Residents Fear Construction of Two Hotels

 by Ronald Drenger

Work is under way on two new six-story hotels in Tribeca, and next-door neighbors say they fear for their buildings.

Residents at 132 Duane Street and the American Thread Building at 260 West Broadway, adjacent to the hotel sites, are concerned that excavation and construction will damage their buildings, which are more than 100 years old. They also worry about shoddy work and the impact the hotels will have on their blocks.

Demolition has begun next to 260 West Broadway, the American Thread Building, to make way for a hotel.

Exacerbating all their fears is their belief that the development team for the two hotels cannot be trusted.


Trying to get maximum oversight of the developers, or even to derail the hotel plans, both groups of residents have hired lawyers and engineers, sought help from local elected officials and Community Board 1 (CB1) and scoured city records for information they say the builders do not share.

The residents point to what happened at 320 Pearl Street, a new Hampton Inn that was supposed to open in September. The unfinished building has been in limbo since June, when the Landmarks Preservation Commission ordered a halt to construction. The facade diverged so drastically from plans the commission had

 
approved that one commissioner questioned whether the builder had used the wrong drawings. Construction can’t continue until the problems are fixed.

The Pearl Street hotel’s architect, Gene Kaufman, and its developer, Sam Chang, are also involved in the two Tribeca hotels, one at the corner of Duane and Church streets, and the other at York Street and Sixth Avenue.

“When we heard about Pearl Street, people really started to worry,” said Paul Yeager, a member of the condo board at 260 West Broadway. Last month, workers began demolishing a one-story garage next to his building to make way for the hotel. The developers have yet to obtain a construction permit for it.

The hotel team says that the Pearl Street problems were an aberration.

“Since it’s been acknowledged that mistakes were made on Pearl Street, the owner and everyone involved on the owner’s team will be looking twice as hard to make sure no similar mistakes are made on future projects,” said Kaufman, the architect. “The biggest loser if a mistake is made is the owner of a project because of the time and cost to make corrections.”

The residents are skeptical. At 132 Duane Street, distrust of the builders has been growing since early 2000, when Kaufman and Chang began seeking Landmarks Preservation Commission approval for the design of the hotel, which is in the Tribeca South Historic District.
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Neighbors have been fighting the
The residents say that the hotel team has repeatedly rebuffed their requests to review building plans and has shown little regard for community concerns.

After starting out with plans for a hotel, which neighbors opposed, the developers, shortly before they got Landmarks’ approval in August 2001, said they were going to build residential lofts instead. When excavation work began, the residents found out from workers on the site that the developers had returned to the hotel plan.“They try to do things in hiding,” said Olivier Scaramucci, president of 132 Duane Street’s condo board. “You have to be transparent, and they don’t seem to understand that.”

Kaufman and the hotel’s engineer and contractor met last month with Scaramucci and the residents’ engineer to go over the plans, assuring them that work would not damage the condo building.

But Scaramucci said that the residents had been requesting the meeting for more than a year, that the foundation plans he was shown were not the ones approved by the Buildings Department, and that he still could not get copies of the building plan, which the agency has not yet approved, for further review.

“The building plans are still being finalized and are not ready for release to anyone at this time,” Kaufman said late last month.

Kaufman said that the foundation was being installed on piles, “the safest way of doing it without impact on adjoining structures.”

At 260 West Broadway, residents have hired a lawyer and a structural engineer to help them monitor the project next door.

“We want to see the plans, and we want to have some sort of agreement on oversight and monitoring,” said Maria Donovan, a resident.

Jack Lester, the residents’ attorney, said that Kaufman had not responded to his request for a meeting. Kaufman said that he left messages on Lester’s answering machine but had not heard back from him.

Lester wants the state Department of Environmental Conservation to investigate the status of gas tanks that may be stored under the York Street garage.

“If we have any indication that the property has been granted a permit to proceed with construction, we will apply in court for an injunction to stop the work,” he said.

Local elected officials and Community Board 1 have written to the Landmarks Commission and the city Buildings Department requesting stricter oversight of the builders.

“The ideal situation would be for the developers to have a dialogue with their neighbors and find a way for everyone to live together happily,” said Mike Rubin, another 260 West Broadway resident. “But it’s not been like that in any sort of way.”