By Lincoln Anderson
New York University on Thurs., June 17, publicly released images of the 38-story tower it plans to add to the landmarked, three-building University Towers complex at Bleecker St. and LaGuardia Place. The images were reproduced first in the Wall Street Journal.
Two weeks earlier, on June 2, The Villager first reported about N.Y.U.’s plans for the fourth tower, as well as the university’s overall plans for its southernmost South Village superblock, between Mercer St. and LaGuardia Place and Houston and Bleecker Sts. As reported in The Villager article, top N.Y.U. officials told the newspaper that the tower would be half residential for N.Y.U. faculty use and half hotel for university-affiliated visitors.
(According to the Journal article, however, the hotel would also be available to non-N.Y.U.-affiliated persons, and would occupy the building’s lower 15 floors with 240 rooms.)
According to an N.Y.U. press release — “NYU Shares Plan for a Fourth Tower on Landmarked University Village Site” — the siting of the fourth tower “best preserves the view corridors for the existing University Towers buildings and particularly 505 LaGuardia Place.” N.Y.U. also owns the Morton Williams supermarket site at the southeast corner of Bleecker St. and LaGuardia Place — but building the new tower there would block the views and light of 505 LaGuardia Place, which is a Mitchell-Lama co-op and not owned by N.Y.U.
If N.Y.U. developed the new building within the University Towers complex it would be 270,000 square feet, while if it built it on the Morton Williams site it would be 250,000 square feet.
The new tower would be contextual with the existing three towers, with a similar style and design theme, though wouldn’t be an exact replica.
The university’s efforts to build within the landmarked University Towers complex will need approval of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, for which the university will apply in the fall. N.Y.U. will also start a formal ULURP, or uniform land use review procedure, in the coming months for both of its South Village superblocks. N.Y.U. also owns the Washington Square Village superblock just to the north.
However, if the option of building the fourth tower in the University Towers complex isn’t available, N.Y.U. would instead build on its Morton Williams site in 2021; N.Y.U. would have to wait till that date to build because of a deed restriction the property still carries from having been developed as part of an urban renewal area decades ago. The 2021 restriction may also apply to both of the superblocks, though N.Y.U. is trying to clarify with the city whether that is the case.
In addition to the fourth tower, the plan for N.Y.U.’s southern superblock also includes rebuilding its Coles gym site with a larger building, with a mix of retail on the ground floor, academic uses and student housing, and a new belowground gym.
On the Washington Square Village superblock, between W. Third and Bleecker Sts., N.Y.U. plans to seek approvals to add two infill-type buildings at the east and west ends of the complex’s central courtyard. The new buildings would project out a bit onto two currently city-owned strips of land on Mercer St. and LaGuardia Place, forcing the relocation of the Fiorello LaGuardia statue on LaGuardia Place.
N.Y.U. also will try to acquire these city-owned strips bordering the superblocks, leftovers from when the city was planning to widen these streets back in the mid-20th century to improve traffic flow for the planned crosstown Lower Manhattan Expressway, which was never built.
