Quote:
Originally Posted by PhyllisJerry2
Thankfully NYC has reached a point where demolishing a building this size isn’t out of the question economically. Let’s hope some of these hotels start to go for higher quality office/resi development a few decades down the line.
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...and the last comment.
You don't need to tear them down. This is an issue of shortsighted building code. While boring, these towers wouldn't be as offensive if it were not for these hideous mandated setbacks from the existing historical streetwall. It's just ghastly how many streetwall wrcking towers have gone up in the last 10-15 years. The time it will take to repair will be long,
but here's how you do it:
An updated building code that prevents such atrocities by modifying the sky-plane requirements and closing the loophole that allows developers to push the trunk of the tower back from the street. The reasons for doing so are varied, but it is often cheaper, more economical thus more profitable for the developer to comply with the sky-plane building code by making little to no effort to maintain a contextually scaled lot-line meeting lower portion of a tower and instead just building a chimney straight up, often times 20 or 30+ feet back from the street wall. And to add insult to injury, there is no requirement at all the conceal, mask or camouflage the newly exposed party walls of older flanking neighboring buildings.
Fix the code first. Then add to the code a special clause that existing towers of this nature, most built in the last 20 years in the budget hotel boom, be encouraged and allowed to
do the following:
Either extend the floorplates out to the sidewalk property line and reconstructing the streetwall with contextually appropriate tower bases in the realm of 10-20 stories replacing these ridiculous single story lobbies and courtyards they use to comply with the flawed code OR allow and encourage architectural scaffolding that meets the flanking streetwall and be allowed to use a combination of architectural grating, screening and plantings to create multi-story vertical gardens growing on vertical architectural trellises bringing green to otherwise dark and barren side streets.