Development plans continue nearby...
http://chelseanow.com/cn_118/proposedhk.html
Proposed HK high-rise eyes dealership deal
By Heather Murray
January 2 - 15, 2009
A major developer is close to striking a deal with a Hell’s Kitchen automotive company to build a 44-story apartment complex at a site at 57th St. and 11th Ave. that currently houses shiny showrooms and auto repair shops.
Rental real estate developer AvalonBay Communities presented preliminary plans to Community Board 4’s Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen Land Use Committee at its Dec. 10 meeting to purchase the property from Bay Ridge Automotive Group.
The project would go up directly across the street from 40-story luxury high-rise The Helena at 601 W. 57th St.
AvalonBay plans to build roughly 700 apartments, 140—or 20 percent—of which would be affordable under the state’s 80-20 program. The high-rise will sit atop a four-story podium containing large automotive and limited commercial uses.
The developer already has two apartment complexes in Long Island City and three in Manhattan, and the company has built approximately 50,000 apartments nationwide, managing all of them save a couple in New York City currently under third-party management.
Fred Harris, AvalonBay’s senior vice president of development, said the developer plans to offer approximately 50,000 square feet of neighborhood retail, possibly including a supermarket or large sports store.
The current on-site public parking garage holds 1,000 cars, but the garage in AvalonBay’s proposal would hold approximately 500—meaning a loss of half the current spots there.
Infiniti and Lexus dealerships occupy the space now, and John Iacono, vice president of Bay Ridge Automotive Group, the operator of the dealerships, said at the meeting that his family has run the 57th St. location for 17 years.
The plan calls for a redesign of the space and the consolidation of five of Bay Ridge’s 23 New York City operations there, with Toyota, Nissan, Lexus, Infiniti and Scion dealerships at the site. The company can no longer afford the current space to hold their new car inventories in Manhattan, and will move parking and prepping operations to Brooklyn.
“Seventeen years ago we never thought I’d be sitting in front of a committee hoping to put a deal together with a developer so we could keep our business in New York City,” Iacono said. “We have finite space we can afford,” he continued, adding that Bay Ridge obtained some financial assistance from car manufacturers.
Iacono said his company’s 47th St. Nissan dealership would move to the would-be 57th St. project, but he can’t do the same with his nearby Acura dealership at 48th Street and 11th Ave., a competitor of Nissan’s. “We’re dealing with two manufacturers that aren’t allowed to coexist,” he said. If Bay Ridge can’t find another location for the Acura dealership, “we might sell it,” Iacono added.
Community Board 4 chairperson JD Noland expressed concern about where cars would be picked up at the new facility, reporting a “constant friction between the community and the [47th St.] dealership,” with cars continually parked on the sidewalk along 47th St. between 10th and 11th Aves. Iacono said the new 57th St. facility would have adequate storage space to keep cars off the streets and sidewalks.
On the residential side, Harris said AvalonBay was open to meeting the community’s affordable-housing needs, noting he is aware that many feel there are not enough two- and three-bedroom affordable apartments.
“We are very interested in moving the mix at both ends” by building smaller one-bedrooms and studios to accommodate more two- and three-bedrooms. “But in order to do that, what we really need is cooperation from the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development,” he said.
Harris told the committee that HPD “indicated that if we came up with a specific proposal that you folks were interested in, they would be flexible.”
Board member Pete Diaz then asked if AvalonBay would be willing to raise the percentage of affordable housing to 30 percent or more. Harris responded that the developer would be interested, but “it’s really about the economics.” He said that AvalonBay would consider it if the city would provide incentives and abatements similar to those earned through the 80-20 program to make 30 percent of the units affordable. Noland asked that the developer consider creative ways “to enliven the street at night” and bring in “retail that’s going to bring people there.”
Harris added that AvalonBay has met multiple times with the Department of City Planning and hopes to schedule a scoping meeting at the end of January to gain certification of the project later in the spring. As of Dec. 29, Harris said he hadn’t heard whether a scoping meeting would be scheduled for the upcoming month. The developer needs a zoning change from the current manufacturing use to allow commercial and residential development there, and will also ask for several zoning text amendments for the project.