BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | The design of a planned 10-story building at the southeast corner of W. 14th St. and Eighth Ave. has been unveiled, and…it’s awful!
The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation tweeted out a photo of a design rendering of the thing on Wednesday with the caption: “Ugh; design revealed for new bldg @ 14St+8Av. Glad we stopped zoning variance which would have made it 20% taller.”
“It’s as bad as you can imagine,” Andrew Berman, the society’s executive director, told The Villager. “I saw someone on Twitter describe it as ‘An ode to the Port Authority Bus Terminal,’ which I think is fitting. Even a building half that height, a design that ugly and obtrusive would stand out like a sore thumb. The scale here is not really a problem; it’s the ugliness and insensitivity to the design.”
In July 2016, G.V.S.H.P. successfully advocated against the developer’s request to the Board of Standards and Appeals for a zoning variance to allow the project to rise 21 feet higher than zoning allows. The developer had tried to argue “hardship” — claiming that only by being able to build larger would they get enough economic return on the building.
The site is just outside the Greenwich Village Historic District, so is not landmarked. But the spot does have contextual zoning, so new development there is capped at 120 feet tall.
In 2015, Mayor de Blasio sought to lift height limits for new developments across the city, including in the Village. But G.V.S.H.P. and the community fought back and the height caps for the West Village, along with other districts, remain intact.
The building just to the south of the new project, One Jackson Square, which went up eight years ago, used to be G.V.S.H.P.’s Public Enemy No. 1 in this neck of the woods. One Jackson Square actually is in the Greenwich Village Historic District, yet the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission still approved its modern-style undulating glass facade.
“That design makes this design look almost poetic,” Berman sadly reflected, comparing the mini-Port Authority to the wavy-glass monstrosity.
Berman said that he, like others, has noticed two other likely development sites two blocks east, on the north corners of the intersection at W. 14th St. and Sixth Ave. But he said he is “not following them as closely because they are on the north side of the street,” so just outside G.V.S.H.P.’s main coverage area. These include the former site of an HSBC bank branch on the northwest corner and the building that used to house Sol Moscot eyeglasses store on the east corner.
Gail Fox, a member of the Union Square Community Coalition, said the bank building has been sold and, along with a small building next to it, is slated for a new 25-story building.
John Beckman, spokesperson for New York University, said rumors that the school was planning a dormitory at the more eastern of the two sites were untrue.
“There’s zero truth to this,” he said. “Neither site is being looked at for a new N.Y.U. dorm.”
The bank corner has become a hangout for vagrants since it closed, and for a period made the news when police were making arrests for K2 — synthetic marijuana — there. The other corner may already be trending in that direction, as well.
As for the Eighth Ave. site, there simply is no existing mechanism in this case for the city to regulate the design.
“It’s really unfortunate,” Berman said.
He said Gene Kaufman is the architect.
“He’s kind of known for really bad architectural designs,” Berman noted, “sort of cheap-quality-construction hotels in Manhattan and Brooklyn. … I’m so glad that we were able to keep it from being 21 feet taller.”
