The developers of the South Street Seaport area have given up on building an apartment tower adjacent to the historic district after strong pushback from local residents and politicians.
BY DUSICA SUE MALESEVIC
The long dance between the Howard Hughes Corp. and the Downtown community over a tall tower at the Seaport is over.
The developer confirmed Tuesday that the controversial luxury condo tower — at one time slated to be 650 feet — will not be built at the New Market building site just outside the Seaport historic district.
There had been news reports last month that the tower may be scrapped, after a proposal to chop it down to 494 feet failed to placate opponents, but a Hughes executive definitively told Community Board 1 as much at its Dec.15 Seaport Committee meeting.
“There will be no residential tower on that site,” Chris Curry, the executive in charge of the project, said at the meeting, as first reported by DNAinfo.com.
Curry said Hughes would instead build a low-rise commercial building on the site.
Locals who fought the tower proposal declared victory against a project they say would not have fit with the adjacent preservation district.
Michael Kramer of Save Our Seaport called the defunct residential tower plan “an inappropriate use in an area that we feel is clearly in the historic district.”
“It has been a public market since the 17th century and we don’t know anyone who has slept with the fishes,” he said.
Many preservationists objected to the apartment tower on historical grounds, while other locals said it would have blocked their Brooklyn Bridge views.
It has been a long struggle between the community and the Texas-based company over the development of the historic Seaport. The community and public officials had to lobby hard in late 2013 even to get Hughes and its landlord, the city’s Economic Development Corp., to reveal their plans. When the proposal for a 50-story tower was presented in November 2013, it was met with boos.
A Seaport Working Group — comprised of elected officials, Hughes executives, CB1 members, business and preservation groups, and residents — was formed to create guidelines for development in the neighborhood.
The main sticking point was a guideline on building heights and views, which stated that new buildings “should not adversely impact neighborhood scale and character” and called for alternatives to the then-50-story tower.
CB1 chairwoman Catherine McVay Hughes said in an email that guideline was “something that the community felt very strongly about and that the views of the Brooklyn Bridge and historic ships are preserved and protected.”
The developer came back with another proposal in November 2014 for a smaller, 494-foot tower and many community benefits — including $10 million for the chronically under-funded South Street Seaport Museum, a community center, marina, affordable housing at Schermerhorn Row and a middle school that would occupy three floors of the tower.
The revised tower plan did have supporters. Friends of the Seaport, spearheaded late last year by three Peck Slip School parents, backed the plan — especially the middle school as Lower Manhattan has been squeezed for school seats. One of the group’s founders, Maria Ho-Burge, lamented the community missing out on the benefits the new tower plan could have offered.
“I think some residents view Howard Hughes as an enemy, when one of the reasons they’ve been targeted is because they were here first — trying to rebuild and make better what we lost to Sandy,” she said in an email. “There are new developments popping up all over, none of which are giving a thought to the skyline or giving back to the community as Howard Hughes has and continues to do.”
Kramer, who is also a public member of the CB1 Seaport Committee, said Wednesday that Save Our Seaport is hopeful that the community can find the best use for the site, and a Hughes spokeswoman struck an optimistic note as well.
“We continue to work on a revised mixed-use development plan taking into account feedback from the community and elected officials which request[ed] the omission of a residential tower,” she said. “We are steadfast in our commitment to the revitalization of the storied Seaport District.”
Meanwhile, Hughes continues its work on Pier 17. The Landmarks Preservation Commission recently approved the pier’s new design after the developer nixed a planned canopy.
