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(These fuckers are turning NY into Abu Dhabi.)
NY Times, April 20, 2019
How Luxury Developers Use a Loophole to Build Soaring Towers for the
Ultrarich in N.Y.
By Matthew Haag
Some of the tallest residential buildings in the world soar above
Central Park, including 432 Park Avenue, which rises 1,400 feet and
features an array of penthouses and apartments for the ultrarich.
But 432 Park also has an increasingly common feature in these new
towers: swaths of unoccupied space. About a quarter of its 88 floors
will have no homes because they are filled with structural and
mechanical equipment.
The building and nearby towers are able to push high into the sky
because of a loophole in the city’s labyrinthine zoning laws. Floors
reserved for structural and mechanical equipment, no matter how much, do
not count against a building’s maximum size under the laws, so
developers explicitly use them to make buildings far higher than would
otherwise be permitted.
The towers benefiting the most from the zoning quirk have all sprouted
during the past half-decade: enormous glass and steel buildings with
lavish condominiums that sell for millions of dollars. Many line the
blocks around Central Park, some of the most expensive and coveted real
estate in the city, and have become second homes for Chinese
billionaires, European tycoons and out-of-state hedge fund investors.
But the proliferation of these buildings is provoking a backlash amid a
broader debate about affordable housing, megaprojects for the ultrarich
and the city’s identity. Now, officials are seeking to rein in
developers by proposing rules that would apply unusually large
mechanical spaces toward a building’s height limit.
The motivation to build tall is obvious: panoramic views for residents
and hefty profits for developers. A 95th floor condominium at 432 Park
Avenue sold in December for $30.7 million, or about $7,592 a square
foot. That same month, a unit about halfway down the building sold for
$4,216 a square foot.
“It’s pretty outrageous, but it’s also pretty clever,” said George M.
Janes, a planning consultant who has tracked and filed challenges
against buildings in New York with vast unoccupied spaces. “What is the
primary purpose of these spaces? The primary purpose is to build very
tall buildings.”
The effort by the city to curb building heights has ignited a showdown
with the powerful real estate industry, which has criticized the
proposed rules as overly restrictive and misguided.
Harry B. Macklowe, who developed 432 Park Avenue, said he agrees with
the effort to establish firm rules around mechanical spaces, but he
rejected claims that his building was using them to rise higher. Every
mechanical floor, he said, has equipment necessary for the building to
function.
“It offends me,” Mr. Macklowe said, “because we created a very nice
building that fits into the skyline perfectly.”
Many of these towers stay vacant most of the year, so their owners are
not subject to local and state income taxes because they are not city
residents. As a result, the state and city have already begun a separate
crackdown on them.
State lawmakers proposed a pied-à-terre tax, an annual recurring tax on
second homes valued at more than $5 million, but it was derailed under
intense lobbying from real estate groups. Instead, lawmakers embraced a
one-time fee on the sale of multimillion-dollar homes.
New York City’s complicated building regulations are meant to produce
predictable developments. Height requirements are imposed in most of the
city, though parts of Manhattan are exempt. Every block is also
effectively assigned a maximum square footage, which can be spread
across smaller buildings on a block or condensed in larger developments.
Savvy, well-heeled and patient developers have worked that system to
their benefit. A developer seeking to build a supertall tower might
start with one lot on a block and then buy unused square footage from
its neighbors.
With advancements in engineering and construction, that developer can
take the accumulated square footage and concentrate it in a skinny
mega-tower. Floors of mechanical space, exempt from the square footage
calculations, make the tower even taller.
“There is no question that they have become this lightning rod because
they are not just luxury housing but uber-luxury housing,” said
Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the Municipal Art Society, a nonprofit
group that seeks to preserve the city’s architecture and urban design.
She said they were unaffordable not only for the 99 percent but also for
most of the 1 percent.
The city’s proposal aimed at supertall buildings — which needs to be
approved by the City Council — would not eliminate enormous mechanical
spaces but would penalize projects that have them.
Oversized mechanical floors — those greater than 30 feet tall, or about
three times the size of a typical apartment’s ceiling height — would be
counted toward the building’s maximum size. The rules would largely
apply to developments around Central Park and in parts of Lower Manhattan.
Two other cities with skyscrapers, Chicago and Miami, have similar
zoning codes but regulate mechanical floors differently.
In Chicago, big empty spaces — those greater than 5,000 square feet —
are not counted toward the tower’s overall size, though officials said
they knew of no complaints about developers exploiting the rule. In
Miami, mechanical spaces are subtracted from the maximum size unless the
area is an atrium or an open-air feature.
In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the proposed rules would “stop
luxury developers from gaming the system.”
“Artificially tall mechanical spaces that serve no purpose but to boost
views of top-floor apartments violate the spirit of our zoning
regulations,” Mr. de Blasio said in a statement.
But the Real Estate Board of New York, the industry’s influential
lobbying arm, said the rules were too restrictive and at odds with
engineering trends, such as the future need for large spaces for
batteries to support renewable energy.
At a recent public hearing, engineers and architects said the proposal
would drive up the cost of construction.
Bart A. Sullivan, an engineer in New York who has worked on high rises
around the world, said supertall skyscrapers need large unoccupied
floors for complex mechanical and structural equipment, including
elevator motors, heating, ventilation and air conditioning.
Developers, he said, could work within the proposed restrictions but
would have to spend more on structural features.
“Most anything is possible if you throw enough money at it, but these
projects have to make sense from an economic point of view,” Mr.
Sullivan said. “They are tying the hands of the design professionals.”
There are legitimate reasons for large areas in buildings for mechanical
and structural features, he said. At 432 Park Avenue, clusters of
unoccupied sections throughout the tower allow wind to flow through and
stabilize the building.
That tower’s structural engineer, Silvian Marcus, said that without the
large, open-air mechanical floors, 432 Park Avenue would noticeably sway
and be unacceptable to residents.
“When they come home, they want to feel like they are at home and not
like they are on a boat, airplane or motorcycle,” he said.
Mr. Marcus used a similar engineering technique at Central Park Tower,
which at 1,550 feet tall will be among the most slender residential
skyscrapers in the world. More than a fifth of its height will remain
unoccupied.
The developer of the building, Gary Barnett, said he believed the city’s
proposal was reasonable, but he said that critics had mischaracterized
the mechanical spaces in Central Park Tower.
“There is one void and everything else is truly necessary mechanical
space, amenity space and high-ceiling retail space for the first
Nordstrom in New York City,” Mr. Barnett said.
Some supporters of the new legislation argue that the rules do not go
far enough to curb supertall buildings. They would largely apply to
neighborhoods around Central Park and would not touch other areas with
high rises, including Midtown and Hudson Yards
City planners first noticed the trend of using mechanical spaces in new
buildings several years ago.
But a turning point emerged over the past year and a half when Rafael
Viñoly Architects, which designed 432 Park Avenue, unveiled plans for
another building, a futuristic, barbell-shaped 32-story residential
tower on the Upper East Side. It would top out at 510 feet tall, thanks
to a 150-foot-tall midsection devoid of residences.
Neighborhood associations, along with Mr. Janes, the planning
consultant, filed a complaint with the city’s Department of Buildings,
noting that “the project includes a huge void, which is larger than
necessary for any mechanical use.”
But without changes in building rules the tower would be likely to avoid
legal challenges: The developers described the super large midsection as
an open area with structural features.
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