City Lifts Hold On Upper West Side's Largest Development

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — A controversial Upper West Side development, which will be the neighborhood's tallest building when complete, is back on track. The city Department of Buildings has lifted a construction hold for 200 Amsterdam Avenue after developers provided the department necessary information to support an initial zoning approval, a DOB spokesman told Patch.

Developer SJP Properties will have to refile permit application for the project before they can resume construction a proposed 668-foot-tall building with more than 350,000 square feet of buildable space, a DOB spokesman told Patch.

City Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal, an opponent of the development, said in a statement that she strongly objects to the DOB ruling.

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"I continue to believe that this project is out of scale, out of context, and runs counter to existing zoning regulations. I will continue to work with community groups to push that case, and will explore all available options to do so," Rosenthal said in a statement.

In July, the city halted all construction on the site of 200 Amsterdam Avenue after a DOB audit identified a number of problems with the original proposal for 200 Amsterdam Ave. In order for the developers to build as high as they wanted they planned to combine several individual zoning lots and purchased air rights into one big lot. But the DOB audit revealed that developers failed to certify that the smaller lots had been combined correctly, a spokesman told Patch. The developers also failed to prove that they can build as high as desired after the lots are combined, the spokesman said.

A public zoning challenge launched by the Committee for Environmentally Sound Development also turned up a problem with the 200 Amsterdam Ave. proposals. The challenge claimed that open space promised by the developers would not be accessible to the public. The DOB agreed with the claim, a spokesman said. The DOB however did not agree with a zoning claim that 200 Amsterdam Ave's planned bulkhead and mechanical floors — which will exceed the building's maximum building height — violate the city zoning resolution.

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