By Gus Saltonstall
A battle is brewing over the possibility of a bank opening within a long-vacant commercial space that is part of a famous Upper West Side building.
The Belnord, which occupies a full block from Broadway to Amsterdam between West 86th and 87th streets, is attempting to open a bank within its commercial space at 2360 Broadway. The storefront has been vacant since 2012.
For the proposed bank to take over the storefront, though, the City Planning Commission needs to grant special authorization to allow the business to open with far more street frontage — the width of a business along one block — than what is allowed under current zoning laws.
In 2012, Councilmember Gale Brewer led a push to pass the Special Enhanced Commercial District Upper West Side Neighborhood Retail Street rezoning, which states that “new and expanding banks and loan offices shall not exceed 25 feet in width at street level.”
The incoming and proposed 4,639-square-foot bank would have a street-frontage width of 46 feet and three inches, nearly double what is allowed by the law.
Exceptions to the Rule
The City Planning Commission (CPC) can grant exceptions to this zoning law if certain conditions are met. One of those conditions is if a proposed location for a new bank has a certain number of vacant storefronts near the address.
Earlier this month, a representative for Belnord Retail LLC went in front of the CPC to petition the agency to grant the new bank an exception for exactly that reason: a high ground-floor vacancy rate “within a reasonable distance of the proposed” 2360 Broadway location.
After hearing the presentation, the CPC said it would schedule the matter for a vote.
Brewer penned a letter to the CPC on Tuesday urging the commission not to grant the exception.
“I feel strongly that CPC should not vote to grant an exemption and set a precedent for other landlords to break the law,” Brewer wrote. “The purpose of the zoning is to make the streetscape interesting with active commercial properties lining the streets. This bank space could be occupied by any other kind of commercial enterprise, just not a bank!”
“This application presents a deeply concerning precedent whereby commercial spaces can be left vacant for long periods of time (while pursuing hefty rent projections by their banks), and for owners to then use that vacant period as proof positive for meriting the return to banks and large frontages that West Siders rejected as misshaping their neighborhood not too long ago,” Brewer added.
When the rezoning was passed 13 years ago, Upper West Side Community Board 7, which voted at the beginning of this summer to unanimously recommend approval for the larger-than-allowed bank to open in The Belnord, helped decide that a 15-percent retail vacancy rate within a “reasonable distance” of a proposed storefront would satisfy justification for an exception to the maximum street frontage of a new business.
The term “reasonable distance,” and the “15-percent” figure were never written into law, however, meaning they remain open to interpretation.
The applicant petitioning for the new bank argued that there is a 26-percent vacancy rate within 600 feet, or slightly over two blocks, of the storefront on Broadway between West 86th and 87th Streets. Brewer countered this by saying 600 feet was an “insufficient study area,” especially when The Belnord takes up a large part of the stretch.
The reason for the rezoning in 2012 was that large storefronts were changing the overall makeup of the Upper West Side, Brewer and other community members contended, and that the local streetscape would benefit more from multiple smaller stores operating along a block.
Extell Development, which owns The Belnord’s retail space, did not immediately return West Side Rag’s request for comment, but the City Planning Commission did get back to us.
“The City Planning Commission strongly takes into consideration all elected and public testimony related to a land use proposal before making its decision,” a spokesperson from the agency wrote in an email. “Since there is no deadline for this application, the Commission will postpone its vote to review the Councilmember’s request.”
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Finally something to go in the empty Banana Republic pace.
Wait The Gap closed 12 years ago? Wow
What is it, 2009?
No more bank branches
Gale’s legacy at work. Who cares if a bank takes over an entire block frontage, when the alternative might be (is) smoke shops and plywood blight?!
15%,,,600 feet…what a load of nonsense. Who cares?! The whole city is full of empty storefronts for ANY small business to reasonably find a space, if their business plan is sound.
This is what overregulation looks like.
100%. Any reputable business is better than a vacant storefront, but let’s red-tape things to death to make progress impossible. It’s like a scene from the movie “Brazil”!
Gale only cares about her legacy.
If there is a bad idea on the UWS in this case the “Special Enhanced Commercial District Upper West Side Neighborhood Retail Street rezoning,” chances are Gale Brewer has something to do with it.
