Thoughts on design and urbanism from a roman face name.

Tonight Community Board 1 takes comments on a pending development in lower TriBeCa, lot 5C, which sits along West Street, just south of Chambers. The Downtown Express has a good round up (there is an additional column with some additional detail about a request to increase the allotment for a larger community center, though it isn’t online).

Scott Resnick is listed as the developer of the site. If the residential work his family, which has blighted the Upper East and West Sides over the past three decades, in is any indication, aside from the potential issue of a lack of sensitivity to the interests of the community, a complete lack of senstivity to quality may be even more debilitating to the neighborhood.

I emphatize slightly with the arguments as they are presented (mostly that the benefit to the community is inadequate and construction activity will be deleterious to the students of PS 234, immediately adjacent), but they have a whiff of NIMBYism. The history of enforced/allowed developer trades (height for public space) is checkered at best, and in this instance, the issue isn’t a variance, but a recently expired development plan that capped the allowable height. So the community does not have much leverage, and as nice as ‘community center’ sounds, it adds a patina of middle class existence that is eroding a rapid pace. Given the number of exceptionally bad buildings in the district, I would rather attention be paid to the aesthetic impact. Even at 350 feet, its proximity to Battery Park City means the impact (in terms of light or horizon interruption) won’t be extraordinary. However, it is isolated enough that it will created a visual landmark, and is in close proximity to evidence of when such a opportunity is either squandered (Independence Plaza) or fully realized (Stuyvesant HS).