According to a communication by State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, the city’s recently announced plans for its “Gansevoort Square” development in the Meatpacking District will include an approximately 60-story building on the site of the city-owned Gansevoort Meat Market Center, south of Little West 12th Street between Washington and West Streets (north of the Whitney Museum). While the particulars of this plan won’t be formally revealed until an upcoming Community Board public meeting, this report and other details indicate an enormous and unprecedented scale is being contemplated for development of this incredibly sensitive site. Village Preservation had written to city officials In response to their earlier announcement — which contained no particulars about the potential size or scale of the building — emphasizing the need to ensure any development here relates well in terms of size, scale and design to its surroundings. Apparently that message was more desperately needed than we could have possibly imagined.

To give context, the tallest existing buildings in Greenwich Village are 31 stories tall — 505 LaGuardia Place and 60 East 8th Street (Georgetown Plaza) — and roughly half the potential height of this building, which at 60 stories would likely rise to around 600 feet tall or possibly even taller. Of the more than 3,000 buildings in Greenwich Village, only a handful even exceed 200 feet. The Standard Hotel, just north of the site and far and away the tallest building in the Meatpacking District, is a mere 261 feet tall by comparison. The planned new building, if anything like the 60 stories Senator Hoylman-Sigal has reported, would be about two-and-a-half times that height.

According to the city’s prior announcement, the development they intend to build would include space for the Whitney Museum and Friends of the High Line, as well as 600 units of housing — at least half of which would be market-rate, or very expensive luxury condos or rentals. As per our communication to city officials, the need for very expensive housing for the ultra-wealthy on this publicly owned land is questionable at best. One very simple way to dramatically reduce the size of the proposed development is to eliminate the hundreds of units of planned luxury housing. The city MUST keep the size and height of any proposed development here to an appropriate size and scale for this neighborhood.

Because this is city-owned land, and the current zoning for the site doesn’t allow the kind of development contemplated, this project can only proceed after extensive public review and approval processes in which local City Councilmember Erik Bottcher and Borough President Mark Levine will play an enormously important role. The first step in that process will be a public hearing in the Zoning and Land Use Committee of Community Board 2 on Wednesday, December 11 starting at 6:30 pm. The public will be allowed to testify, and we strongly urge you to demand an appropriately-scaled and designed development here — nothing like 60 stories — and to call for ensuring that by eliminating the hundreds of planned units of unnecessary luxury housing.

TO HELP:

You can use the sample letter in the first link above as sample testimony when speaking on December 11.

Waging battles like these to prevent outrageous, oversized developments in our neighborhood, demolition of historic buildings like the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center, and saving endangered buildings like 50 West 13th Street, require considerable resources. You can help ensure Village Preservation continues to wage and win these battles to preserve our neighborhoods.