15th Street Neighbor-Hated Condo Conversion Denied

The neighbors didn't have strong grounds for arguing against the proposed 20-story condo-hotel project at 31 West 15th Street, given that the project was as-of-right. Still, the residents of West 16th Street's Chelsea Lane co-op sued to overturn the project's needed air rights transfer on environmental grounds, and they kept on fighting when developer Alchemy Properties switched the project from a hotel-condo to just condos atop Xavier High School, which sold the air rights in the first place. Now it looks like neighbors have achieved a partial victory. A tipster points out that the permit for the planned FxFolwe Architects-designed 25-story residential structure was denied. But a permit for the demolition of the existing building was approved prior to that, so the fate of the site remains unclear.
· 31 West 15th Street [PropertyShark]
· 31 West 15th Street coverage [Curbed]