Well, that was fast! Shortly after we broke news that the building at the corner of 80th and Broadway would be demolished, we received the rendering above of the building that is being proposed for the site. Friedland Properties is using the rendering to advertise the space to potential retail tenants.
The building will be 20 stories tall, and it appears from the retail floor plans that it will have two above-ground and two below-ground floors for retail establishments. Food establishments will be allowed. The bulk of the building, as expected, will contain luxury apartments, many of which will have balconies. We don’t know yet whether they’ll be rentals or condos. The Larstrand, another Friedland project, is a rental property. Rose Associates will manage the building.
State assembly member Linda Rosenthal got in touch with Friedland Properties after seeing our story (Friedland still hasn’t responded to us). Lauren Schuster, Rosenthal’s chief of staff, tells us Rosenthal will push hard for affordable housing units to be included in the development.
But it’s not clear that the developer will need to make any concessions such as adding affordable housing, because those concessions are usually made only when a developer wants to exceed the zoning allowed on the site. If zoning allows you to build “as of right” you can do so without having to negotiate the planning process. Rosenthal’s office was not sure yet whether the proposed building would exceed the zoning requirements.
She’s also not sure how much of the block will be demolished to make way for the building. The proposed building’s address is listed as 2234 Broadway, although the demolition permit is for 2228-2236 Broadway. “That could be because they chose a middle address for the entire building which will span the whole lot or because there are other things going in at adjacent spaces,” Schuster wrote.
The corner site is currently occupied by Fox’s department store and is the former location of Syms.
We will have more on this as soon as we get more details.
Here’s the site as it looks now:
Thanks to Linda Rosenthal’s office and Robert Josman for getting us the rendering. Thanks to Angie for the photo of Fox’s.
Great. Really in-character for the look of the neighborhood. It will fit right in. I mean, I’m all for new development but can we get somebody with an understanding of what the neighborhood really looks like to be involved? Ugh.
Not in keeping with the neighborhood at all. This looks like a midtown office building. So sad to see this type of development on the UWS.
YES – even more sad now that I see the follow-up article about the demo progress (total). I really thought it might not happen or that city would make them incorporate the old building, which is so pretty.
Exactly.
I so tired of glass ..Agree with BMAC – Enough already!. look to 15 CPW for inspiration in design .
Awful..
worse then I feared.
please rethink this horrible design.
Fugly.
Then imagine 20floors of crappy window treatments to complete the picture.
Please don’t do this!!
So ugly. Why destroy this beautiful neighborhood with something that does not fit in this neighborhood. We don’t need any more retail stores.
Hideous
Seriously, what’s wrong with these developers? It’s one thing to propose something modern, another to plunk down some generic eyesore that belongs in the ‘burbs. No surprise that it’s from the same loser company that brought us the Larstrand – was the first thing I thought of when seeing this. Ugh.
The Laureate is beautiful, so is the new builiding on the corner of 86th & West End. Couldn’t they have taken a cue from those designers? New can be done with classic style.
Do you want affordable, expensive or stratospheric? WEA and 86th St prices were stratospheric and the Laureate is very expensive .15 CPW is one of the most expensive buildings in the history of the human race. Of course, not one child from these market rate buildings will ever step foot in a PS whatever the zone which is good for our schools.The projects cited aren’t even afforable to working doctors and lawyers much less 90% of the finacial sector grunts. Afforable housing, workforce housing and even upper-middle class housing is all road kill if we pick our standards to be 15 CPW. Let’s get real here.
Here we go again, the extremists liberals confusing two issues.
YES, all those buildings are expensive and I cannot afford to live in them. or anything built on CPW. so what! I am not owed an apt in the San Remo or the Majestic – but I sure appreciate them being the neighborhood.
The knee jerk response is affordable housing (really you mean subsidized by others: taxpayers, neighbors, landlord). That is a separate issue.
I do accept bad design and say its okay if there is subsidized housing (personally I think we have plenty).
I do demand from Landlords quality design that benefit the area and city or at least not damage the cityscape.
