After Sunday's spirited sign-waving against NYU's proposed 40-story building in the Silver Towers complex in Greenwich Village, it was time for Community Board 2 to pick up the baton. Last night board members heard from both sides, and here's a Curbed tipster's eyewitness report of what went down, at least for 90 minutes:
The room was packed with a couple hundred anti-tower folks. NYU did a presentation covering both archiecture and landscape architecture (~ 30 minutes, a re-hash of what's been seen / shown before). They tried to explain their justifications with lots of talk about "dialog" between old and new. Somebody yelled out "Can you translate? What are they SAYING?" Then the questioning began. A CB2 member said the new building seemed to be holding a soliloquy and not having any sort of conversation with the surroundings. Another wanted to know if there was any documentation showing that I.M. Pei has ever stated his plan was incomplete and needed an as-of-yet unbuilt 4th tower. Grimshaw Architects rep denied ever saying that the Pei plan was incomplete. The rep from Grimshaw certainly earned his pay last night. I left after an hour and a half and questions from the public were just about to begin.
This was a subcommittee hearing (not a full board vote), and the CB2ers recommended that the full board vote to deny approval for the tower. Of course this is just a preseason exhibition for NYU, which needs approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission, not the community board, to proceed to the next stage. UPDATE: The committee decided to delay officially adopting the resolution to recommend the denial.
· Villagers Say No to NYU Tower, Yes to Name-Calling [Curbed]
· NYU Begins Landmarks Commission Fight for Pinwheel Tower [Curbed]
Loading comments...