At the end of last month, YIMBY, the pro-development blog, posted plans for a monstrous 367-foot-tall residential tower at 14 Fifth Ave., between Eighth and Ninth Sts. That location is within the Greenwich Village Historic District.
The site is currently home to a humble-looking five-story building.
Madison Realty Capital is reportedly contemplating the 27-story project, which is designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects. However, no permits or applications for the new building have been filed. Any project there would need approval by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.
The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation promptly issued a statement after the plans appeared online.
“Any developer that would think that a tower of this grossly out-of-context scale would ever muster approval in the Greenwich Village Historic District is sadly deluded,” said Andrew Berman, the society’s executive director. “Any development in the Greenwich Village Historic District would have to go through a long and in-depth public hearing and review process, where the local community would have ample opportunity to make its feelings and opinions about the proposed design known. If this developer thinks that this proposal would receive anything less than vociferous opposition from the public and affected community, he’s in for a rude awakening.”
Curbed, another real-estate blog, reported that Madison Realty Capital purchased the existing five-story building for $28 million two years ago. At that time, Crain’s reported that the site had air rights that could potentially allow a building there to “triple in size.”
In support of the Stern plan, YIMBY wrote, “At first glance, the design may appear uncharacteristically tall, especially for Greenwich Village. But in reality, One Fifth Ave. directly across the street, stands 340 feet to its rooftop.”
