Condos, Hotel to Replace Artist Studios

By Carl Glassman
POSTED MARCH 30, 2007

Artist Tamara Zahaykevich occupies Studio Number 3 on the seventh floor of 443-451 Greenwich Street in Tribeca. There she constructs small, delicate pieces made of foam core, paper and paint. Her studio is special, she says, not only because of its ample size, the bright, natural light that bathes her work, or even the free rent. It is the knowledge that many accomplished artists worked there before her.

“It’s a legacy,” said Zahaykevich, 36, who was chosen from more than 1,300 applicants from around the country for one of the 14 coveted one-year studio residencies in the building, provided by the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation.

The legacy of creativity and accomplishment fills most every nook and studio corner of 443-451 Greenwich Street, where hundreds of artists in three residency programs and individually rented spaces have worked for more than 20 years.

But when Zahaykevich and the other remaining artists in the building pack up later this year, they will be the last.   

Shahab Karmely, the developer who bought the almost fully occupied building last year for $115 million, plans to gut its warren of artist studios and small offices and construct a condo and hotel complex, with a ground-floor spa.

The handsome 124-year-old red brick building is actually two connected seven-story buildings that take up three-quarters of a block, bound by Vestry and Desbrosses Streets, with Collister Alley on the east. The plan calls for 50 condominium apartments in the western two-thirds of the building, and a 118-room hotel in the eastern side. Two penthouses would be built on the roof.

On April 14 and 15 the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program, whose studios have been in the building for 17 years, will hold its last “open studio,” an annual event in which the current 14 artists open their studios to the public. “It’s going to be sad,” said Joyce Robinson, executive director of the Colorado-based foundation. “We’ve had a great, great run there. What can I say?”

In May, artists in the studio program of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design, begun in the building in 1985, will showcase their work for the last time. The program provides studios to students in colleges of art outside of New York.

As the studio programs prepare their move to a building in DUMBO in Brooklyn (the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation is hoping to raise the needed funds), Karmely is pursuing the special city approvals he needs to convert his Greenwich Street building to residential use. Hotels and apartments are not allowed under the current manufacturing zoning in North Tribeca.

Some say such a variance may not be in the best interests of the city.

“If you look at what’s happening in a larger sense,” said John Tomlinson, who has run the college program in the building since 1992, “I feel like New York is just ruining its heritage and not mindful of its history.”

Councilman Alan Gerson said the city needs a “more coordinated policy for keeping artists in our community, especially in manufacturing districts. It’s clearly working at cross purposes with itself.” If passed by the City Planning Commission, the City Council must sign off on the variance. 

A city zoning provision allows owners of buildings in landmark districts to gain their variance in exchange for a restoration plan approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Karmely’s architect, David West, pitched the building’s plan last month to the Landmarks Committee of Community Board 1, which advises the commission.

He did not get far.

The penthouse additions, which must be largely hidden from street-level view, were noticeably visible.

“It looks like an ocean liner cruising on top of the roof,” remarked committee member Marc Donnenfeld.

“Given the size of the building, I can’t imagine that you can’t live with reducing the visibility down to marginal amounts,” added committee chairman, Roger Byrom. “It’s a huge building.”

“It’s a very, very substantial restoration,” argued Karmely’s lawyer, Deidre Carson.

Karmely, who was in the room but did not speak at the meeting, is expected to return to the committee with a modified penthouse plan. But even if it is approved, the developer must next try to convince CB1’s Tribeca Committee that a change of use, from commercial to residential, is appropriate for this building. A zoning change under consideration by the city, which CB1 supports, would make residential conversions as of right in north Tribeca. But the committee may see 443 Greenwich Street differently.

“This is a viable commercial building in the district that has very few commercial spaces, which means that the tenants are being evicted,” Landmarks Committee member Tim Lannan said at the meeting. “So on principle I would be opposed to this because of the tradeoff that’s involved.”  

No one understands that tradeoff more than Dennis Elliott. He co-ordinates the Marie Walsh Sharpe program and directs a studio program for foreign artists—the International Studio & Curatorial Program—that has since moved from the building. 

Elliott remembers the building as a dynamic fulcrum of creativity filled with more than 100 artists. Now, in the waning days of 443 Greenwich, he has applied to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation for funds to create something like it; the Downtown Center for the Arts, a consortium of six arts groups that would pool their resources with public funds to buy or rent a large space Downtown.

“I don’t know that we can ever be in Lower Manhattan unless something is developed by the city or the state for this center,” he said. “That’s a long haul and a lot of work.”

Tom Healy, president of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, envisions the city helping artist groups find space in the new buildings on the World Trade Center site, a financial partnership between the city and private organizations.

“Our tax dollars are going to be subsidizing tenants in Tower One and the Freedom Tower, because they’re saying we need to bring government tenants into these spaces,” Healy told the Trib. “There’s no reason cultural life shouldn't be thought of in that way.”

In the meantime, at 443 Greenwich Street, artists continue working away in paint-spattered studios that, soon enough, will be transformed into pristinely kept homes of the well-to-do.

Erling Sjovold, a painter and art professor on sabbatical from the University of Richmond in Virginia, was relishing each day that he worked there, courtesy of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation. From the window of his studio he could see the Hudson River, a subject that had found its way into several of his paintings.

“I’m trying to take advantage of this pretty incredible view I have here,” he said, as he showed a reporter his sunny vista. “You may have to pay quite a bit in the future to take that peek.”

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