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Volume One, Issue 15, January 5 - 11, 2007

Does new seminary housing plan have a prayer?

By Lawrence Lerner

The General Theological Seminary added a new dimension to its hotly debated Ninth Ave. tower proposal last week when it announced it would devote unused development rights from the project to the creation of affordable housing in Chelsea.

In a letter sent to Lee Compton, Community Board 4’s chairperson, on Dec. 28, Dean Ward Ewing of G.T.S. said that the seminary, along with its development partner, the Brodsky Organization, would apply “our only transferable asset,” between 55,000 and 60,000 square feet of leftover development rights, to an unspecified site under an as-yet-unspecified government affordable housing program.

“To make this commitment a reality, both the seminary and the Brodsky Organization will require a viable development site in Chelsea to which the rights can be transferred,” Ewing wrote. “We pledge to work with the Fulton Houses Tenants Association, Community Board 4 and the city to find such a site for affordable housing in Chelsea.”

But securing such a site may not be easy.

While lauding G.T.S.’s intentions, Compton sees a practical problem ahead.

“We’ve already tried everything we could to find other places in Chelsea and West Chelsea to transfer development rights [for other projects], and there aren’t any unless you rezone the neighborhood to do it,” he said.

G.T.S. is well aware of the difficulty it may have in finding an appropriate site, according to Maureen Burnley, the seminary’s executive vice president for finance and operations.

“We’ve got some thoughts about potential sites, but they’ll require some creative looks at current zoning regulations,” she said.

Because the seminary is landmarked, it has the as-of-right option to transfer development rights to an adjacent lot, across the street or diagonally across a corner, but there is no such ready solution in this case, Compton said.

“If the seminary had told us about this two years ago during the West Chelsea rezoning, we could have made room for it,” he said.

Burnley understands Compton’s point but stressed that G.T.S. had a very different focus back then. She said the seminary was not plugged into real estate discussions with the Chelsea community a few years ago, when the West Chelsea rezoning was being discussed, because the seminary was concluding a possible deal with the national Episcopal Church to partner on the seminary’s current site.

That deal fell through at the last minute after a letter of agreement had been signed, according to Burnley. The plan called for the church’s national headquarters, located at 815 Third Ave., to use the proceeds from the sale of its building for a new Sherill Hall — the existing four-story building on Ninth Ave. between 20th and 21st Sts. — which would have contained office space for both institutions and required no apartments to generate funds for the restoration of G.T.S.’s ailing historical buildings.

“Had we known the partnership with Episcopal Church was going to fall through, we certainly would have pursued other options to fulfill our need for revenue and the community’s need for affordable housing,” said Burnley.

G.T.S.’s current proposal was recently submitted to the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The plan involves two buildings: a structure that rises 15 stories facing Ninth Ave. and steps down to 13 stories on the other three sides, along with a four-story building to go on the seminary’s tennis court on W. 20th St.

The mixed-use tower would replace the deteriorating Sherill Hall and would contain luxury apartments, in addition to offices, a library and parking. It has been the center of a yearlong battle between area residents and the seminary, with residents claiming the proposed tower would violate the 75-foot height restriction of the Chelsea Historic District, of which G.T.S. is an integral part.

But seminary officials say the building represents the best hope for generating the $15 million to $20 million needed to stabilize many of G.T.S.’s historic buildings, which have fallen into disrepair because of years of deferred maintenance and which are in need of immediate attention.

With the latest addition to its proposal, G.T.S. is attempting to sweeten the deal for disgruntled area residents. According to Burnley, the seminary has recently identified three possible sites on which to try to develop affordable housing, the most promising being a New York City Housing Authority-owned parking lot on W. 19th St. between Ninth and Tenth Aves., right behind G.T.S.’s building at 422 W. 20th St.

“It’s not clear what all the mechanisms are to transferring our rights there, and it’s hardly a slam-dunk, since new zoning laws in general make it hard to transfer rights,” Burnley said. “But we’re encouraged by NYCHA’s transformation of parking lots for affordable housing developments,” she said, referring to the city housing agency’s plans to build low-income housing on lots at the Elliot-Chelsea and Fulton Houses and Harborview.

But Anna Levin, a member of C.B. 4’s Affordable Housing Task Force, says the seminary’s bid for a NYCHA site is a long shot.

“The city scoured the area for public sites on which to build affordable housing back when we did the Special West Chelsea District rezoning,” Levin said. “If there were another NYCHA site viable for development, we would have gotten it included in the West Chelsea plan.”

Levin also emphasized that securing a site may be impossible without a rezoning, which she says would be politically unfeasible at this point.

“And even if G.T.S. got a rezoning, they’d have to go out into a hyper-inflated market to buy a site to build on,” she said.

Meanwhile, Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and a member of C.B. 4’s Landmarks and Affordable Housing Task Force, calls G.T.S.’s proposal a double-edged sword. While he would welcome additional affordable housing in West Chelsea, he said that “to tie it to a plan to violate zoning protections for this neighborhood and to construction of a much larger luxury development is problematic.”

Berman added that transferring G.T.S.’s development rights would mean increasing density — or bulk — in the area, which has already experienced several massive upzonings in recent years. It would also have implications for G.T.S.’s current Ninth Ave. proposal.

“If it is possible to find appropriate locations for additional density in Chelsea, then it would seem that similar alternatives should be pursued for identifying sites where Brodsky’s proposed luxury tower could be moved so that the 75-foot height limit of the Chelsea Plan does not have to be violated as currently proposed,” Berman said.

But G.T.S.’s Burnley doesn’t see the logic in such a proposal.

“I still don’t understand why advocates for affordable housing would think this was a good deal,” Burnley said of the idea voiced by Berman. “Are they really saying that they would rather have fewer units of affordable housing in exchange for a shorter building on Ninth Ave.?

“We think it makes more sense to propose an appropriately scaled building to make our money on the Ninth Ave. project so that we can preserve the rest of our buildings,” Burnley said. “Then we want to develop another building that is as large as a good architect, the law and community politics allow for affordable housing.”

With both sides at an impasse on the plans for the tower and affordable housing, the disagreements are not likely to die down soon. C.B. 4 will hold a public forum on G.T.S.’s plans on Jan. 19 at the Fulton Center Auditorium at 199 Ninth Ave. between 17th and 18th Sts. The board’s Landmarks Task Force and Chelsea Preservation and Planning Committee will then take up the matter on Jan. 22, and the full board will review their recommendations on Feb. 7.

In the meantime, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission could hold its own hearing as early as Feb. 27, according to spokesperson Lisi de Bourbon, who added that although the 11 commissioners could theoretically vote on G.T.S.’s application at this first forum, they will likely hold off to give the public an opportunity to voice its concerns at the meeting, then schedule a second hearing where they will either approve the proposal outright or offer comments and suggest changes.

“The applicant then makes the revisions and appears before the commissioners again,” said de Bourbon. “The entire process can be quite long. It’s possible that G.T.S.’s case might not be decided by Landmarks for some time.”

If G.T.S’s project is finally approved by Landmarks, it will then have to go through the city’s uniform land use review procedure, or ULURP, which involves successive reviews by the Department of City Planning, Community Board 4, the Manhattan borough president, the City Council and the mayor.

As for how the Landmarks Preservation Commission is likely to vote on G.T.S.’s proposal, de Bourbon said, “The commissioners haven’t seen it, so it’s impossible to predict how they’ll decide. We would never endorse a proposal before the commissioners see it.”