The Belnord’s sister building, The Apthorp, has had a bank on the northern half of its Broadway frontage since it was built in 1909. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1991/03/10/085191.html?pageNumber=232
I think the Apthorp is a pretty attractive building even if Gale Brewer finds it such a drag on the neighborhood that it should be illegal.
The proliferation of banks, Duane Reades and big-box retailers on the UWS has been reversed since that 2012 rezoning (although other factors have also contributed to the reversal), and the case for an exception here seems quite weak.
Both sides of Broadway one block south are pretty much fully occupied by a variety of shops (pizza, bagels, coffee, a mom-and-pop pharmacy, a grocery store, a shoe repair shop, a sit-down restaurant, etc.), so it strains credulity to argue that the Belnord space can’t be leased to anything but a single mega-tenant.
And a lot of blocks north of there are pretty much empty with a lot of vacant storefronts. Twelve years is a long time, let them rent it.
Put more affordable child care centers in these vacant spaces.
Are you going to subsidize the rent?
Not sure how that would be possible…. But nice idea
Exhibit # 1 billion on why NYC zoning is broken and dumb…
Has Brewer found the money to save West Park Presbyterian Church yet? It’s only been 15 years.
I hope it’s an illegal pot megastore. Or a can recycling center. Or maybe the proposed e-bike rest area on west 72 can go here? All the things that add such vibrancy to Gale’s UWS
The city gets in its own way many times with these ridiculous rules. You want tax revenue from non-weed shops? Let the bank move forward…
The law is pre Amazon – when there were plenty of retailers around to fill spaces like this. The reality is now there are not. And as posted elsewhere the likely alternative is a weed shop. Maybe it’s time for the law to be updated.
This is regulation is simply not in sync with the times.
I think if someone else could afford the rent they would have moved in 12 years. I do miss clothes shopping on Broadway however – used to be a good selection 15 years ago
Agreed, I don’t even enjoy clothes shopping (never have) but my mom would browse Banana Republic and The Gap and buy herself something if she was having a bad day and it would cheer her up, those blocks make me think of her. My parents sold out and left the city in 2019
The rezoning adjustment was put in at a time when banks, Starbucks, and pharmacies were over-expanding their footprints to each neighborhood. However times have changed. Trying to find retail tenants in general for large swaths of space is like trying to find a kidney match. This isn’t another weed store. We should be encouraging all companies right now to want to lease here and cut this type of red tape.
So Gale would rather have an empty storefront for 12 years stay that way for maybe another 12 years over allowing business to flourish there? If only it were another smoke shop with 25ft width of a front, huh? Half of Broadway is dead on the UWS and if it is up to her she’ll finish killing the other half (hoping it can all be converted into… you guessed it, homeless shelters).
Toxic NIMBY Brewer is against dynamism on Broadway and against businesses, preferring instead empty storefronts and blight, to be filled by trash and other undesirable elements. She and her negative policies needs to be voted out in 2025.
Ridiculous. Let them open. It has been vacant for over 12 years.
No. No matter what, no. Is it possible that with what landlords ask for rent only banks with no inventory and low staffing needs can afford it?
Target the cause. Why is it economically a better choice for a landlord to have empty space?
It’s economically a better choice for a landlord to wait for a tenant that has strong financial standing and will not stop making lease payments when the going gets rough. Smaller and weaker retail tenants would be a burden for the landlord just as non-paying residential tenants are. Landlords have no advantage to keeping their spaces empty other than looking longer term,
Who cares? It’s a business and they will be paying rent. There are too many vacant spaces along the avenues. It detracts from the beauty of the UWS and invites crime. Why don’t our representatives put their energy into more important issues?
That exact space was a bank branch for many decades.
My Dad had an account in that Bank, branch, and another one in another Bank branch directly across 86th Street. That was in the 40”s until 1963 when he had passed and when my Mom and I moved out to Long island. The Upper West Side I read about on the Rag is another world from the one I grew up in.
Do people really think the building owner was dumb enough to leave the space empty for 10+ years so they could have this big “aha!” moment now with a bank? Really? The premium rent they might get from a bank will still take many years to make up all those losses.
I’m not a big fan of banks everywhere. But I also don’t like empty stores. And now I believe three of the four corner stores at that intersection are empty, with two of them being very large spaces that have been empty for a while.
Let’s get them back in business, paying taxes and creating jobs. Plus there is a secondary effect – the people who work in those stores spend money at other stores. The neighborhood is also safer when stores are occupied, rather than having their doorways being used as homes.
