City Aims to Auction Off Tribeca Building; Local Leaders Push for Community Benefits
The administration of Mayor Eric Adams plans to sell a city-owned building in Tribeca that has been abandoned for almost a decade. The structure, located at Seven North Moore Street, between Varick Street and West Broadway, was built as an adjunct office facility for the Department of Sanitation (DSNY) in 1939. It was last used in 2015 as locker room and meal facility for DSNY personnel.
Since then, according to DSNY documents, the building has been poorly maintained, with “the interior showing signs of water infiltration from the roof… causing the presence of mold.” DSNY says that it “considered repurposing the Seven North Moore Street building for other operational functions, but the anticipated high redevelopment costs had deterred these considerations from moving forward.” This has led the agency to begin the process of selling the building (and the land beneath it), which triggers the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure—which, in turn, requires a public review. In bureaucratic parlance, the city is seeking “disposition approval” of the property.
The structure at Seven North Moore, which sits on a lot of 1,405 square feet, is three stories tall, and encloses 3,393 square feet of interior space. The lot, which is located within the Tribeca Mixed Use District, is zoned C6-2A for commercial use, with the equivalent residential zoning of R8A. This means that a developer who purchased the building could, as of right, double the size of the current structure, with a six-story building (mixing commercial and residential use — most likely with retail or a restaurant at street level and apartments above. If such a developer chose to include any affordable housing with the new building, a zoning bonus could allow it to reach between seven and nine stories.
The value of such a redeveloped building, based on data for Tribeca including recent sales, as well as the asking prices of comparable buildings currently offered for sale, would likely run between $5 and $15 million.
City Council member Christopher Marte does not support the city’s disposition of the building. “It’s public land and public property,” he said. “We should have a say in this and not just give it away. In a blind disposition, there’s no way you can negotiate. There are a lot of good uses that can go there.”
At the December 11 meeting of the Land Use and Economic Development Committee of Community Board 1 (CB1), Board member Richard Corman asked, “is there an opportunity to put affordable housing on this site?”
DSNY assistant commissioner Chuck Kanu replied, “we reached out to the City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development [HPD]. Their Office of Neighborhood Strategies reviewed it, and informed us that they don’t have programs to finance something that, due to its size, would yield only a few affordable housing units.”
Mr. Corman pressed, “even with the immigrant and homeless crises that we have, there’s nothing that could be put there that would have some benefits?”
CB1 chair Tammy Meltzer interjected, “we’ll take ten units of housing versus zero. Our district literally has lost more affordable housing than any other in the State. So, any amount of affordable housing is better than none.”
Mr. Kanu said, “I fully understand. I don’t work for HPD and I can’t speak on their behalf. They did review it and this is the answer that we received.”
CB1 member Susan Cole observed, “they gave that answer because they can sell it for a lot of money. That’s the whole point.”
Mr. Kanu maintained, “we reached out to HPD and other agencies have not come forward with a proposal So seeking this disposition approval gives the City the flexibility to sell in the future.”
CB1’s Land Use Committee chair, Patrick Kennell, queried, “have any developers approached the City about developing the lot?”
Mr. Kanu answered, “the way it’s set up, the City sells property is to the highest bidder. This is for transparency.”
Mr. Kennell pushed back, saying, “We’ve been through this before. I distinctly remember the pre-packaged disposition of a number of properties, including one where CB1’s offices used to be, at 49-51 Chambers Street.”
This was a reference to a controversial plan implemented in the waning days of the Bloomberg Administration, in which multiple historic and enormously valuable Lower Manhattan properties owned by the City were sold to private developers. These included the former Emigrant Savings Bank Building (at 49-51 Chambers Street, which sold for $89 million) and the Clocktower Building (at 346 Broadway, which sold for $160 million). Both buildings were converted into market-rate, luxury condominiums, with no affordable units and no community benefits. The developers projected that the total sales payouts for the buildings were $334 million and $637 million, respectively.
“In the time that I’ve been on this board,” Ms. Meltzer said, “we have seen every city building sold to become luxury condos or event spaces. Every city asset sold for profit, while affordable housing is drained, bit by bit by bit.”
She added, “There’s no reason that we can’t get affordable housing units and a proper building there. Affordable housing remains the most pressing concern we have.”
At its December 20 meeting, CB1 enacted a resolution expressing “deep concerns about simply disposing of the property by, for example, selling it to the highest-bidding private developer,” when Lower Manhattan has “other great needs for public uses or benefits, including but not limited to additional affordable housing.” The measure concludes, “CB1 opposes the Seven North Moore ULURP application unless and until [the City] has conducted and fully exhausted additional review of possible alternative uses of the property.”