Half a Century Later, Loophole May Allow Privatization of Public Space in Tribeca
An unnamed developer is hoping to build two towers in a public plaza on Worth Street, based on a technicality from a 1967 building permit. The clause in question hinges on a bonus that was offered to AT&T when it erected its Long Lines Building (right) at 33 Thomas Street, a half-square block site that is bounded by Thomas, Church, and Worth Streets.
In exchange for being permitted to build taller than zoning regulations at the time would have allowed, AT&T promised to create a 19,000-square foot plaza alongside the structure, which would be available for public use. For at least five years, however, AT&T has kept this plaza padlocked, and used it as a private parking lot for their fleet of corporate vehicles.
Their authority to do so, says lawyer Jon Popin, rests on the argument that while the 1967 building permit allowed the company to build a larger tower than zoning would have permitted, AT&T didn’t utilize this benefit – instead scaling back their design to fit then-existing code.
“There was no plaza bonus taken in the development of the AT&T building in 1967,” Mr. Popin said at the May 12 meeting of the Land Use, Zoning, and Economic Development Committee of Community Board 1. “They could have utilized it, but for their purposes, they didn’t need the bonus. So there is no public plaza. It’s just a private plaza. That’s why it’s open and closed at the whim of AT&T. It has been closed for the last few years, just used as a free garage.”
Parsing these semantics of “public” and “private” may prove consequential. A page on the Department of City Planning’s website refers to the facility as “a public plaza,” and these are two very different legal categories that entail varying sets of rights and obligations. Ironically, arguing that was what once regarded as a public plaza is actually private, then offering to make it public (at less than half its former size) may yield a windfall for AT&T.
This leads to the second aspect of the argument advanced by Mr. Popin – that because AT&T didn’t build out to the maximum height and bulk that would have been permitted under their 1967 arrangement with the City, the site is “under built.”
“There’s available floor area to build more as of right,” he added, in a reference to “floor area ratio” (FAR), a regulatory limit that caps the allowable space within a building as a multiple of the size of the lot on which it is located. For the zoning regulations applicable at the site of the plaza, the FAR comes to 53,000 square feet.
“This time around,” Mr. Popin explained, “we want to utilize a zoning bonus. We want to maintain the plaza, but we want to generate bonus floor area for the inclusion of a now-public plaza. So now AT&T is interested in a public plaza, but also to subject that space to regulation. It will meet all the design criteria of a public plaza. It will be beautified, it will be more inviting, it will be more interesting.”
The plan outlined by Mr. Popin would cut the existing plaza in half, erect two buildings on its far side, and leave the reduced public space between the AT&T building and the new structures. The FAR bonus associated with taking away 10,000 square feet of plaza space, but creating a new (truly public) plaza of around 9,000 square feet, would allow the new buildings to swell from 53,000 square feet to approximately 103,000 square feet, and accommodate approximately 79 new apartments.
The two new towers would adjoin Worth Street (with 21 stories) and Thomas Street (with 15 stories). The prospective developer of the site has not been named because AT&T believes the parcel will fetch a higher price if the company obtains all the necessary approvals in advance, and then sells the property on a “turnkey” basis. Mr. Popin said the plan “isn’t altruistic, but it’s a benefit to the community to have the plaza.”