Team Behind Northern Tribeca Rezoning Meets With Critics

By Barry Owens

The team behind a rezoning proposal that would allow for significantly bulkier buildings on four blocks of northern Tribeca met for the first time March 2 with Community Board 1 members and area residents that mostly oppose the plan.

“Frankly, we haven’t felt welcome here,” said William Wallerstein, head of development for the Jack Parker Corp. The group has been the target of pointed resolutions from the board in recent months and the focus of a resident group’s wrath, the Tribeca Community Association, which is circulating petitions to block the proposal and threatening legal action.

The Jack Parker Corp. is the owner of a lot at Desbrosses and West streets and has plans to build a residential a tower there, along with a 180-space parking garage in the basement. As part of the plan, the developer is asking for a change in the zoning of blocks bordered by Watts, Hubert, West and Washington streets along West Street that if approved would increase the lots’ allowed floor area ratio—the formula that determines a building’s bulk, and in turn, the amount of space inside for units— from a 5.0 to a 6.9. It is the difference between 50,000 square feet of space, and near 70,000.

“Each one of these arbitrary numbers means tens of thousands of feet of new apartments,” said the board’s Tribeca Committee chairman, Rick Landman, who pointed out that additional residents to the neighborhood would mean a demand for additional services. “That’s schools, that’s sewers, that’s transportation, that’s traffic—all of these type of issue that are normally considered in an Environmental Impact Statement.”

Elsewhere in the neighborhood (and separate from the Parker proposal) the city is proposing a C6-2A zoning with a maximum building height of 120 feet and an FAR of 6. East of Sixth Avenue, the FAR would drop to 5. The city has assured the community board that there would be an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) attached to the full north Tribeca rezoning plan.

		That the rezoning Parker proposal is moving forward without such a full review required under an EIS is a major sticking point with the community board. But the 160-foot height cap on the zoning category the proposal calls for does not meet the city’s threshold for requiring such a study. Conducting a full EIS would saddle the developer with an undue expense, said the company’s attorney, Ken Lowenstein.

When the public had an opportunity to comment on the proposal during the hearing with the Parker group, one Tribeca resident said the development would be good for the neighborhood, but the rest of the half dozen speakers derided the plan, called for more study, or suggested that the developer could build a smaller building and still earn a profit.

“We realize this is really just an architecture of greed at this point,” said Nicholas Goldsmith. “It just doesn’t seem like an argument that the community can really stand behind.”

Even the renderings that Wallerstein and his team exhibited provoked debate. Board members pointed out that some of the buildings pictured—which the development group used to argue that large buildings are not out of context in northern Tribeca—are not within the neighborhood. And only three of the 11 buildings, they noted, are residential.

“That went about the way we expected it to,” Wallerstein said afterward about the hearing.

Later in the month the community board adopted separate resolutions that called for a full EIS—highlighting, among other things, the historic buildings in the area—and rejected outright the zoning change and the garage proposal.

“Why should we welcome them?” asked Hila Rosen, a long-time resident of the neighborhood who spoke against the zoning change. “We’ve all played by the rules, they should play by the rules.”