall on the side away from Chelsea Market and step down to “optimize conditions on the High Line and along West 16th Street.” It says everything about the merits of Jamestown's proposal that it would put this height on top of Chelsea Market.









Dept. of City Planning sources: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/westchelsea/westchelsea3a.shtml
More on Chelsea Market: The Chelsea Market Deal, brought to you by ULURP - November 4, 2012 Is the City Building Google a High Line Skybox? - July 5, 2012 High Noon at Chelsea Market - March 20, 2012 What New Zoning Could Mean for Chelsea Market - May 31, 2011 Saving Chelsea Market - March 22, 2011 Other Chelsea NewsJamestown's Shady Plan for Chelsea Market
Last Sunday's sunshine made the High Line's "Tenth Avenue Square" a pleasant place to relax, even in late November. The popular grandstand feature would be cast into shadow at the hour this photo was taken if Jamestown Properties builds its planned office tower over Chelsea Market. The effect would be particularly damaging to a park highlight meant for lingering rather than strolling.
Designed by James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the High Line is more than a critical and popular phenomenon. It's one of New York's most successful large-scale design initiatives since Rockefeller Center. In an era when any visionary large project is almost impossible to coordinate and execute, the High Line is nothing short of miraculous. Certainly, all that separates it from designated landmark status is the minimum required passage of time. The park is not only the work of talented private sector firms, but of the Department of City Planning, which created a Special West Chelsea Zoning District around the High Line intended "to ensure that light, air and views are preserved along the proposed High Line open space." These words are so central to the Special District's purpose that they appear as often as twice per page in its zoning text. As anyone who's walked the High Line knows, light, space and sky are to its elevated structure what grass and trees are to Central Park's paths. The open space carved out by the Special District's zoning is of a single design with the High Line. To change it would be to alter a landmark.
Jamestown Properties proposes to have Chelsea Market brought into the Special West Chelsea District as a mechanism to allow addition of a third of a million square feet above Chelsea Market, a result that couldn't be more hostile to the Special Disrict's purpose. As the real estate investment fund company that owns Chelsea Market, Jamestown would interpret the Special District's provisions to its own ends, primarily to build a high-rise tower above the High Line and cash in on its top-dollar views. A key piece of Jamestown's zoning strategy is its claim that Chelsea Market is entitled to the specific zoning provisions granted the site of the Caledonia apartment building just across 16th Street, apparently on the simplistic grounds that what's good for one block must be good for the next. Let's take a look.
The image at left shows the Caledonia apartment building and across 16th Street, Chelsea Market in its current form. The Caledonia was deliberately shaped by Special District zoning to step down toward the High Line and the historic Market complex just outside the District. At right, in gold, is the new zoning envelope Jamestown has proposed for Chelsea Market once it's included in the Special District. Jamestown proposes to fill most of this envelope's 250-foot tall volume at the Tenth Avenue end of the Market with an office tower that would make the zoning-sculpted form of the very substantial Caledonia irrelevant and cast part of the High Line into shadow, particularly at mid-day during the colder months of the year. The park's Tenth Avenue Square grandstand feature is seen to the lower left of the Caledonia in these images.
The Caledonia is a linchpin for any evaluation of Jamestown’s proposal on urban planning merits. Occupying the southernmost lot in the Special West Chelsea District, it appears in the lower left corner of this model of the District from the Department of City Planning website. Chelsea Market is seen to its left in white, under "16th St," along with a glimpse of the green High Line crossing Tenth Avenue. The District customizes zoning to surrounding streetscapes and to the High Line on the blocks over which it passes from 16th to 30th Streets. Lower heights are allowed within the District where it approaches the lower-scale Chelsea Historic District, seen in white to the left of 23rd Street. Higher buildings are allowed farther away from historic buildings and to the north, where the District approaches the anticipated high-rise development of the Hudson Yards. The Caledonia’s considerable height is an exception, allowed only because the building was already in construction under earlier, higher zoning when the Special District was created in 2005. The Department of City Planning nonetheless engaged the Caledonia in the Special District, shaping its unfinished form to complement the High Line. Despite its unusual height, the Caledonia was stepped down in a way that's consistent with the lower heights allowed throughout the Special District for lots near the the High Line or historic areas. In addition to protecting High Line open space, a stated goal of the Special District zoning is to "provide a transition to the lower-scale" surrounding historic architecture of Chelsea. Completion of both the Caledonia and this section of the High Line has realized this goal. Jamestown's proposal would undo its achievement.
After considering a maximum height of 220 feet for the Caledonia's lot, the City Planning Commission allowed 250 feet expressly so the project could realize its full zoning area, mainly in a higher tower away from Chelsea Market, and still step down to a contextual “base” of 120 feet near the High Line and Chelsea Market. The Special District zoning text states:
"The Commission believes that the proposed base height of 120 feet adjacent to the High Line is appropriate and is consistent with the loft buildings that occupy the other three corners of the West 16th Street intersection with Tenth Avenue. At the same time, the Commission believes that an addition to the base height along West 16th Street would, in combination with the very high streetwall of the Chelsea Market Building on the south side of 16th Street, compromise the pedestrian experience. The Commission therefore accepts the modification that would establish the maximum building height of 250 feet within Subarea I."
Although the Caledonia’s great height was effectively grandfathered from previous zoning six years ago, Jamestown would now exploit it as a precedent, reaching back through time to make a grab for the taller zoning the Caledonia had before there ever was a High Line or a Special West Chelsea District. The zoning text allowed the Caledonia to be 250 feet high so it could build that tall on the side away from Chelsea Market and step down to “optimize conditions on the High Line and along West 16th Street.” It says everything about the merits of Jamestown's proposal that it would put this height on top of Chelsea Market.









Dept. of City Planning sources: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/westchelsea/westchelsea3a.shtml
More on Chelsea Market: The Chelsea Market Deal, brought to you by ULURP - November 4, 2012 Is the City Building Google a High Line Skybox? - July 5, 2012 High Noon at Chelsea Market - March 20, 2012 What New Zoning Could Mean for Chelsea Market - May 31, 2011 Saving Chelsea Market - March 22, 2011 Other Chelsea News- New plans still say "teardown" for Chelsea's oldest house Jun 10, 2016
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- Is the City Building Google a High Line Skybox? Jul 05, 2012
- High Noon at Chelsea Market Mar 20, 2012