Results tagged “planningcommission”

Michael Lappin, CEO of the managing company for what is being called the "New Domino", responded yesterday to our questions about the proposed project via email.

The iconic Domino Sugar sign is not included in these renderings. [We photoshopped it back in, above.] Is there any plan to preserve that somewhere at the site? We are making every effort to save the sign. We are looking at different engineering solutions regarding the “where and how.” It’s a complex problem.

A state judge has shot down Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to rent sports fields on Randalls Island to private schools because the administration failed to follow the legally required land-use review process when it made the deal. The plan was for private schools to pay $2.6 million a year for the next two decades in exchange for use of the renovated fields during peak hours from 3pm to 6pm. The Parks Department had agreed to contribute $65 million to refurbishing 36 sports fields and building new fields on 12.5 acres of the island.

A rendering of Brooklyn's proposed City Tech Tower, designed by Renzo Piano, at Tillary and and Jay Street sent some into speculation mode, especially since its height seemed to be up to 1,000 feet tall. Which would make just about twice the height of the 512-foot tall Williamsburgh Savings Bank, currently the tallest building the Brooklyn. However, the rendering of the building is apparently old. A representative at Forest City Ratner, the development company which...

The old saw is that one can't fight City Hall, and we can apparently add the ivory tower to the bulwarks of imperviousness. Despite fierce community opposition, Columbia University will be expanding its upper-Manhattan campus to surrounding blocks. The plan to expand the university's property by 17 acres and several blocks in each direction was approved this afternoon by the New York City Planning Commission. CityRoom reports the neighborhood meeting wasn't exactly neighborly:A majority...

Yesterday, developer Sheldon Solow's ambitious plans to redefine the East River skyline were examined in the Sun, as he is presenting the plans to a Community Board today. Solow proposes to build six towers south of the United Nations along the East River, with over 5 million square feet of residential, commercial and retail space.

Elected officials, including U.S. Congressman Jerrold Nadler, are speaking out against the proposed expansion of Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus, directly south of the performing arts complex. The school wants to add 1.5 million square feet of building space to the midtown campus, which includes an undergraduate college and its law school, between Columbus and Amsterdam Aves., nearly tripling the complex's size from the current 800,000 square feet. Fordam gets to avoid complicated issues of eminent domain and displacing current residents, since it already owns all the property that it would like to build on.

In 2004, we believed that the Domino Sugar Factory would make for a great museum, à la the Tate Modern. Today the NY Sun reports that a group of Brooklyn artists are calling on the Community Preservation Corporation Resources development company "to change its plans for the Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg, pushing for the creation of a cultural complex similar to London's Tate Modern art museum."

The hard-hitting polemical film, , lucidly articulates and amplifies the movement to stop Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards plan. Directed and produced by Isabel Hill, the film portrays the AY project as an outrageous scam to be perpetrated upon hoodwinked Brooklynites. Numerous interviews with critical residents, planners, critics, and elected officials portray a scenario in which a cynical developer and corrupt State agencies have hired gullible community allies and a star architect to conceal their true motives. The politics of the Brooklyn-based coalition, Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB), are evident in the film, although the work was independently created and funded by Hill, a former city planner.

The City Planning Commission has spoken and says the Atlantic Yards Project should be reduced by 8%. This is only a "recommendation," but since the project's developer the Forest City Ratner had been considering a 6-8% downsizing, given all the public outcry, this seems like something the group may well do. Especially since the City Planning Commission "raved," the Post puts it, about the tallest skyscraper in the group, Frank Gehry's "Miss Brooklyn" structure that would be taller than the Williamsburgh Savings Bank in the Brooklyn skyline. Instead, the CPC asked that another tower's height be reduced so views the bank could still be seen. The CPC also asked that other buildings' heights be reduced, plus for another acre of open space to go to 8 acres total.

The Times today reports on some funny numbers running around the theater district. Here's what we understood of it: In 1998 legit theater, which like the Apple Computers of yore is always somewhat "beleaguered", was having some trouble getting patrons in the door to watch anything that a theater snob might call "passable." Money was desperately needed to kick things into gear. So the city struck a deal with a group called The Broadway Initiative, led by Gothamist-idol Stephen Sondheim, to provide more money not only for theater owners but for the theater community as well. The deal was simple: 25 theaters in the theater district (that'd be between 40th and 57th Streets and 6th and 8th Avenues) were given permission to sell their unused air-rights to any property also located in the district (instead of only to the usual rules which only allow air rights to be sold to neighboring plots). In exchange for this lenience anyone who bought up one of these theater's air rights would have to pay an extra $10 per square foot on top of the regular price. That extra money was to be then given to a new Theater Subdistrict Council which would spend 20 percent of it on monitoring theater conditions and the rest on bringing poorer city residents to the Great White Way. Sounds like a good, simple, idea, no?

- Gothamist doesn't understand why musicians who have nothing to do with the city or do not seem to be famous for real estate are singing at various condo markeitng parties - jeez, at least try to Lenny Kravitz who seems like a real estate whore

As the West Village is happy that the City Planning Commission wants to prevent high-rises from being built (well, the measure needs the City Counci's okay),and Gothamist can only suspect it's part pre-emptive strike against huge outdoor advertisements. For example, the Queens Tower Condos in Rego Park are the target of many complaints for putting up a huge lingerie ad outside one of the buildings. The Department of Buildings has issued violations to the condo's president, as the ad "went up without a permit and in a zoning district where they are prohibited." The Buildings Department says they are just "too big and too high." The ads, for Elle MacPherson's lingerie line, were supposed to be taken down in October anyway, says the ad's marketing director, who added, "You usually don't see posters like that in Queens. You see them in Times Square, so we thought it would be a perfect place to stand out and get a little exposure." That's so weird - we went to Queens to get away from Times Square. But then again, Queens was the only place in NYC with a Red Lobster for a while. Gothamist can only assume that Buildings Department fasttracked these violations in fear that drivers on the LIE would get into accidents.

Embattled Brooklyn apartment dwellers have taken their fight against the proposed site of the new arena for the "Brooklyn Nets" all the way to Athens. A group called Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn unveiled a banner on one of the endangered apartments which reads "Dr. Rogge and the International Olympic Committee, Please Don't Destroy Our Homes." If New York City is awarded the Olympic Games in 2012, the proposed basketball arena would be used to house the gymnastics competition. Local residents hope that by appealing to the International Olympic Committee, a new space for the arena can be found where the current populace won�t be forced to give up their apartments via eminent domain.