[NYguy]

https://nypost.com/2017/12/01/the-la...dmarking-laws/

The latest sour-grapes low in abusing the city landmarking laws

By Steve Cuozzo
December 1, 2017

It took the city five years to rescue rotting East Midtown by rezoning it for 21st century office use. And it took architectural nitpickers barely a month to turn back the clock — trying to block plans to modernize the lower portion of 550 Madison Ave., the former Sony Building.

The charge against the project is led by architect Robert A.M. Stern, who wants the building landmarked. He calls the Philip Johnson and John Burgee-designed structure with a “Chippendale” top “an icon of Postmodern corporate design.”

In fact, architectural critics are as split on 550 Madison’s importance as the public is to its “beauty.” Not only that, the “icon’s” lower levels are not the 1980s “Postmodern” original. Sony in the 1990s replaced the original open-air sidewalk arcade with granite storefronts and enclosed the open atrium between East 55th and 56th streets.

The landmarks law is meant to protect and preserve buildings of clear-cut architectural and/or historical value. It wasn’t meant as a tool to thwart a redesign that one particular individual or group doesn’t like. Yet that’s what’s at risk of happening at 550 Madison.

It isn’t about zoning — the changes the owners want to make would have been allowed under the old rules. But denying them the right to redesign 550 Madison’s lower floors is diametrically contrary to the spirit of the new zoning — which, by allowing large new buildings to go up, is intended to stanch the exodus of great companies from East Midtown to the West Side and Downtown.

The imposing, pink-granite tower between East 55th and 56th streets doesn’t need replacing — far from it. But it’s been empty since Sony moved out two years ago, and it has little chance of drawing tenants without some serious improvements.

Owners Olayan America and Chelsfield America, who bought the structure last year for $1.4 billion, plan to spend $300 million more to make it into a state-of-the-art office and retail address. Key to the plan by architectural firm Snøhetta is to replace the gloomy granite sidewalk facade with transparent glass — which would make it attractive to stores and humanize the tower’s awkwardly configured public spaces.

The alterations, on the lowest floors only, wouldn’t affect the rest of the 41-story tower’s facade. They now require no city approvals, but landmark designation would force the owners into a protracted struggle over what they could or couldn’t do.

What’s behind the push to preserve in aspic some 1990s revisions? Stern just might hold a grudge. He was tapped by 550 Madison’s previous owners to design luxury condos there, but he’s out of the picture since the new owners scrubbed them for offices.

No one knows how much money his firm might have made, but its fee for shaping 113 apartments including a $150 million triplex penthouse wouldn’t have been chump change.

It’s rich, too, that Stern, former dean of the Yale School of Architecture, exhibits such passion to preserve a single facade that isn’t universally loved. All of his own recent Manhattan facades look basically alike — cookie-cutter limestone at condo towers 15 Central Park West, 30 Murray St. and 220 Central Park South.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission disappointingly seems willing to entertain Stern & Co.: It has “calendared” an application to designate 550 Madison, which means it’ll hold public hearings on the matter in the next few months.

The owners of 550 Madison said they’re open to “collaborating” with the LPC to “breathe new life into the property” and bring 3,000 new jobs to the area. Let’s hope the panel, which has shown mostly good judgment under chairwoman Meenakshi Srinivasan, recognizes that those needs take priority over immortalizing a few 20-year-old storefronts.