Opponents of Proposed 940-Foot Tribeca Tower Launch Effort to Fight It

City Councilman Christopher Marte speaks to a gathering of opponents of a propoed 940-foot residential tower in the Independence Plaza complex. It was the third meeting on the plan since it was publicly announced. "The developers said they wanted to move fast, but because you turned out, because you started organizing, I think it really put the brakes on them," he said. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

Organize for a fight.

That was the message to opponents of a proposed 940-foot residential tower who gathered on Monday evening to hear what can be done to stop the massive addition that developers are proposing for the Independence Plaza North (IPN) apartment complex in Tribeca. 

The skyscraper, to be located where there is now a plaza next to IPN’s 310 Greenwich Street building, would be double the height of the complex’s three 37-story towers, and the tallest building in Tribeca. The developers are IPN owners Vornado Realty Trust and Stellar Management.The development team has revealed nothing publicly about their plans since their initial presentation [1] to Community Board 1 last December. City Councilman Christopher Marte, who spoke at the meeting, organized by the IPN Tenants Association, said that is a good thing. 

“No news is good news because it gives us the precious time to bring people together and create actions and next steps,” he said.

(A spokesman for Stellar Management said in a statement that there are “ongoing discussions with City Planning and no new renderings have been created since December.”)

Marte said he believes the tower “is so vast and so drastic” that the developers will need a special permit that, as part of a ULURP or land use review process, requires City Council approval. That is an approval, he says, that would not likely be granted out of “member deference” to his opposition.

The developers insist that because no zoning change or new waivers are required for the site, they do not need to go through a land use review.

People attending the meeting, held at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center, said they worried that the pile driving and other work would destabilize nearby buildings, including the Federal-era townhouses on Harrison Street. And they feared the impact of years of construction on their quality of life.

“There are a lot of environmental arguments we can make of how this development would drastically change this community,” Marte said. 

The Stellar Management spokesman said in a statement that the project “will go through the full CEQR  [City Environmental Quality  Review] before construction begins, including preparing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that will outline the steps needed to minimize the impact of the new construction on existing tenants and the surrounding community, including the Federal-era townhouses.”

An organizing effort is being led by Stephanie Kelemen, a litigation lawyer who lives directly across the street from the site. She and three others have formed a board that is hoping to recruit new members “willing to dedicate meaningful amounts of time” to join them.

“I don’t know exactly what the strategy forward looks like,” Kelemen said. “I know that one thing we can all agree on is that the first step needs to be to hire an expert…to assess the project and the extent to which it complies with zoning regulations and to the contract that was put in place when the whole [Independence Plaza] development was first created in the 70s.” 

“We’re going to need money to hire that expert,” she added. “So fundraising will come, but today the first step that we want to take is to create a leadership board.” 

Along with Kelemen, the current leaders include Diane Lapson, president of Independence Plaza Tenants Association, Richard Corman, a nearby resident, Community Board 1 member and Downtown Independent Democrats president, and Stuart Gold, a retired litigator and longtime Tribeca resident.

“In some sense, we’re actually very fortunate,” Corman said. “Sometimes you come into these projects and it’s way too late. We’re at a point in time where it’s not too late. We have time, but now is the time to organize.”