BY SCOTT STIFFLER | One week after Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer issued his conditional disapproval of a Jamestown Properties Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) application to vertically expand Chelsea Market by as much as 340,000 square feet, City Planning Commission (CPC) Chair Amanda Burden presided over the commission’s sole public hearing on the matter.
By summer’s end, the CPC is expected to issue their recommendation — at which point the City Council will have 60 days to either approve or reject the project. With Community Board 4 (CB4) and Stringer having specified a number of preferred alterations to the ULURP application, questions posed by members of the CPC delved further into the nuances and implications of those recommendations.
Nearly three dozen supporters and detractors (most of them familiar faces who came with prepared statements articulating equally familiar arguments) arrived before the July 25 meeting’s 10am start time in order to secure a two-minute speaking slot. Until called to testify, many of them joined an overflow crowd relegated to witnessing the proceedings on a video monitor just outside of the main room.
During the three-hour Chelsea Market section of the meeting, the commission heard testimony from local residents, Jamestown Properties, community-based organizations, market concourse merchants and representatives of elected officials.
Following their comments, the majority of these speakers were quizzed by one or more CPC members — whose inquiries demonstrated a studied grasp of ULURP-specific issues as well as the implications of greenlighting a project which calls into question the purpose and integrity of the Special West Chelsea District (SWCD). Established in 2005 by the City Council (after a thorough vetting by CB4 and the CPC), the SWCD is a zoning classification designed to promote residential and commercial development while protecting light and air integrity along the High Line.
Concerns surrounding the project’s impact on the elevated public park — whose High Line Improvement Fund (HLIF) stands to receive a mandatory 19 million dollar donation from Jamestown — were addressed early on.
Representing Jamestown, attorney Melanie Meyers was the first to speak. She began with an overview of the proposed zoning map and zoning text amendment relating to the Chelsea Market block, and then presented “some of our thinking about the land use rationales for the proposal.”
Citing the 18-building complex as “the only site in Chelsea with a building having a strong physical connection to the High Line,” Meyers said that the market’s location allows it to provide the High Line with “education and event prep space, freight access and support facilities.”
Momentarily putting aside the current design’s aesthetic virtues or shortcomings, Burden let it be known that her take on the project is “less about how it compares to the building across the street” than how it will impact a pedestrian’s experience on the elevated park — which has become a major tourist draw for Chelsea. “I’m coming at this from the perspective of a visitor to the High Line,” she noted. “That light and air, that sky, is really important. How much sky are you going to take away?”
Meyers responded by asserting that current debate over the project’s ultimate size, shape and layout was “the beginning of the discussion and not the end.” Elsewhere in her presentation, Meyers noted, “We certainly have heard that further exploration of the envelope is warranted.” But, she added, “We think that it is important that you hear our thoughts and put that discussion into the neighborhood context.”
Later in the meeting, Friends of the High Line co-founder Robert Hammond downplayed concern that a towering vertical addition to Chelsea Market would detract from the High Line experience. “People congregate under [current High Line] construction,” he noted, “for shade.” As for concerns that further construction would add to the swaths of the High Line where open sky is blocked, Hammond referenced existing buildings on either or both sides of the park, stating that, “People love the architectural variations along the High Line.”
CPC member Betty Chen implored Meyers to “get more specific on 10th Ave.” — a loaded reference to a section of Stringer’s July 18 conditional disapproval, in which the borough president proposed “shifting the addition from over 10th Avenue to over 9th Avenue and lowering the addition’s base height to 170 feet and capping its height at 184 feet in total.” Doing so, Stringer reasoned, would respect “the original intent of the Special District to shift density away from the High Line.”
After repeating the months-old assurance that Jamestown was amenable to taking the 90,000 square-foot hotel at 9th Avenue and West 16th Street off the table (and replacing it with office space), Meyers concluded by citing two elements “that we haven’t addressed…a proposal to reallocate a portion of the HLIF to the Chelsea Affordable Housing Fund, which raises a larger policy question for the city, and modifications to the Tenth Avenue envelope, which we know we will continue to discuss.”
That discussion continued when Michael Phillips (chief operating officer of Jamestown Properties) took the mic. In addition to providing “vital amenities” to the High Line, Phillips cited a 2011 expansion study conducted by Appleseed that estimated the project will create (as paraphrased by Phillips) 1,000 “high-quality jobs in emerging and high-tech businesses” from clients occupying the newly created office space.
