[NYguy]

http://www.downtownexpress.com/2014/...fight-to-come/

The Seaport Fight to Come




Rendering of the proposed marina at the South Street Seaport, which Howard Hughes Corp. considers a community amenity as part of its tower and redevelopment plan.


January 16, 2014

Before the de Blasio administration begins to consider a proposal to build a 600-foot tower at the South Street Seaport, officials want to see affordable housing added to the plan, according to the project’s developer.

Chris Curry, senior executive vice president of development of the Howard Hughes Corp., the Seaport’s developer revealed last week that the firm reached out to Bill de Blasio during his mayoral transition, and a few advisers told Curry in December that the best way to make the plan more appealing would be to add some type of subsidized housing.

“I know the administration has already mentioned to us… affordable housing,” Curry said during a presentation of the project to Downtown Express Jan. 7. “[It’s] very important to the mayor.”

He said it was not clear if the affordable housing needed to be included in the tower, which is strongly opposed in the community, or if it could be built somewhere off the site in order to curry favor with the mayor.

When the mayor-elect announced Dec. 31 that Kyle Kimball would be continuing on as president of the city’s Economic Development Corp., Kimball said in a prepared statement that “we will innovate in new ways to spur affordable housing and meet the needs of neighborhoods.”

Kimball’s agency owns much of the Seaport and will be negotiating with the Hughes Corp. on its latest proposal to build a tower on the New Market Building site.

The mixed use building is likely to have apartments, a hotel and retail.

Curry is taking comfort in de Blasio’s decision to retain Kimball.

“I think that it’s helpful for us that Kyle was appointed president of E.D.C.,” Curry said. “Now that doesn’t mean the administration is gonna have the same perspective as the previous administration did, but I think it’s helpful to him to be able to articulate to the new administration what it is we’ve beentrying to do for the last three years.”

Similarly, during the same meeting last week, the project’s lead designer, Gregg Pasquarelli of SHoP Architects, pointed out that his firm has worked with E.D.C. for a decade to redesign Lower Manhattan’s East Side waterfront immediately north and south of the Hughes project.

“It’s nice to know there’s people there who understand why we made the decisions we made for the last ten years,” Pasquarelli said. “This is really the critical point in the development of that whole waterfront.”

Adding affordable housing by itself though, is not likely to win over much community support.

“That may be fine for the administration but not for the community,” John Fratta, chairperson of Community Board 1’s Seaport Committee, told Downtown Express when told of the message from the de Blasio camp. “It’s still a tower and it just doesn’t belong.”

Hughes has not finalized its proposal, and negotiations with the various parties have not begun, but the parameters of the talks are becoming clearer.

C.B.1 and the local politicians are united in opposing a 600-foot tower, but if that height were to drop significantly, and large community amenities were added, a split would probably form, as some in the community might accept a smaller tower if there were enough sweeteners.

The board discussed that issue briefly last month.

“We don’t want to confuse the issue of the tower and anything else,” said Joe Lerner, a board member who lives in the Seaport area. “We are not selling our life and giving them a tower.”

And Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver told Downtown Express last month that he could envision negotiations beginning around a smaller building.

“We’ve expressed our opposition to the height of the tower just as an opening,” Silver said, but if the height were reduced, “yeah, I think if we sit down with Catherine [McVay Hughes, C.B.1 chairperson] and other members of the community board and work out some of the things the community needs — obviously that’s what dialogue is about.”