[sparkling]

Originally Posted by Eidolon

^^^^
Be glad it's meh rather than the typical that is involved in Poon's budget hotel projects.

People may hate Kaufman and Poon but this article is worth reading. I found it on the yimby website yesterday.http://observer.com/2013/02/rise-of-...hting-midtown/

The crux of the zoning issue is the Department of City Planning’s rules about what is known as the “sky exposure plane.” When a building rises straight up from the sidewalk, the architect must often set the building back on floors higher than 85 feet, or about eight stories—something that hotel builders worried about costs are loathe to do, as it would require different floor plans above the setback.

To get around this restriction, builders can use what’s known as “tower regulations.” Builders are allowed to violate the sky exposure plane, Mr. Cook explained, so long as the structure doesn’t occupy more than about half the lot and the base of the building is pushed back at least fifteen feet from the sidewalk (or ten feet on wide streets). In other words, developers can build straight up as tall as they’d like, without having to vary the size of the building’s floor plates.

Buildings using tower rules (or another called the “alternate front setback” rule, which mandates a similar gap between the sidewalk and the structure) can also sometimes qualify for the “plaza bonus,” which allows structures to have more floorspace if they include a public plaza in front of their buildings. These plazas have largely fallen out of style among urban designers, but the incentives to build them remain in effect in New York City’s 1961 zoning code—a code which has been tweaked in the intervening years, but never fully overhauled and replaced.

And this is straight from YIMBY regarding another budget hotel but relevent to the issue of why we have all those developments
http://www.yimbynews.com/2014/07/rev...th-street.html

The site should be destined for dense residential development, but with local politicians hostile to luxury housing, the area has held onto its outmoded M1-6 zoning, which only allows commercial uses. Since cheap hotels are the most profitable commercial use, these are the only things that are generally built in the vast M-zoned lands on the West Side.

One day, perhaps rents in the area will rise to the point where new office buildings are the highest and best use, but sadly, today is not that day. The neighborhood’s inflexible zoning code is to blame for penny-pinching buildings and unsightly setbacks, and until policy changes, the blight will continue.