Design beyond zoning: Negotiating architectural form

and bulk restrictions at HL23

Per-Johan Dahl

Research Institute for Experimental Architecture, Bern, Switzerland.

Three players and one complicated project site

HL23 is a 14-story condominium tower with an art gallery on the ground floor and community amenities on the second . It is located at the intersection of West 23rd Street and the High Line in the West Chelsea district of New York City. The architect behind HL23 is Neil M. Denari. He was commissioned for the design in 2004. Construction started in 2008, and the building was completed 2011. The developer behind HL23 is Alf Naman. Working in the real estate sector since the early 1990s, Naman has expanded on a business model ‘‘of creating the best quality architecture in the hope of attracting the unique buyer capable of paying for it’’ (Seward, 2008). Naman had paid attention to the promising features of West Chelsea as early as the late 1990s, which despite some turbulence during the last of the recession has been proven rather lucrative, with property values skyrocketing since 2007 .

When Naman gained control of the project site for HL23 in 2004, however, he was not sure what to do with it. Located in the heart of a derelict warehouse district, the development potential appeared to be severely limited. The project site encompassed a midblock through-lot traversed by the High Line,

with 75-foot frontage (23 meters) on West 23rd Street, and 50-foot frontage (15 meters) on West 24th Street. Comprised of three separate lots, it measured a total of 12,344 square feet (1147 square meters). Despite this considerable size, 56 per cent of the profitable land was concealed by the elevated railroad bed, including most of the West 24th Street frontage, which made real estate development problematic.

The obstacle, however, was not just the complicated project site, but also the overlay of two zoning amendments. Together, these determined the building’s legal form, and thus drastically reduced the site’s development potential. Willis (1995) observes that development cycles have affected density and spatial distribution in Manhattan throughout the twentieth century. While development cycles adapt to shifting socioeconomic forces, density and spatial distribution are channeled through real estate incentives and regulated through zoning. Whereas shifting socioeconomic forces may be difficult to predict, zoning is explicit. Deployed in New York City as a key tool for carrying out planning policy—a contestation that NYCDCP (2014) states well—zoning mediates between the individual interests of real estate industry and the public interests of city governances. While the developer and the city planner are the administrative players in such policy procedure, the architect provides the transition from administration to form. The following review of the policy procedures for the Chelsea neighborhood will clarify the drastically reduced development potential for the HL23 project site, which

frames a context for the evaluation of Denari’s design pathway.

One development cycle and two zoning Amendments

Chelsea is a neighborhood on the west side of Manhattan. Located close to the Hudson River, a major part of the neighborhood evolved as a trade and light manufacturing district in the early twentieth century. The businesses flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, which led to the construction of the elevated High Line between 1929 and 1934, in order to separate freight trains and street level traffic. Following the economic restructuring processes of post-World War II America, the businesses in Chelsea declined. When the High Line was closed to traffic in 1980, the business scene transformed into ‘‘a cultural wilderness of trucking companies, drug dealers, and strip bars’’(Ingrassia, 2001). The relocation of trade and light manufacturing businesses, however, resulted in a significant stock of abandoned warehouses, which attracted new businesses from the art market. Relocating from the gentrified SoHo, the art market turned Chelsea’s abandoned warehouses into studios and commercial art galleries (Sicha, 2003). Following the opening of Dia:Chelsea in 1987, the number of commercial art galleries in Chelsea increased from 12 in 1995 to about 250 by 2004 (Molotch and Treskon, 2009). Literature research and interviews pursued by the author combine to verify that the relocated art market catalyzed a new development cycle in Chelsea. As a result, new legislation was needed to balance the often-contradictory interests of real estate development and historic preservation.

The resolution ‘‘The Chelsea Plan: A Contextual Zoning Proposal to Create Housing Opportunities’’

was approved by the City Council on 9 September 1999, and the amendment introduced a special zoning district for major areas of Chelsea. The contextual zoning technique complied with planning objectives by acknowledging development pressure while still controlling residential density and preserving neighborhood character (Berg, 2007). For the western part of the neighborhood, the amendment reinforced the historic character of West 23rd Street through the creation of the West 23rd Street Corridor. An interview with Sellke and Ramnarine (2011) of NYCDCP confirms that the creation of the West 23rd Street Corridor served to replace single-use zoning with a combination of mixed manufacturing and residential uses. The map of zoning demonstrates that the blocks with West 23rd Street frontage were changed from M-district to M1-5/R9A (NYCDCP, 2005). The adopted bulk

restrictions reveal the ambition to allow taller buildings with streetwalls of 102 feet (31 meters), and building heights of 145 feet (44 meters) (CPCCNY, 1999). The market response was immediate; archival research done by the author at the Real Estate Board of New York, for example, shows that the market value of lot 27 on block 695, which is 515 West 23rd Street, increased from $623,000 in 1998 to $764,000 in 1999. A second initiativewas formed in 1999 to catalyze land-use change and increase property value in Chelsea. Drawing on former Chelsea resident and activist PeterObletz’s efforts to oppose demolition of the outmoded railway viaduct known as the High Line, Joshua David and Robert Hammond formalized the idea of historical preservation through the founding of the non-profit group, ‘‘Friends of the High Line’’.Archival research pursued by the author shows that the High Line was neglected in the 1999 amendment, which suggests that the idea remained more of a vision than a project. Support for the project improved in 2002, when a study done by the Friends of the High Line showed that new tax revenues created by the public space were anticipated to be greater than the costs of construction (Amateau, 2014). The international design competition ‘‘Designing the High Line’’, launched in July 2003, attracted 720 teams from 36 countries. The winning proposal by Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro was announced in the New York Times on 12 August 2004 (Ouroussoff, 2004). The successful fundraising combined with the international design competitionmobilized public support.In 2004, with Michael R. Bloomberg as the new mayor of New York City, the city government committed $50 million to establish the proposed park (Amateau, 2014).

（文章来源：URBAN DESIGN International excerpted）