At this point, it may be the Far West Village’s longest-running development controversy. After years of success in securing landmark protections and stricter zoning for much of the Far West Village (and every other available site having been snatched up for development), the site of the former Whitehall Storage warehouse between West and Washington Streets, Charles and West 10th Streets, is one of the few remaining sites in the Far West Village where truly large-scale development is allowed.
It is not for lack of trying that this remains so. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) and many community groups and neighbors fought very hard to get this site included in the expanded landmark district and downzoned areas we secured from the City in 2005 and 2006. However, the City stubbornly refused to do so, protecting the developer. Thus, over our objections, the site was excluded from the 2005 downzoning of the area passed by the City Planning Commission and the City Council.
Following this, the saga took a strange twist. While zoning for the site allowed and encouraged a tall, setback tower on the site not unlike the nearby Meier Towers or the Memphis, the developer claimed he wanted to build a lower, squatter building, maintaining the old warehouse on the site, and build up to about 15 stories above the existing building (as opposed to the approximately 30 stories the current zoning allowed).
After initially claiming the developer could build the squatter building on top of the existing building under the zoning for this site, the City and the developer then claimed a zoning change was needed to allow them to do this. This would require the City Planning Commission and the City Council, led by Speaker Quinn, to add a provision to the zoning for this site that continued to allow the developer to build the tall tower the current zoning allowed, but gave him the option of building a shorter, fatter structure as well if it involved keeping the existing warehouse building and building on top of it.
GVSHP was certainly not a fan of a tall, setback tower on the site, but we were also not particularly enthusiastic about the large, squat “addition,” which would be many times larger than the original building, to be added on top. Like many in the neighborhood, we always felt that development on the site should be much more limited, whether it was a tall tower or a squat addition. Therefore, GVSHP, like many neighborhood groups, ultimately neither supported nor opposed the zoning change that gave the developer the option of preserving the existing building and developing on top of it.
But it took years before any progress was actually seen on the planned development. After many delays, when full-scale work on the Whitehall Warehouse began in earnest last year, we and many others were shocked to see more and more of the original building demolished. Within months, virtually nothing was left. A hole in the ground had completely removed the foundations and the entire interior of the building, and almost nothing of the facades remained except a thin piece of concrete framing.
In multiple presentations to the Community Board about the project, attended by representatives of the City Planning Commission and Council Speaker Quinn, the developer represented the project as preserving and re-using the existing building, with the zoning authorization he received allowing him to build the lower, squatter building based upon this preservation and re-use. The text of the agreement approved by the City Planning Commission and City Council made frequent reference to preservation and re-use of the existing building as the purpose of the zoning change.
When this blatant discrepancy between what the developer presented, what the city approved and what was built became clear, GVSHP brought this to the attention of City Planning and Council Speaker Quinn, and repeatedly called for answers. While we were never supporters of the development, we did at least believe that it would preserve and re-use the existing building, and that this was the justification for the developer having repeatedly gotten incredibly favorable treatment from City Planning and the City Council regarding the site’s zoning.
Amazingly, neither City Planning nor Speaker Quinn ever put an answer in writing, but merely deferred to the Department of Buildings, which is responsible for enforcing the zoning text. The Department’s answer: the tiny amount of the concrete frame of the building façade left standing satisfied the requirements of the zoning, and the developer was merely required to maintain the envelope of the old building (i.e. the same shape and size, with development allowed on top) rather than actually preserve any greater amount of the building itself.
This was a stunning response, and was clearly a contradiction to everything that had been said about the project from the beginning, and how it had been packaged and sold to the community.
The question now becomes what happens from here? Unsurprisingly, many neighbors of the planned development are disgusted by what they see as patent deceit. Lacking any real answers or responsiveness from the city officials responsible for the development and its approval, some neighbors who would directly abut or face the new development have filed a lawsuit, claiming that the developer violated the terms of the zoning authorization they received and, therefore, cannot proceed under its terms.
While it will likely be some time before a judge rules on the suit, it raises certain important questions. The most important of these is what if a judge agrees that the demolition of nearly all of the existing building violates the terms of their approvals from the City?
There may be a few possibilities. If a judge decides the zoning authorization did require preservation of the existing building, he may simply require the former building’s walls be rebuilt. The Landmarks Preservation Commission often does this with landmarked properties, which generally have much stricter preservation requirements than ones only regulated by zoning. In fact, it has already been reported that the developer plans to reconstruct the remainder of the façade of the building.
Another possibility is that a judge could find that, with most of the original structure gone, there is no longer any way the developer could satisfy the terms of the rezoning authorization he received and the development cannot proceed under those terms. In that case, the underlying zoning would still allow the much taller (possibly 30 stories as compared to approximately 16) setback tower option for the site, which is not dependent upon any sort of preservation of the original building.
There may be other possibilities, including that a judge finds that the development still qualifies under the existing zoning authorization and can proceed as planned. None of these are particularly happy outcomes, and speak to the utter inappropriateness of the City’s stubborn refusal to allow this site to be downzoned and/or landmarked like so much of the rest of the neighborhood.
But now the future of this site is more up in the air than ever. Further delay, a large, squat development with a facsimile of the old warehouse rather than the preserved original, and a much taller, narrower tower are now all possibilities for the Whitehall Storage site’s future.