The positive ripple effect of newly created jobs was cited by Jennifer Hensley, executive director of the Association for a Better New York. “We have thoroughly reviewed the project,” said Hensley. “We also evaluated the project’s economic impact as it relates to job creation and increased tax revenue for the city, and Chelsea Market’s role as an important hub for growing technology businesses…This project is critical for New York City’s economic growth.”
Nearly a dozen current Chelsea Market concourse business owners as well as representatives from the Real Estate Board of New York and the 32BJ Service Employees International Union spoke in favor of the project as an economic engine — but detractors questioned why CPC and CB4 hearings have not been attended by a single current Jamestown tech tenant citing their pressing need for more office space.
The CPC’s Richard Eaddy and Irwin Cantor both quizzed Phillips on the Stringer recommendation to shift massing from over the 10th Avenue side. While not rejecting the notion outright, Phillips did cite a number of obstacles — including the presence of lower-density construction materials in the center of the concourse, prohibitive alterations to the cost of constructing an alternate platform design and the loss of light to the concourse if massing were to be moved east. He also noted that current upstairs tenants (such as the Food Network) would be negatively impacted.
Bob Benfatto, Betty Mackintosh, Lee Compton, Brett Firfer and Joe Restuccia were among the CB4 members on hand to assess the project and provide some background as to how the full board arrived at their June 6 vote. That 26-14 “No, Unless” recommendation called for, among other things, scrapping plans for the hotel, lowering the height and creating an Affordable Housing fund.
Referencing the extent to which CB4 was divided on its conditional approval of the project, CPC member Maria M. Del Toro observed “Fourteen people. That’s a large number to vote against.”
Restuccia responded in the positive when Cantor asked him to confirm, “My takeaway is that you [CB4] want reduced bulk on 10th Avenue, and you want affordable housing built in the community.”
Despite the notion of affordable housing as a palatable community “get” should some type of construction occur (an increasingly likely scenario), the project’s opponents urged the CPC to send the City Council a message by issuing an uncompromising denial of expansion in any form.
David Holowka, a 12-year Chelsea and a licensed architect who has long blogged against the designs put forth by Jamestown, suggested that “The Special West Chelsea District might as well be called the ‘Special
District to Ensure That Light, Air and Views Are Preserved along the High Line Open Space,’ for the number of times these words are repeated in its zoning text; as often as twice a page.”
A representative from the office of Assemblymember Richard N. Gottfried read a prepared statement which criticized the proposal as “simply too large for the neighborhood. Even after some changes, this is still a massive development being added to a development corridor in the neighborhood that is already overburdened by expansions.” Gottfried also cited the “devastating effect” that any construction would have on the building. “The Landmarks Preservation Commission,” he noted, “should have landmarked the Chelsea Market long ago, and it is distressing that it has not. But even in the absence of landmark protection, the Commission can and should protect the building.”
Representatives from the offices of other electeds read similarly damning statements — with Assemblymember Deborah Glick noting that construction on 10th Avenue would “damage the High Line experience in perpetuity,” and State Senator Tom Duane concluding, “I cannot support this project unless CB4’s conditions for approval have been met.”
Several Chelsea Market merchants (including the owners of Posman Books and The Lobster Place) praised Jamestown as a quiet but effective advocate for local business — crediting them for everything from favorable leases to robust consumer demand and the subsequent hiring of additional employees.
Others questioned if these tenants would regard Jamestown as a benevolent landlord in years to come. Today, 85 percent of Chelsea Market’s ground floor is occupied by food-oriented businesses. Jamestown’s current plan asks for a reduction of that amount to 50 percent, with CB4 pushing for closer to 65 percent. All parties reached a rare consensus in their praise of The Lobster Place’s lobster rolls, agreeing that the loss of this particular asset would be devastating to the community.
But Andrew Berman, noting that he was there in his capacity as executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, was unmoved. “There is no good reason to upzone Chelsea Market, and many good reasons not to,” said Berman, who implored the CPC “not to approve this application, not to amend it, not to move the proposed bulk from one side to another or from the avenues to the middle. We urge you to simply reject it. ”
For the complete excerpt of Berman’s July 25 CPC testimony, and the unedited transcripts of many others, please visit the Chelsea Now website. Go to chelseanow.com and, while on the home page, click on “CPC Public Comments.”
