Most egregiously, the DOB endorsed the applicant’s tactic of separating the one-story entrance facing 74th Street into separate projects from the tower itself. This portion of the building is located at the rear of existing tenement buildings at the NE corner of 74th and Third Avenue, home to J.G. Melon and Mezzaluna restaurants, and framed as enlargements to those structures rather than as part of the tower itself. In doing so, the applicant has gained approval for a building that would not otherwise be legal, undermining the predictability and very purpose of zoning regulation. If this absurd interpretation of three separate approvals for one building is upheld, it will open a new path to evading zoning regulations in the city, and will certainly lead to greater use of this tactic. In response, FRIENDS has filed a community appeal to the DOB urging the agency to rethink its approval of this building as planned.
It also cannot be overlooked that the DOB’s inexplicably delayed response to FRIENDS’ original challenge came in the same week as news broke that the project site has been sold to a new developer, the Elad Group, owner of the Plaza Hotel. In fact, although the DOB ultimately denied the challenge, the Department actually agreed with several issues. But rather than issuing a notice of intent to revoke the zoning approval, it appears that DOB used the Challenge to identify errors in the approved plan, and then worked with the applicant to correct the errors, while leaving the Zoning Challenge unanswered until new plans had been filed and a new owner secured.
