By Ronda Kaysen
New York Law School sold its Tribeca library building, making way for a new high-rise residential tower and shoring up its endowment, now one of the 10 largest in the country.
The school sold the Mendik Library site on Church and Leonard Sts. in June to the Alexico Group, a development and management company known for building luxury residential towers and hotels around the city. The proceeds from the sale — estimated at about $140 million, according to the New York Post— and the sale of $135 million in triple-tax free bonds from the city filled the law school’s coffers. Its endowment is now worth about $190 million, rivaling the nation’s best-endowed law schools including Harvard, Yale, Columbia and New York University.
“It’s a very elite category,” Richard Matasar, dean of the 1,400-student Tribeca law school, said in a telephone interview. “Endowments signify that the school has reached a certain stature.”
Flush with the newfound funds, the school broke ground on a new nine-story library and classroom building to rise on the site of a Leonard St. parking lot and a former residential building at 54 Leonard St. The new 200,000 sq. ft. glass-enclosed building, designed by the SmithGroup, will rise five stories above ground and have four stories below grade, and include a cafeteria, auditorium, classrooms and a new library. The school also plans to finish renovating existing buildings by 2010.
But the development that will most dramatically impact the neighborhood will be the new 240 Church St. tower, a 306,000 sq. ft. luxury residential building developed by Izak Senbahar and Simon Elias of Alexico.
The team has developed several luxury projects in recent years, including the Alex Hotel in Midtown. The two recently developed 165 Charles St., a 16-story residential condo designed by Richard Meier. That West Village tower with Hudson River views was lauded by the architectural community, but evoked the ire of local residents who insisted that it and two other nearby Meier buildings changed the character of the neighborhood and cut the area off from the waterfront. Alexico is currently at work on a 30-story luxury tower on the Upper East Side designed by Costas Kondylis.
The Mendik sale has been the subject of speculation since the school first announced last summer that the parcel was on the market. Last fall, a deal with Tishman Speyer Properties fell through and since then the school has been mostly silent about who might buy the property and what a potential buyer might develop there. Even after the sale, school officials declined to say who purchased the building and for how much, despite the information being a matter of public record.
“My responsibility is to generate the resources we need to be able to exist into the future,” said Matasar. “You have to have a process where a potential buyer feels they can have a confidential conversation.”
Some neighbors have voiced outrage at the possibility of a high-rise tower landing in their sleepy, Tribeca neighborhood, worrying that a new influx of residents will further burden an already strained public school system. The neighborhood’s only zoned elementary school, P.S. 234, is already at 120 percent capacity.
The area is mostly zoned for low-rise buildings, with heights capped at 120 feet. But the Mendik site has much looser zoning restrictions. A developer could build a 306,000 sq. ft. tower on the 12,500 sq. ft. parcel, an equation that could translate to a 50-story building, some speculate.
“Whatever beef that exists is a beef with the zoning laws of New York City,” said Matasar, noting that the sale is “as-of-right,” or within the zoning laws. “We should be able to maximize the value of our property.”
Community Board 1, which represents the neighborhood, often struggles with developers to reduce the scale of new developments. But in this case, the board has taken a quieter approach, arguing that it has little room to influence a development that will not need to go through any kind of public review process.
“We are not pleased about this at all, but the decision was made years ago to rezone that area… and put the large buildings along Church St. and that leaves us in a very unfortunate situation,” said Julie Menin, C.B. 1 chairperson. The neighborhood’s efforts would be better spent fighting for more public schools to absorb all the new children in the neighborhood, she added.
Not everyone agrees that the options are so limited on an as-of-right development. Former C.B. 1 chairperson Madelyn Wils insists that developers can be influenced and she has organized a group of Leonard St. residents to fight the development.
“When I was chair of the [community] board, I had my head to the ground and I generally knew which developers were being talked to,” she said. “Many times I talked to the developers and I warned them. I tried to take a more proactive approach to it. It’s just a matter of style.”
The law school could have been pressured to restrict the terms of its sale because its endowment was enriched with $135 million in public bonds, said Wils. “Given that the public is basically endowing New York Law School… it seems to me they’re taking advantage of the community,” she said.
In 1995, Wils chaired the C.B. 1 committee that worked to rezone the neighborhood. Wils said the school was exempt from the zoning restrictions with the idea that it might one day grow, not so that it could sell off its property to become one of the wealthiest schools in the country. “This isn’t expanding the law school in the spirit of what was given,” she said.
Wils and others in the group of residents started a fundraising campaign and has met with City Councilmember Alan Gerson to discuss their options. Now that the building is sold and the buyer is known, “we can come up with real strategy,” said Leonard St. resident Antonio Convit.
“We are going to explore different avenues of leverage to keep the height to a scale that comports with the community,” said Gerson. “Ultimately, I think they would recognize that with all else being equal, people will want to come in and live in a place where they’re welcome, not where they’re viewed as denigrating a community.”
Alexico will meet with the community board in the fall to discuss its development plans. Senbahar of Alexico did not return a call for comment.
The law school has no plans to further develop the Tribeca campus once the new addition is complete. They will however, continue to look for dormitory space. Last year, the school leased a 13-story East Village dorm, which was a resounding success with students. “It turns out the East Village is more the taste of young people,” said Matasar. “It turns out we’re a bunch of old farts.”
Ronda@DowntownExpress.com
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