New York

The former Citicorp Center (aka Citigroup Center) at 601 Lexington Avenue as seen in December 2015. Photo by Evan Bindelglass.

Landmarks Calendars Seven Midtown East Buildings for Designation

New York City is full of amazing stories of transformation. Many neighborhoods are dramatically different from the way they were 100 years ago. That’s certainly true of Midtown East, the area around Grand Central Terminal, and it is on the cusp of a new era of transformation. Various city agencies are managing that transformation, which included a rezoning plan abandoned in 2013. It also includes preservation. That’s where the Landmarks Preservation Commission comes into play.

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25 Kent Avenue

City Planning Commission Expected to Approve Eight-Story Office Building Planned at 25 Kent Avenue, Williamsburg

In early January, the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) kicked off for Heritage Equity Partners’ planned eight-story, 400,000-square-foot office/manufacturing building at 25 Kent Avenue, in northern Williamsburg. Now, the City Planning Commission is expected to support rezoning the block for the project, Crain’s reports. But the approval comes at the expense of the proposed neighborhood rezoning, which would establish an “Enhanced Business District” over most of the North Williamsburg Industrial Business Zone (IBZ), allowing for the surrounding blocks to be developed similar to 25 Kent Avenue. The rezoning would grant developers a boost in allowed commercial FAR in exchange for the inclusion of light manufacturing space, identical to a normal community facility FAR bonus. City Planning is expected to approve the application later this month, at which point the City Council will vote on the project. Mayor Bill de Blasio will complete the ULURP review if he decides to sign off on City Council’s pending approval. Rubenstein Partners is partnered in the project, and Gensler and Hollwich Kushner Architecture (a.k.a HWKN) is designing.


437 Cleveland Street

Three-Story, Three-Unit Residential Building Coming to 437 Cleveland Street, East New York

Woodhaven-based Joe Mashieh has filed applications for a three-story, three-unit residential building at 437 Cleveland Street, in northern East New York, located four blocks from the Shepherd Avenue stop on the C train. The structure will measure 3,942 square feet. Each floor will host a single apartment, and the units should average a family-sized 986 square feet apiece. Suresh Manchanda’s Flushing-based L&C Associates is the applicant of record. The 25-foot-wide, 2,458-square-foot lot is currently vacant. The site benefits from the East New York Rezoning that was approved last month, and now sits within an R5B district. The site can accommodate up to 3,318 square feet of residential space, which means 361 square feet of air rights will remain if the latest plans move forward.


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