| NYguy |
May 22, 2014 10:56 PM |
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/articl...t-improvements
Community board asks Extell for transit improvements
By Dana Rubinstein
May. 19, 2014
Quote:
Community Board 5 has another bone to pick with Extell.
The midtown Manhattan board, which famously took the One57 developer to task for the shadows its skyscraper is casting over Central Park, is demanding the developer contribute more money to mass transit, now that it's building an even taller tower down the block.
On Friday, the community board's chair, Vikki Barbero, and its land use chair, Raju Mann, sent a letter to Extell Development president Gary Barnett, New York City Transit president Carmen Bianco and City Planning Commission chair Carl Weisbrod asking the city and the M.T.A. to require the developer fund a project to make the nearby Q train station at 57th Street and 7th Avenue fully wheelchair-accessible by building an elevator shaft all the way down to the subway platform.
The community board's argument goes something like this.
In addition to yet more luxury condos, Extell's just-underway 217 West 57th Street tower will house the city's first Nordstrom department store and is poised to flood the nearby subway station with a lot more traffic.
In 2007, when the nearby One57 was just getting underway, Extell agreed to build an elevator to the subway, but only one that carried straphangers from the street to the mezzanine, not all the way down to the subway platform.
"[S]o (if the elevator is working) a person in a wheelchair takes it down to the mezzanine/fare control level and then realizes s/he can’t get down to the platform and therefore has to take the elevator back up to the sidewalk," reads the letter.
"Isn’t it silly?" said Jim Weisman, general counsel for the United Spinal Association and an advocate for the disabled. "If you do it, do it. Make it a usable station."
Now, Extell is requesting a waiver from a zoning requirement that it incorporate a new subway station entrance into its 217 West 57th Street development, a skyscraper that when it's complete will be the tallest residential tower in the country.
"We believe this application represents exactly the right opportunity to finish the job," wrote Barbero and Mann.
Instead, Extell is offering to widen and relocate a staircase.
And the M.T.A. is moving ahead with a contract to build two mezzanine-to-platform elevators on its own, without Extell funding.
"We’re not even saying that Extell should bear the entire cost of the project, though that would be nice," said Wally Rubin, the board's district manager, in an email. "But we do believe that with the added traffic that will result from Extell’s supertower, and especially the department store that will be at the base (think Macy’s at 57th Street), and with a billion dollar budget for the building of this megatower, and a $35 million tax break for One 57, tax payers should not have to bear the full freight of this ADA project alone and Extell should be expected to contribute to the project’s completion, from which its tenants will benefit."
In a statement, Extell spokesman George Artz said its "relocated and expanded subway stair" and a wider sidewalk "will accommodate subway riders and pedestrians now and in the future."
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