By Lincoln Anderson
In a relief to neighboring residents, the School of Visual Arts dormitory planned at Third Ave. and 10th St. will not use the community facilities zoning allowance. As a result, it will be six stories, as opposed to at least twice that height, which would be permitted with use of the zoning bonus.
Samantha Hoover, an S.V.A. spokesperson, confirmed the zoning allowance won’t be used.
“The developer said they decided to keep it at the floor-area ratio for an apartment building so that they could keep that option down the line,” she said. The site has an F.A.R. of 3.44 for residential and 6.5 for a community facility.
S.V.A. has a 10-year lease on the yet-to-be-built dorm, followed by two 10-year options to renew.
Until the end of March, New York University was negotiating for the Third Ave. site, which is between two N.Y.U. dorms. However, five days after The Villager reported the university was interested in the site, an article in N.Y.U.’s student newspaper reported the university had ended negotiations.
Andrew Berman, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation director, helped uncover N.Y.U.’s designs on Third Ave. He contrasted the S.V.A. dorm with the 26-story dorm being built for N.Y.U. on E. 12th St., which will be the East Village’s largest building. The E. 12th St. and Third Ave. sites have the same F.A.R.
“The St. Ann’s dorm is all that you don’t want in a dorm,” said Berman. “And, basically, it’s going to be a dorm forever, or [they would have to] go for a variance to convert it to something else or illegally convert it to residential. This could have easily been another 30-story tower, if they had stacked it, bought air rights and used the community facilities bonus,” which was done on E. 12th St. “I sort of feel like we dodged a bullet here,” he said. “We know N.Y.U. was looking at it.”
Hoover said the developer didn’t float the idea of building a jumbo-sized dorm using the zoning bonus.
“It really wasn’t presented as an option for us, and this building suited our needs,” she said. “I don’t think that we would need a facility that big and it works better in the community” at this size.
