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DUMBO’S TALLEST BUILDING Giant planned for Jay Street sparks debate

DUMBO’S

The groundbreaking this week for a new high-rise condominium at 100 Jay
St. has re-ignited concern about what will be built there.

Last Monday, bulldozers took to the site — formerly occupied by an
outdoor parking lot and bounded by Pearl, York, Front and Jay streets
— tearing up pavement and gouging a hole for the foundation of what
is being called the J Condo. At 33 stories, it would be the tallest building
in DUMBO.

But unlike other big development projects in the predominantly low-rise
former manufacturing district, the rezoning the city granted to the developer
of the J Condo site was for a very different, and much shorter, project.

That project, called “Light Bridges” by developer Cara Development,
would have built twin 18-story buildings joined by a common two-story
base with an interior courtyard. The twisting, triangular glass-and-steel
design also called for ground-floor retail. That plan required a zoning
change to allow the residential and retail uses in the manufacturing district.
With approval from Community Board 2, the borough president and the City
Planning Commission, the City Council in January 2002 approved the site-specific
zoning change.

The 18-story building would have stood 200 feet tall, with 375,000 square
feet of space.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation, which reviewed the
project’s environmental impact statement, said it “will not
have a significant adverse environmental impact.”

Light Bridges, however, never saw the light of day.

The J Condo, also being built by Cara Development, will stand 337 feet
tall, with 267 one- to three-bedroom condo apartments with just over 407,000
square feet of space in total, and ground-floor retail.

J Condo marketers tout its being the tallest building in DUMBO and adding
an “easily recognizable icon to the Brooklyn skyline with its dramatic,
curved, sail-like facade of floor-to-ceiling windows,” according
to an advertisement on the Web site of the building’s managing agent,
The Hudson Companies Inc.

Repeated calls to the property’s owner, Charles Cara, were not returned,
and neither were calls to The Hudson Companies.

The city’s Department of City Planning, however, said all the changes
to the plans were legitimate, and would not require any further review
by the city in the urban land use review process (ULURP).

“The short answer is that the 100 Jay St. project was approved by
the City Planning Commission,” said Rachaele Raynoff, spokeswoman
for the Department of City Planning.

“Developers changed. New developers are building as-of-right,”
she said, explaining that the application that passed the city’s
Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) rezoned the site from manufacturing
(M1-5) to high-rise residential (R9-1), meaning that the building would
be capped at a 280-foot height with an additional 40-foot-tall tower allowed
at the top, set back from the building’s edge.

“The CPC and Council approved [this] rezoning,” Raynoff said.
And even though the new project features a different design and additional
10 stories, Raynoff said it would not need to be re-submitted for review,
even though it is 17 feet taller than the limits she cited.

“A development pursuant to that zoning does not require another ULURP
or EIS. If the 100 Jay St. plan did not comply, [the Department of Buildings]
would have indicated that further review was necessary,” she said.

“We have no complaints on record, that says something as well,”
said Buildings Department spokeswoman Jennifer Givner. “Normally,
when the community has a problem with something being overbuilt they call
in and complain, but on record, we have nothing to date.

“We have the ability to issue something called a reconsideration
that basically only comes form the top advisors that say something like
you can’t do ‘X’, but you can do ‘X’ if you do
something else that makes it just as safe,” she said.

A principal at Gruzen Samton, the architecture firm designing the J Condo,
referred a reporter’s questions to Cara Development.

What makes J Condo an oddity is not only the height, but the seeming bait-and-switch
pulled by the developer to obtain the rezoning based on a shorter project,
which in turn set a precedent that may facilate other large-scale developments
in DUMBO and Vinegar Hill.

DUMBO’s look as a turn-of-the-century city by the sea between the
Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges has over the past year or so given way
to more Manhattan-esque development.

Developer Shaya Boymelgreen has two high-rise apartment buildings under
construction, the 11-story Beacon Tower luxury condominium at 84 Front
St. and a 23-story residence at 85 Adams St., on the other side of the
Manhattan Bridge overpass from the J Condo site.

“That went through because quite honestly there was a sort of naivete
of the community members involved,” said Marcia Hillis, a DUMBO resident
who reviewed the Light Bridges project as a member of the CB2 Land Use
committee, noting that the community board got the application for review
just a month after the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001. She said most members
probably didn’t think that by approving the R9 zoning for the site
they were opening it up to other designs.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t put any restrictions on the developer,”
Hillis added, such as restricting the approval to the project as described
or requiring a re-approval to change the plans.

Ursula Hahn, a non-CB2 member of the its Land Use committee who also saw
the original model presentation by Cara Developers and then-architects
Sharples Holden Pasquarelli (SHoP Architects), said the plan the board
approved was already setting a precedent for height in the area.

“They showed this dazzling, undulating light tower, and I think we
noticed that this was going to be very high, but we were also very enamored
with this building,” said Hahn in a recent interview with The Brooklyn
Papers.

Michelle Whetten, president of the DUMBO Neighborhood Association (DNA),
said she had not yet seen the plans for the J Condo.

“I can’t say we’ve exhausted all our options,” said
Whetten, whose DNA raised concerns early on about the precedent a building
of Light Bridges’ height might set. Whetten became president of the
group this year.

Robert Perris, district manager of CB2 who was working as a community
board liaison for the borough president’s office at the time the
Light Bridges plan was passed, suggested that the mistake board members
made in their approval of that project was “unfortunate” but,
he said, it was a common ruse used by developers seeking spot rezonings.

“They’re voting on a zoning, not a building,” he said.
“Unfortunately, this happens all the time.”