We are admiring the aesthetics of 15 CPW. If the building is coming anyway, blending in with the nabe is the least they can do.
completely agree with MJ.
Hire Robert AM Stern or someone who can build in the classic style. At least is NOT offensive like this and Lesturd. or that other ugly they build in the 80s on Bway (the Merlot?)
This family made its millions (billions) of the retail on the UWS and UES. I don’t begrudge them for that or even for building on taxpayer sites,
BUT have a little respect for the community, most of whom will not live in the buildings but will live with them and walk by them daily.
Build something your kids would be proud of Friedlanders, Don’t nickel and dime on the design and please no Ptak units, its cheap and you block 1/4 of the window.
Think 15 CPW, Lauriette, Harrison, 86th and West End.
Good design is good business.
Please reconsider
webbot – You are asking the family enterprise connected to this development to not nickel & dime? I think that is how they made their fortune – it is not going to change now. That said, I would sure like to be wrong.
Webot,
I don’t think they are reading this blog. How can we contact them as a community.
On the other hand, I am happy to see a nice, new building pop up in the nabe before Linda Rosenthal allows even more homeless shelters in our nabe. She seems to confuse them with affordable housing, which I consider to be housing for non-millionaires, but not homeless.
I visited the Friedland website (linked above) and sent them an email with my two cents (pasted below). Does anybody know who is overseeing at local level? Is it community board?
Hi there, I’m an Upper West Side resident writing to express my displeasure with the rendering of Friedland’s proposed luxury building at 80th & Broadway. I respect your need to contain costs and your desire for a modern look, but must say that the design is an affront to the neighborhood. It shows zero creativity, and I’m surprised that a New York company would take pride in introducing whitewashed suburban blight onto perhaps the most famous of NYC streets.
I sincerely hope you return to the drawing board, look for a little inspiration and produce something worthy of the area. Regards.
When you get your own piece of land you can decide what you want to do with it. It’s not landmarked, there are no additional zoning requirements or variances being requested,they’re not taking public money, the owner can build whatever they want. Really, do you think building a 15CPW-like building is cost-effective to please your aesthetics??
Eddie.
They can build whatever they want? Thanks for clearing that up, I had no idea. 15 CPW was one example. Why do you assume that it costs more than a glass tower?
Limestone vs. glass? Really? Do you have any idea how much Robert AM Stern charges? 15CPW was not just some casual building that was thrown together. Cost benefit analysis.
Yes, they can build whatever they want within the building code, it’s none of the neighbor’s and politician’s business. Everybody can whine and rant all they want about how they feel they’re entitled to something, but they’re really not entitled to anything except the right to complain.
Eddie, of what utility is an opinion? What is your suggestion? And what, by the way, would be your own preference vis-a-vis building aesthetics? Assuming you *do* have personal opinions and personal prefs related to aesthetics.
Personal opinions and prefs can matter in the public sphere. Enough shared opinions can lead to political action, and from there to physical results.
Your thoughts, please.
The only person who used the word entitled in this entire thread is you. And yes, we have a right to an opinion. It is not whining when you express that you would like to see the design of your neighborhood upheld. Maybe these things don’t matter to you, Eddie, but they matter to others. They matter to people who work for landmark rights, and they matter to just about anybody who looks around a neighborhood to decide if it’s somewhere they want to live.
It’s not landmarked. Express your wasted opinion.
that is your excuse to build ugly?
You are right , it is their property and they have the right to build. I believe in private rights. Same reason they have the right to rent or sell at whatever price they want to ask for – with out artificial subsidies for the select few that make it more expensive for the rest.
I am asking for a little consideration to the community and build something aesthetically pleasing.
Glad that before WWII, developers also looked to building handsome facades.
While developers have the right to build what they want within the city guidelines what all of you are forgetting is that just as they can build what they want, we can make it very costly for them. The problem is that we, the residents of the UWS, talk a lot but when it comes to actually doing something, “we don’t have the time.” Our politicans know this, they survive because of if.
Our politicians, and developers have learned, that all people do is talk and complain. It is possible to influence developers. It’ possible to get them to build smaller, to build more interesting, to support the infrastrution, but, like our politicians, they know that you really won’t do anything.
