Back in 2011, the Wall Street Journal predicted the demise of the Bowery’s Lighting District, a strip of wholesale light stores beginning south of Delancey Street in the borderlands between the Lower East Side and Little Italy. Now three of those shops will bite the dust to make way for an eight-story residential and hotel project at 138 Bowery, situated mid-block between Broome and Grand Streets.
Over the summer, YIMBY revealed renderings for Related Companies’ planned 13-story, 47-unit residential building at 70 Vestry Street (aka 264 West Street), in Tribeca, and now the developer has landed $200 million in construction loans, provided by Bank of America. The building will measure 154,019 square feet in total, and includes roughly 800 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. Robert A.M. Stern is designing, while Ismael Leyva is serving as the architect of record. Demolition permits have already been approved to raze the site’s existing tenement and low-rise buildings.
Last year, ground was broken and new renderings were released for the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church planned at the also-under-construction Liberty Park, an elevated lot to the south of the World Trade Center, in the Financial District. The New York Times now reports the drum-shaped structure is rising and will be constructed with “white Pantelic marble, from the same vein in Greece that was quarried to construct the Parthenon.” Santiago Calatrava is designing, and completion of the sanctuary and park is expected in 2017.
Do what the Landmarks Preservation Commission asks and you shall receive its blessing. So was the case for the hotel planned for 456 Greenwich Street, sitting partly in the TriBeCa North Historic District. The proposal went before the commission in early August, but the brick choice and square fenestrations didn’t fly. So, the applicant was forced to come back. They did so on Tuesday and had perhaps the most pain-free experience in this journalist’s experience with the LPC.
Early this year, the New York Daily News reported the landmarked three-story synagogue at 415 East 6th Street, in the East Village, was being partially converted into residential units, and now the structure’s penthouse addition is being constructed, per EV Grieve. The finished structure will stand five stories and measure 8,634 square feet, up from an original 6,344 square feet. The synagogue will continue to operate on the ground floor with 2,000 square feet, but three residential units are being built above, each averaging 2,115 square feet. East River Partners is developing, while Joseph Pell Lombardi is designing.
