New York: Projects & Construction

City blasts CUNY for Fiterman demo delay threat
Volume 21, Number 18 | The Newspaper of Lower Manhattan | Sept. 12 18, 2008

City blasts CUNY for Fiterman demo delay threat

By Julie Shapiro


Downtown Express photo by Caroline Debevec

B.M.C.C. students rallied outside damaged Fiterman Hall on Sept. 10, nearly seven years after it was damaged and 15 years to the day after the building was donated to the school by the Fiterman family.

Word spread quickly that the City University of New York was planning to leave the damaged Fiterman Hall standing to pressure the city to pay to rebuild it — and at least two government leaders are not happy.

Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver called on CUNY to demolish the Borough of Manhattan Community College classroom building across the street from the World Trade Center site as soon as possible.

“There’s plenty of money to take the building down,” Lieber told Downtown Express last week. “Next week it’ll be seven years and it’s a travesty to have that building standing…. There’s no reason that the building is not coming down. It’s ridiculous.”

Lieber called delaying the demolition “stupid” and accused officials of “sitting on their thumbs.”

Silver told Downtown Express the city needs to pay its share to rebuild Fiterman Hall, but he said there is no reason for CUNY to delay demolishing the building in an effort to get funds.

“A vacant lot is better than the blight that is there right now,” Silver said.

Many see the shrouded Fiterman Hall as a constant reminder of 9/11, the day Fiterman was irreparably damaged. CUNY is currently decontaminating the building in order to demolish it. CUNY has plenty of money to get the building down but is seeking an additional nearly $80 million from the city to rebuild it.

After Downtown Express first reported that CUNY Vice Chancellor Iris Weinshall had privately said she wanted to leave Fiterman Hall standing until she got more money from the city, Weinshall confirmed as much to the New York Post’s Steve Cuozzo. Jay Hershenson, CUNY’s senior vice chancellor for university relations, subsequently wrote a letter to the Post complaining about Cuozzo’s column — but Hershenson did not deny that CUNY is using Fiterman as a bargaining chip to get money from the city.

In his letter, Hershenson also mentioned that construction costs are rising, so he said the city should put up the money for the rebuilding before the project gets even more expensive. But by the same token, the cost to demolish the building is also rising and will only get more expensive if CUNY delays it.

Weinshall, formerly the city’s Transportation commissioner, used to report to Mayor Bloomberg, as Lieber does now. She declined to answer Downtown Express questions on Fiterman including whether there was any value to removing the damaged structure from the Downtown skyline before there was money in place to build a new building.

Michael Arena, a CUNY spokesperson, would not directly say whether CUNY would demolish the building as soon as decontamination is complete. He released a statement to Downtown Express saying the federal Environmental Protection Agency still has to approve CUNY’s demolition plan.

“Our focus continues to be on moving the Fiterman Hall project forward as safely and quickly as possible,” Arena said in the statement. “We are working closely with city and state officials to expedite this stage of the project and beyond.”

Deputy Mayor Lieber would not commit to the city giving any more money to the project. Asked if starting demolition of the building was a precondition to the city giving any more money, Lieber said no.

“We’ll talk about the money at the appropriate time,” he said.

The city did not give CUNY the money for Fiterman during the executive budget in June. City Councilmember Alan Gerson and other Fiterman advocates then put their hopes on this month’s capital budget, but the city has made no promises.

Gerson said he would keep speaking out until the city put up the cash. He said Weinshall had promised him that demolition would immediately follow decontamination.

“I don’t think we should be posturing or playing political games over Fiterman Hall,” Gerson said.

Cas Holloway, chief of staff to Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler, called Fiterman “an extremely important project” last June at a board meeting of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

“We expect to be able to work this out expeditiously,” Holloway said of the funding dispute.

At the same meeting, Weinshall noted that the September capital budget would offer another chance to resolve the funding dispute, if the June negotiations failed.

The B.M.C.C. community gathered on Wed., Sept. 10 right outside Fiterman Hall to mark the 15-year anniversary of the Fiterman family donating the building to B.M.C.C. Eight years and one day after the donation, 7 W.T.C.’s collapse nearly destroyed Fiterman Hall.

“Just like Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, the Fitermans had a vision,” said Curtis Brown, student government president at B.M.C.C. “A vision that this building become the center of education…We cannot lose focus on the vision the Fitermans had.”

After delivering a zealous speech — speaking so fast that Brown often tripped over his own words — he asked the students “What do we want?” They responded, “Fiterman Hall!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” “I’m going to ask you one more time and I want the whole country to hear,” yelled Brown towards an even louder response.

Rebecca Hill, a professor at B.M.C.C., spoke on behalf of the faculty union, describing cramped conditions and inadequate classrooms.

Some of the rooms are “so small that if you want to walk from one end of the room to another, you basically have to trip over the students,” she said.

Joseph Baugh, a second-year student from the Lower East Side, agrees, “S700, it’s like one hundred degrees in the room and when you go into the classroom, you have to carry your chair from another classroom.”

The student senator also described the trailer modules B.M.C.C. is currently using to teach classes.

“You can barely hear what the teachers are saying,” he said.

Savitri Prashad, a third-year nursing student said that being in a trailer at night is scary.

“People — strangers — tend to just walk in,” she said. The Queens resident is the student government secretary.

“Let’s give a warning to this city,” said Councilmember Charles Barron. “We might have to come to City Hall. We might have to come to Gracie Mansion. [The mayor] better fix our house or we’ll take his house.”

