Last week the City issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) to developers to build a 60 story, 600- ft.-tall, 600-unit apartment tower on public land at Little West 12th and West Streets in the Meatpacking District. The tower would contain up to 75% or more super-luxury housing. The move completely ignores the overwhelming majority of public input during the city’s rushed “public engagement” process, which resulted in zero changes to their plan.

Any developer and plan selected by the City will have to go through a full rezoning and public review process that includes approval by the City Council, for which the local Councilmember (currently Eric Bottcher) will be key. Councilmember Bottcher issued a statement on X saying that the proposed tower is too tall for the neighborhood, while Assemblymember Deborah Glick sent this letter to city officials. Borough President Mark Levine,  who will eventually have to vote on the plan, issued a statement that doesn’t address the height of the building or the inclusion of super-luxury units on public land. State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Congressmember Dan Goldman have thus far not made any public statements on the proposal or their positions on it. 

Here’s a few quick fact checks about the planned tower:

• Height: It would be far and away the tallest building ever constructed in Greenwich Village or the Meatpacking District, about double the height of its nearest rival, and two-and-a-half times the height of the nearby Standard Hotel. It would be nearly 15 times the height of the average Meatpacking District building and nearly 10 times the height of the average Manhattan building. 
• Density: It would be one of the densest buildings ever constructed in New York. The floor area ratio (a measure of density for buildings) would be almost 20 times the average Meatpacking District building, 15 times that of nearby Westbeth, seven-and-a-half times that of 2 Fifth Avenue, and twice the density of the Empire State Building. 
• Affordability: Only 25% of the units are required to be “affordable,” though the City hopes a developer will come back with a proposal to make more of them affordable. So 75% of the units can be extremely expensive ultra-luxury apartments that may serve as pieds-a-terre. But because the luxury units can be larger than the “affordable” ones, they may occupy more than 75% of the tower. And while the so-called affordable units will be cheaper, they are only required to be affordable to households whose income levels are actually higher than the majority of NYC renters, making the “affordability” quite modest at best. 

Village Preservation has called for removing all luxury units from the project, guaranteeing permanent affordability for what remains, and reducing the size of the tower by 50-75%, and we will continue to fight for this outcome. The ultimate arbiter here will end up being the NYC Council when a rezoning proposal is filed.

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