The good news for residents of 66th Street, between 12th and 13th avenues, is that a hotel is not going up on their block.
The bad news is that the development at 1225 66th Street of a six-unit apartment building is just one of several taking place simultaneously on the block, whose residents are already frustrated by the lack of parking.
Residents had recently raised the issue of a possible hotel on the street, after reading a building classification of J-1 residential (hotel) on the Department of Buildings’ (DOB) website Buildings Information System (BIS) file for the address.
However, Kevin Ong, of Jung Wor Chin architects, said that was an error that had been overlooked not only by the architects but by DOB, referring this reporter to another page (schedule A) which is attached to the information on the plan exam approved for the location on May 30th. That referred to a structure with three floors and two apartments on each floor.
“We’re going to fix that,” Ong said of the J-1 notation. “We definitely don’t want to create any enemies in the neighborhood.”
Nonetheless, residents of the block are not delighted by the flurry of development occurring there. “What’s particularly stressful for residents is that there are several older homes being demolished at the same time,” noted Josephine Beckmann, the district manager at Community Board 10. “It’s a very rapid change in a short period of time.”
Martin Hopkins, who has lived on the block for eight years, noted, “We were lucky on this block. Buildings were going up all over the place. But, now our luck has run out.”
The construction boom on 66th Street, Hopkins pointed out, “Not only inundates the block.”
For just the house at 1225, he remarked, “With six families, you’re talking 12 cars where there was a one-family house with a driveway. You’re talking six more families using the sewer system, six more families with school kids, six more families taxing the electrical grid.”
Parking has been a particular sore spot on the block. Residents already deal with the fallout from valet parking from Gennaro’s caterers on 13th Avenue, and also with bus parking zones set up for the school for autistic children that’s at the corner.
When you factor in the construction zones, the combination packs a triple whammy, said Patricia D’Apice, who told this paper, “Everybody on the block is at each other’s throats. It’s brutal. We lost 16 spots to the school buses, now six or seven more because they’re knocking three houses down. And, all three houses are on the side of the street where the spots were. Now, each one has a huge dumpster, and cones, and Gennaro’s has cones holding spots for valet parking.”
Even having a driveway, D’Apice added, is no guarantee of having a parking spot. “I have a driveway and I can’t get into it,” she explained, “because my neighbor painted yellow lines (to delineate his own driveway, pushing curbside parking back), so I lost four feet.
“It’s ridiculous,” D’Apice contended. “They are knocking down three houses at the same time on one block. We’ve learned to live with the school. Now, we’ve got nothing.”
