The 40-year-old Plantworks at 28. E. Fourth St. between the Bowery and Lafayette closed for business in May, and the adjacent garden center shuttered last month.
Now Curbed has the scoop what's coming next:
NYU, which leased the lot to the garden center, wants to do a massive renovation of its Academic Support Center at 383 Lafayette Street and expand it into the East 4th Street lot.
The expanded building will rise 4 floors on the former Garden Center property.
[Rendering photo by Evan Bindelglass via Curbed]
The Landmarks Preservation Commission heard the pitch for the renovated 383 Lafayette building (previously home to Tower Video) and annex yesterday.
And their reaction?
New LPC chair Meenakshi Srinivasan said there was much that was positive about the proposal and that restoration and enlargement of the existing building would be "helpful" to the area.
The LPC was reportedly close to approving the project, but asked for a few modifications.
This stretch of East Fourth Street will be active again with construction, with NYU and the new 8-floor hotel to rise next to the Merchant's House Museum.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Plantworks 'probably closing and not moving'
7 comments:
I liked Plantworks, but the owner was pretty rude and condescending.
There should be limits to NYU's growth. They are spreading like a cancer. And immature people are marauding through our neighborhood late at night. Nothing useful about that,
...and the raping of the East Village continues.
"Helpful to the area" - am I missing something here, or has the meaning of that word fundamentally changed? Helpful to NYU is more like it. I guess the new chairperson is as useless and pro-development as the last one was.
I googled Meenakshi Srinivasan, and this came up from a post when she was named head of the Landmarks Commission: "Srinivasan told members of the Rules Committee last month that she hopes to strike a balance between preservation and development", i.e. the developers get their way.
Ugh. This is potentially really bad news for preservation, especially now we need someone to be really strong in resisting development (and a big blow in my opinion of De Blasio)
No real plants, just alciada plants.
I agree that the owner was rude, etc. The one time I went into the place and asked him if they were going to relocate, he said in the most condescending and rude way, "Nooooo, where'd you get that idea?"
Bill the libertarian anarchist and opponent of rude jerks
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