Legal Challenge Filed Against Tower At 200 Amsterdam

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — A group of Upper West Side preservationists is filing a legal challenge against a planed 668-foot residential tower currently under construction in the latest attempt to block the development.

The Committee for Environmentally Sound Development filed a challenge Friday in Manhattan Supreme Court against SJP Properties and its planned 200 Amsterdam Ave. development. The challenge has the support of groups such as Landmark West! and the Municipal Arts Society and politicians such as City Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal.

The Committee for Environmentally Sound Development has been fighting 200 Amsterdam since 2017 when the group filed a challenge against the development with the Department of Buildings. The group has accused developers of gerrymandering 200 Amsterdam's zoning lot to obtain out-of-scale building rights. The 200 Amsterdam lot is combined with parts of five other tax lots, which should violate a Zoning Resolution condition determining what makes an appropriate zoning lot, the group argues.

Rosenthal in a statement that that the city Zoning Resolution is "incapable" of addressing the problem of out of context development because of tax lot loopholes that allow buildings such as 200 Amsterdam Avenue.

"Communities are being bombarded by projects that are supposedly 'as of right,' but they are often drastically out of context, do not actually comply with the spirit of special district and other local protections, and are not helping to address our affordable housing crisis," Rosenthal said in a statement.

The city Board of Standards and Appeals sided with SJP Properties in July and the high-rise is currently under construction. Throughout the board's deliberations on 200 Amsterdam, developers noted that construction on the building's foundation began back in the fall of 2017.

Developers called the new lawsuit a "last ditch" effort to stop a development that has been " exhaustively reviewed" by multiple city agencies.

"This appeal is a last-ditch attempt by a well-funded group of NIMBY activists whose previous efforts to block this as-of-right development have failed at every turn. We are confident that this lawsuit will be dismissed, as have all previous challenges, on the grounds that this project is fully compliant with NYC’s zoning resolution. The development team for 200 Amsterdam has followed the law completely and continues to make unabated construction progress," a spokesperson for SJP Properties said in a statement.

When 200 Amsterdam Ave. was first proposed by SJP Properties it was set to become the tallest building on the Upper West Side. Extell Development's recently proposed 15 W. 65th St. — which would rise 775-feet-tall — has since taken that title. Neighborhood groups and politicians are also fighting that development.

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