With reporting by
Josh Rogers and Sisi Wei

Some neighbors say tower is stacked against Tribeca
Volume 21, Number 19 | The Newspaper of Lower Manhattan | September 19 - 25, 2008

Some neighbors say tower is stacked against Tribeca


The Alexico Group developer this week released renderings of the residential tower under construction at 56 Leonard St. Herzog & de Meuron architects designed the 830-foot tower near the corner of Church St., and have a sculpture by Anish Kapoor at the base.

The teetering stack of condo cubes that will soon rise at 56 Leonard St. almost looks poised for a giant hand to descend from the sky and, carefully, slide one of the cubes out of place.

Like a game of JENGA, the 57-story tower will soar 830 feet above Leonard and Church Sts., with views stretching from Tribeca’s historic districts to the Atlantic Ocean. The building is architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron’s first residential high-rise, and the design of staggered condos gives all 145 residences a unique floor plan and private outdoor space.

Developer Alexico Group unveiled the renderings of the tower this week. The designs also feature a bean-shaped stainless steel sculpture at the base of the building by Anish Kapoor. The reflective sculpture looks dented by the weight of the upper floors.

Construction on the tower has begun, and residents will start moving in at the end of 2010. Sales so far are in the double digits, the developer said.

In promotional materials, the architects say that their design “establish[es] a dialogue” with Tribeca’s lower-rise townhouses and manufacturing buildings, but one community leader took issue with that explanation.

“I don’t really see how asymmetrical stacked glass boxes reflect the architecture you tend to see in Tribeca,” said Julie Menin, chairperson of Community Board 1. “This building is absolutely non-contextual with the rest of Tribeca.”

The board could not weigh in on the designs or the height because the building is “as of right,” meaning it’s within the zoning limits. Much of southern Tribeca was rezoned in the mid-’90s with a height limit of 120 feet, but 56 Leonard St., which previously belonged to New York Law School, was left out. The school sold the parcel to Alexico for a reported $140 million in 2006.

“This didn’t have to happen,” said Menin, who joined the board after Tribeca South was rezoned. “The rezoning should have included every single site in Tribeca.”

The design has mostly been panned on curbed.com. “My 5-year-old could design something better than this with his wooden building block set,” wrote one poster on the real estate blog.

Izak Senbahar, principal at the Alexico Group, said 56 Leonard St. succeeds in being respectful to the city and contributing to its skyline. The lower portion meshes with existing buildings in Tribeca, while “the design for the upper half of the tower relates in thoughtful ways to the history of tall buildings in New York,” Senbahar said in an e-mail to Downtown Express.

The tower will house two-bedrooms to five-bedrooms and 10 penthouses. The condos range in size from 1,430 to 6,380 square feet and go for $3.5 million to $33 million. Along with the prices come the expected amenities, plus a few unexpected ones: floor-to-ceiling fireplaces, an indoor-outdoor 75-foot infinity edge pool and a screening room.

This week’s Wall St. downturn did nothing to squelch Senbahar’s certainty that the units will continue to sell.

“Our goal is to create a building of extraordinary quality, something that’s singular in terms of both the residences inside and the larger issue of a relationship to the city,” Senbahar said in an e-mail to Downtown Express. “If you have an extraordinary product, the market doesn’t matter. The building will have its own market.”

— Julie Shapiro

Warns of dangers in Dutch Kills
Warns of dangers in Dutch Kills

BY DONALD BERTRAND
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, September 17th 2008, 10:26 PM

Irresponsible developers trying to beat the clock on a sweeping rezoning plan in Dutch Kills are creating dangerous building sites, a Queens official warns.

Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Sunnyside) is urging the city to step up enforcement of construction violations in the neighborhood, where at least 11 hotels are being built.

The Council's zoning subcommittee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the Dutch Kills rezoning plan on Oct. 2, Gioia noted. The full Council is expected to vote on the measure later in the month.

The new rezoning would not allow hotel development on side streets in Dutch Kills, only on busier Northern Blvd. Developers are moving quickly to lay foundations, because if 80% of a new building's foundation is laid before the rezoning kicks in, it will be grandfathered in under the existing rules.

"We shouldn't let the construction in Dutch Kills turn into the Wild West," Gioia said at a news conference he called Monday to focus attention on construction site infractions and a recent wall collapse.

"Reports of working at night, skirting the rules and the wall collapse prove that these developers are playing a dangerous game of beat-the-clock," Gioia said. "We need to make sure that they are operating safely and within the law before someone gets hurt."

According to Gioia, construction on a nine-story, 68-room hotel being built at 40-40 27th St. undermined the foundation of an adjacent building, leading to the collapse of part of the wall.

But Steve Geroulis, manager of A&M Holding, the developer of the property, disagreed.

Geroulis said that a 3 foot-by-5 foot section of a wall made of hollow concrete blocks fell without damage to the foundation. He contacted the building's owner and is now replacing the wall with one more stable, he said.

City officials said enforcement was ramped up in the area in December 2007 in anticipation of the large number of projects.

"We have consistently monitored projects in Dutch Kills to ensure builders adhere to safety regulations, and we will continue to work with the community to ensure construction proceeds in a safe manner," said Buildings Department spokeswoman Kate Lindquist. Lindquist confirmed that the agency does grant variances for after-hours work in Dutch Kills.

dbertrand@nydailynews.com