When I moved to the UWS at 14 years of age in 1967, the first floor of The Belnord was a bank. I think it was First National City Bank (now Citibank).
Time for Brewer to be put out to pasture.
Everything about this fight is an idiotic waste of time and epitomizes precisely why Gale Brewer is unfit to server in public office.
While I respect Gale Brewer, I completely disagree with her on this matter. There are so many empty storefronts on the UWS, and I would certainly rather see a bank in The Belnord than more brown paper, or no paper at all, in windows. One needs to know when to bend with respect to one’s principles.
I want the bank to move in. That corner space, and the one across the street, have been empty far too long. Commercial activity will liven up this dead stretch and enhance safety. I wish more clothing stores would open up, or a store like Muji . . .
Hard to think of a single figure who has done more to negatively impact the quality of life on the UWS in the last 20 years than Gale Brewer– from the rampant proliferation of homeless shelters (and the various euphemisms by which they are known), to the unchecked expansion of bike lanes, to her feckless response by the neighborhood being overrun by illegal aliens, to her utter worthlessness at expanding affordable housing, to her myopic attempts at zoning in a changed commercial RE climate.
Thanks for nothin’, Gale.
This has been vacant forever and is an eyesore. Let’s get it filled already. What silly regulations that solve nothing and just leave us with empty storefronts.
Article doesn’t say which bank. Chase and Capital One have cafes connected to some of their branches so maybe that could be the setup which would be nice.
Capital One is the bank that, at the beginning of the pandemic, reduced credit lines for credit card customers without prior warning. Not a bank for me.
Wait — I know! Use that space as a homeless or migrant housing shelter! Fill it with lots of cots and sleeping bags — removes the large vacancy and houses the unhoused!
Multiple problems solved! Howzat, Gale?
(Oh, gosh, Gale, pleeeeease don’t take this seriously……..)
Gale Brewer should do something useful, like trying to reduce taxes, rather than initiating idiotic legislation limiting the size of banks.
No doubt this is another one of many polarizing topics circulating around. If the bank can’t make a deal on the corner maybe they can replace the space PC Richard just gave up in the Belnord. The corner of 86th & Broadway is awesome and I’m sure there are a lot of really nice tenants to lease it if the landlord entertained a rent commensurate with the economy.
Typical regulation by a career politician who never had a REAL (private sector) job in her entire career.
Our government is saturated with this parasitic cancer – city, state, federal.
This space and the one on the opposite side of the street have been vacant for many years. There have been many bank closing north of this area. Street safety should improve with occupancy!
Smh.
“The purpose of the zoning is to make the streetscape interesting with active commercial properties lining the streets.“
Please explain how a block of “this space for lease” signs for 12 years has made the streetscape “active” or “interesting”.
I believe a building with commercial space being taken up by one tenant actually looks quite nice, and can increase the property value of a building if it looks good and is maintained well! To keep the landlords from holding on to empty spaces, hoping for a higher paying tenant, the landlords should be fined monthly for any empty space exceeding 8 months of vacancy! That would keep rents competitive, fill the spaces and invite Mom&Pop type business back into the fabric of our neighborhoods, which were pushed out when Guiliani invited the corporations in!
No. It should be a supermarket, or another store that is needed, not yet another bank.
A supermarket? Great idea! Feel free to open one — let us know when the opening date is.
Is there really a need for such a big storefront for a bank at this time when most people are banking (or doing most of their banking) online, and the in-person banking is shrinking, not growing? This smells strongly of “maximizing tax deductions” for the rental fees and not of any community need. If there’s an urgently need for that bank in that location (doubtful, but, who knows) – make it small. Want to utilize the space so it is not vacant? Use the tax incentives for the renter to make it a community space instead. Perhaps a food bank, a cafe, a second-hand store, a bookstore? Anything but another mega bank storefront …
can you please elighten me as to what tax deductions you are talking about?? You cannot deduct rent from your taxes and there are very limited items related to rental property that the IRS will allow you to deduct from taxes.
The storefront has stood vacant for twelve (12) years. It is a bad look for the neighborhood to so many vacant storefronts sitting dark all day. I am in favor or just about any legitimate business taking the space and lighting up the corner. In short, beggars can’t be choosers.
