NYU East 12th Street dorm construction can proceed

Construction work can continue on new 26-story NYU dorm, which will incorporate the front tower of St. Ann’s Church. Photo:Morgan Kunz.

Court denied request to stop construction while residents file BSA appeal. East Village residents sought an injunction to stop construction of a 26-story dormitory for New York University on an East 12th Street site occupied by the vacant and partially demolished St. Ann’s Catholic Church.

Hudson 12th Development LLC purchased 120 East 12th Street, … <Read More>

Court upholds BSA’s denial of variance

BSA legalized existing Queens homeless housing facility, but denied request to expand facility. In the 1980s, Homes for the Homeless, Inc. converted an abandoned hotel on Rockaway Boulevard near Kennedy Airport into a 259-bed homeless housing facility; a use which conflicted with the lot’s manufacturing zoning. Over 15 years later, Homes applied to BSA for variances to expand the facility for 91 additional homeless families and legalize the use. The expansion faced significant opposition.

BSA … <Read More>

Kingsbridge Armory proposed for reuse

EDC seeks proposals to convert historic Bronx armory to a mixed-use facility. On September 26, 2006, the City’s Economic Development Corporation released a request for proposals for the sale and redevelopment of the Kingsbridge Armory located on the southwest corner of 195th Street and Jerome Avenue in the Bronx. Reportedly the largest Armory in the world, the main floor is larger than a full city block, and is comprised entirely of an immense 300-foot by … <Read More>

DOB proposes to amend self-certification rules

Proposal would add grounds to suspend architects and engineers from program. Buildings proposed a series of amendments to its rules that would expand the grounds for suspending and permanently excluding an architect or engineer from the professional certification program and increase scrutiny of applications and plans submitted by those architects and engineers.

New grounds for suspension and exclusion would include knowing and failing to report that a project on which they worked in any capacity … <Read More>

Landmarks approves two individual landmarks

The Morse Building, lower Manhattan; the Staten Island Savings Bank, S.I. Landmarks unanimously designated the two new individual landmarks on September 19, 2006. The crimson red and black brick terra cotta Morse Building, located at Nassau and Beekman Streets in lower Manhattan, was the city’s tallest building when constructed in 1880. Built by two nephews of Samuel Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph, the building originally contained office space but was converted in 1980 … <Read More>

New Brooklyn historic district to be considered

Landmarks takes first steps towards designation of historic district in Flatbush. On September 19, 2006, Landmarks voted unanimously to hold a public hearing on the proposal to designate 250 single-family homes in Flatbush, Brooklyn as the Midwood Park – Fiske Terrace Historic District.

Fiske Terrace features single-family homes developed from 1905 to 1920 by Theodore B. Ackerson on a 30-acre, densely wooded estate purchased from George Fiske. In 1905, Ackerson cleared the land, set out … <Read More>