How many hour(s) a week would you be willing to contribute to have these developers change their minds and redesign this structure? Oh, I’m sorry, you’re too busy.
Webot likes to go on and on about “housing subsidies for the few” and how UNJUST affordable housing is because it is “SUBSIDIZED.”
in fact, the largest housing subsidies on the Upper West Side (and in most parts of the US) are realized by rich condo owners and high end homeowners. I am speaking of the mortgage interest deduction. this is a subsidy worth 10s of thousands of dollars annually to people with mortgages up to 1 million (or is it 1.1 million now?). You can even deduct mortgages on your second home!!
and of course almost any developer of luxury housing in NYC receives all sorts of tax subsidies “as of right” — at the very least, when they are finished and selling or renting the property. Property taxes in NYC on residential construction are highly subsidized by commercial rates.
so please, let’s leave rent stabilized tenants and public housing tenants and Michell-Lama Tenants and Section 8 Tenants alone! if you want to complain about subsidies, start with the mortage interest deduction. i don’t know your living arrangements but the constant carping about affordable housing “subsidies” comes across as very self-centered and “class warfare.”
Bruce do you have any comment on the quality of the design or lack thereof of the above proposed project?
Or do you only care about your own personal class warfare and wish to redistribute wealth.
BTW, mortgage taxe deduction is an IRS federal law for all americans. benefiting poor homeowners too, don’t know what it has to do with the ugly architecture they want to build.
Webot: we can only comment on the topics YOU want commented on now? or in a way YOU want them commented on?
I was responding to your continually trashing of so-called “subsidies”. Yes, homeowners with SMALL mortgages (not too many on the UWS) would also get the subsidy. But if you have a LARGER mortgage, you get a HIGHER subsidy — MUCH higher. Hence if you are going to complain about housing subsidies, start with the mortage interest deduction, which redistributes wealth UPWARDS… as any economist would tell you.
So stop hating towards other subsidies!! end the hate!!
To bad they can’t incorporate the original building into the new design.
The lot is officially called 2228-2236 Broadway and is alternatively called 220 W 80 St.
Rights, Schmites! The discussion of who has the right to bash a community only serves to fatten up the lawyers’ wallets. I used to live on W. 80th. The UWS I learned to love NYC while living in, is becoming another place, right in front of my eyes.
That actually looks a *lot* like the Melar, their other building that is also ugly.
I wonder if the proposed new penthouses in the Apthorp will enjoy the view?
Check the Museum of the City of NY archieves for the picture of Broadway and 79th Street.
The picture won’t post but here is the info.
The Oliver A. Olson department store where Woolworths later Filenes once stood. Picture is from 1914
Museum of the City of New York – Broadway and 79th Street.
collections.mcny.org
Broadway and 79th Street. – MNY62957 The corner Broadway and 79th St showing Oliver A. Olson department store. The store has large display windows showing clothing and furnishing. Above the store are billboards advertising products and stores.
How very disapointing–on such a great location to have such an awful looking (out of character).
its an interesting point – there is fight over penthouses which would have so little effect from the street ,
AND yet,
this POS get to be built without any say from the community it will negatively hurt.
Terrible, terrible design. Linda Rosenthal should try to prevent this awful thing from being built. That should be her #1 priority when it comes to this project. It’s bad enough there’s this ugly verizon store across the street. 9 verizon neon signs all over it – ok we get, you’re a fricken verizon store with no respect for neighborhood aesthetics.
On a positive note about the ugly building: at least it is 20, not 38 (Ariel) stories. It is significantly less stomach wrenching than the Columbia. It does not take up the whole block from 79-80th Streets. It is less bazaar than the monstrosities of 72nd Street. Less obtrusive than the Ascap horror. Has less Gold colored Trump garbage. Shares the same great market (Zabar’s) as the Apthorp. Is not replacing anything of merit or architectural value.
VERY ugly- don’t they have to build buildings that FIT IN with the neighborhood architecture??????
I appreciate the information. Wish we could have held the sky in place. Good luck to Linda securing space for tenants who really need it.