It was a bank in the 1940s. Not sure why it shouldn’t be one again.
https://www.landmarkwest.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/225_W86_FULL.jpg
The Brewer law was passed 8 years before lockdown created a streetscape of indented space on Broadway. Think about the empty blocks surrounding the Belnord! The old legislation should be revised!
Extell Development, which owns The Belnord’s retail space, is a nightmare. They don’t give two hoots about the community. Rent gouging is in place? There needs to be a law whereby owners of a space that isn’t rented for a year start having to pay a fine.
More regulation is absolutely not what we need. What if a landlord legitimately cannot rent a space for reasons unrelated to the rent they want to charge? Who are we going to have determine if the suggested rent is market or not? and at the end of the day, who are we to say what a property owner should or shouldn’t do with their space (so long as they aren’t violating the law)?
This corner is SO depressing. I’m amazed that with the popularity of Only Murders in the Building someone hasn’t come along and opened a restaurant in the corner space. Would be a major draw for tourists and lord knows it would be a welcome addition to have some semblance of life on this long vacant corner.
Leave it to our “savior”, Gale Brewer, to focus on the really important things and ignore problems like the scaffolding on 74th and Columbus, where the work has been done for over 18 months and that pile of junk still stands. Gale always has her eyes on the truly important battles.
Brewer’s efforts (through law and now objection to an exception to the law) to manage the the streetscape into her vision of what everbody wants, has created a streetscape that nobody wants. Does she really think that people want to walk by empty storefronts? Let them open up a bank. It’s better than a perpetual “for rent” sign. If nobody wants a bank there, nobody will use it and it will close. If people do use it, then Brewer should get out of the way and let someone else run the neighborhodd.
Any tenant is better than no tenant for the economy and to liven the neighborhood. But our bureaucrats are not pro-business and lack common sense. The proliferation of shelters is a welcomed development while commercial tenant in a space vacant for a long time is not. People like Brewer do not serve the interests of the UWS, only their careers.
Interesting — I went back and found a WSR Article from last year that reported there were 85 ground floor retail vacancies on Broadway from 59th Street to 110th Street (an average of 1.6 vacancies per block). The year before, the article notes another study was conducted which found 56 retail vacancies on Broadway from 68th Street to 98th Street (an average of 1.9 vacancies per block). Perhaps we should ask Council Member Brewer if this is large enough of a sample size for her.
Seriously. Aside from all the other reasons outlined below, why would any bank need all that frontage when most transactions are ATM based?
I’ve wondered why banks need enormous square footage for their branches when they use so little of the space, especially since they have given up on basements full of safety deposit boxes.. You could roller skate across the floor of the newish Chase branch at 86th & Columbus, (formerly The Gap), Like many of its ilk, it squeezes a few offices and teller windows around the perimeter, uses a small vestibule for ATMs, and leaves huge swathes of floor space barren. My theory is that it is a throwback to the days when, as the old protest song goes, “The banks were made of marble, with a guard at every door, and the vaults are stuffed with silver that the workers sweated for.” Nowadays they’re made of Formica and plate glass, with boring corporate esthetics, but the idea is the same: “We’re big and we’re rich.”
Bottom line, though– While I’d rather see interesting retail at the foot of the Belnord, a boring bank is still better than dead space.
Why would a bank need that much ground level space?
Talk about cognitive dissonance! It’s a bit startling to read so many comments castigating Gail Brewer for legislation that was intended to promote the opening of smaller mom-and-pop stores over large, national chain stores. It’s not that long ago (last week? last month? the day before the pandemic started?) when the vast majority of commenters on WSR resoundingly decried every new bank opening in our neighborhood as increasing sterility and decreasing character!
As for all the cracks about homeless shelters, I think too much callousness and disdain is showing. I wish there was more sympathy and less animus toward the less fortunate. Poverty, homelessness and mental illness are deep-rooted and widespread societal problems, and contrary to the inaccurate and false narrative that has taken hold around here, the UWS does not contain a disproportionate number of facilities. We all want our streets to be clean and safe, but our neighborhood should be able to do its part without so much hostility.
Now maybe if there were a couple of policemen or policewomen regularly outside walking up and down Broadway (and other avenues) once in a while–actually patrolling and interacting with shop owners and passersby (instead of heads buried in their phones)–we could still have a good quality of life.