It was looking less like a negotiation and more like a game of chicken late last month as City Councilman Alan Gerson and Bloomberg administration officials sought a last-minute agreement over massive new residential construction proposed for Tribeca.

Development plans for two city-owned parcels near P.S. 234, Sites 5B and 5C, have been the focus of complex negotiations for months. On Sept. 9, following two days of committee hearings and concluding a required 60-day review process, the City Council is scheduled to vote on the sale of one of those sites, 5C at West and Chambers Streets, to developer Scott Resnick.

		But much more is at stake than Resnick's plans for a 300-foot-high apartment tower. Community leaders and city officials appear to have reached an agreement on Resnick's project. It is expected to include a 300-foot-high residential tower, nearly 28,000 square feet of space for a community center (with a 75-foot pool) run by Manhattan Youth, and a 10-classroom pre-k and kindergarten feeder school. Though important financial details were yet to be worked out, Gerson and Community Board 1 representatives said they were pleased with the deal after much haggling over the size of the community center (now more than twice what Resnick originally offered) and the height of the building (100 feet shorter than first proposed).
The catch is that the city has plans for a much bigger project-which faces more resistance from the community-on the larger Site 5B, bordered by Greenwich, Warren, Murray and West Streets. City officials have linked the negotiations on the two sites. Looking to avert future community opposition to the large-scale development on Site 5B, community leaders said the city wants them to agree in advance to the size and placement of the apartment buildings that the designated developer, Edward Minskoff, will put there. And the community has its own demand: a commitment from the city to build a k-8th grade school east of Broadway, to relieve the pressure on P.S. 234 when families move into all those new apartments. "We are not going to allow any development without assurance of the school," Gerson said. All this appeared hopelessly unresolved as time ticked away in the waning days of summer, when many of the principals in the negotiations were not even in the city. In an Aug. 30 letter to Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff, who heads the city's side of the negotiations, CB1 chairwoman Madelyn Wils said it would be a "prudent path" to finalize an understanding on Site 5C and defer discussion on 5B. But as the Trib went to press on Sept. 3, it was unclear how the administration would proceed. Would it be willing to go ahead with an agreement with the community on 5C-community center and all-without one on 5B? Would it withdraw the land sale from a vote altogether, leaving an agreement on 5C up in the air? "We're going to have no comment on that," said a spokeswoman for Doctoroff. "I am prepared to kill the whole thing if it is not satisfactory to the community," declared Gerson, who said he believed the City Council would back him if he made good on his threat to oppose the sale. Two years ago, Minskoff met stiff community resistance when he proposed a 600-foot-tall office tower for Site 5B. Having scrapped that plan, he now wants to build a residential/retail complex. In a telephone interview, Minskoff said he intends to build "two residential towers and a retail pavilion connecting the two." He said that his project, which would be designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill, would include two floors of retail. "We're working on the tenant mix right now," he said. According to people familiar with the negotiations on Site 5B, the city is proposing a height limit of 370 feet on West Street, 245 feet on Murray Street between Greenwich and Washington Streets and 135 feet on Greenwich Street between Warren and Murray. Wils said the tallest tower could be acceptable because it would be perpendicular to West Street, minimizing its shadow on Washington Market Park and its impact on river views. But she called the 245-foot building, with half its apartments at below-market rents, "very unsatisfactory." Gerson said an administration proposal faxed to him on Aug. 27 left the two sides even further apart. The city added another building to the mix and pushed for a shallower setback for the building on Greenwich Street, he said. "We don't know if [the proposal] is coming from the developer or the administration but I want to get to the bottom of this," Gerson said. Community negotiators said they have been pushing for an "upscale" food store on the site. Minskoff promised only "retail uses that are absent right now." "There will always be somebody who will be disappointed," said the developer, who claimed to be detached from the negotiations. "But the majority will be happy."