The extended plywood arrived on Friday at 118 E. First St. between Avenue A and First Avenue...
... as work officially started in the lot that will be home to a 9-story residential building featuring seven units divided over 12,500 square feet of residential space (likely condos). The building will include a small retail space on the ground floor.
Meanwhile, no sign of a rendering just yet. (Warren Freyer's Freyer Architects is designing the building.) Perhaps one will eventually show up on the plywood along with the required work permits.
Not much has happened here in the past 12-14 months since workers demolished the three-story building that was standing here.
As noted in a previous post:
No. 118 was one of five new East Village projects identified by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation as an oversized new development ... "in the neighborhood's affordable housing zones [that] were approved by the city without requiring affordable housing."
According to their investigation released in February 2016 (find the letter to the mayor here), the city approved new developments "with greater square footage than allowed for market-rate developments, without requiring any affordable housing either on-site or off, as mandated by law."
We also heard from a dismayed next-door neighbor when construction started in the lot on Friday.
I am now going to lose 70 percent of light in my place. The kitchen, bathroom and a bedroom will all have shaft windows. I am not even going to rant about another luxury condo absurdity but to lose all this light feels tragic. It is stunning that nobody considered this or there was no hearing in place.
Previously on EV Grieve:
118 E. 1st St. arrives on the market with so many possibilities, and air rights
118 E. 1st. St. will yield to a new 9-floor residential building
Demolition of 118 E. 1st St. begins to make way for 9-story residential building
Plus the noise from the HVAC systems - with the property tax exemptions its a lose lose for the citizens.
ReplyDeleteHow is a 9 story building allowed to replace a 3 story building? What air rights shenanigans where at play to get around the zoning laws? As I overheard a real-estate agent utter this weekend "this is becoming a desirable neighborhood" curser them all.
ReplyDeleteToo bad about that tenant losing so much light. But this is not the fault of the new developer. It is the fault of whoever owned your building and the lot where construction is about to start and how they bought, or didn't buy air rights long before any of us were around. Air rights are tricky and just as valuable as property rights. When you can buy them both in a vertical property format, it is worth a lot more money. Sad, but it is the way it works.
ReplyDelete