[NYguy]

http://thevillager.com/villager_407/trinitysays.html

Trinity says it’s time for residential in Hudson Square

By Lincoln Anderson
February 10 - 16, 2011

Calling Hudson Square’s zoning “outmoded,” Trinity Real Estate wants to rezone a major portion of the district to allow residential use.

With the change, Trinity expects 3,000 to 3,500 new residential apartments over ten years would be added to the neighborhood — not counting the district’s few existing legal residential units.

The plan’s centerpiece is a new, 429-foot-tall, residential tower at Duarte Square, on property owned by Trinity. Helping alleviate local school overcrowding, a 420-seat, K-to-5 public school would be included in the tower’s base. Trinity would build out the school’s raw space for the Department of Education.

Currently, residential use and schools are not allowed in Hudson Square’s M1-6 (manufacturing zoned) district. Neither are cultural uses currently permitted.

Tonight, Thursday, Trinity Real Estate will present the rezoning concept plan to Community Board 2’s Land Use and Business Development Committee. Three days earlier, Trinity gave The Villager an exclusive advance presentation.

...In addition, Trinity is seeking height caps for new construction in Hudson Square. The caps are being described as “a modest downzoning.”

Along wide streets, like Canal, Hudson and Varick and Sixth Ave., there would be a height cap of 320 feet, or 32 stories. For commercial use, the maximum floor area ratio, or F.A.R. (which determines how much square footage can be built.) would be 10, with current bonuses for including public plazas and arcades eliminated.

On these wide streets, residential F.A.R. would be 9, which would get a bump up to 12 F.A.R. with the inclusion of 20 percent affordable housing.

Currently, the whole district’s F.A.R. ranges from 10 to 12. Plus, there’s no height limit — which is how the Trump Soho condo-hotel could be built to 490 feet, equivalent to 49 stories, by acquiring air rights from adjacent buildings and using a plaza bonus.

On narrow streets, like Greenwich and Spring Sts., and other east-west streets, the height cap would be 185 feet, about 18 stories, and on mid blocks the F.A.R. would be lowered from the current 10 to 6.5, but could rise to 8.5 with affordable housing included.

On Broome and Watts Sts., however, the F.A.R. would be even lower, 5.4, but could rise to 7.2 with the affordable-housing bonus. The height cap would be about 12 stories.

The tower Trinity hopes to build at Duarte Square — at the wide-streets intersection of Canal and Varick Sts. and Sixth Ave. — at 429 feet would be taller than other new construction. The public school in it would occupy four stories and be 100,000 square feet, and would not count toward the project’s F.A.R. Trinity would build out the school’s core and shell — and then give the space to the city for free — and rent free, for perpetuity.

Trinity is also obligated to build a park on part of the property at Duarte Square as part of the development.

A prime concern of Trinity is to preserve the jobs of current commercial tenants. Under the scheme, existing buildings of more than 50,000 square feet could not be residentially converted. If a commercial building of more than 50,000 square feet were demolished, then there would have to be a “1-to-1 replacement” in the new building — meaning it would have to have at least 50,000 square feet of commercial space. Buildings less than 50,000 square feet could be residentially converted, and the expectation is that many would be. According to Trinity, under the rezoning, about 90 percent of the existing square footage in the neighborhood would be preserved as is.

Also, under the proposed change, new nightclubs would not be allowed to open in Hudson Square. Big-box stores would be banned, as well, with an exception for supermarkets.