After a Year, De Niro's Hotel Penthouse Still Illegal
By Matt Dunning
The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission says it hasn’t forgotten Robert De Niro’s promise.
More than a year ago, the actor stood before the commission and vowed a redesign of the errant two-story penthouse atop the Greenwich Hotel, a project he co-developed at 377 Greenwich Street. The penthouse, the commission discovered, was much larger than had been originally approved.
Landmarks Preservation Commission staffers are finally scheduled to meet with project representative on Oct. 8, according to Elisabeth De Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the commission. De Bourbon said she did not know whether a new design for the penthouse would be presented at the meeting, or whether the developers themselves would be a part of the proceedings. Landmarks staff members last met with the project’s last December.
“They came to us with a revised scheme, our staff members gave them some suggestions and they said they would go back and work on it,” DeBourbon said. “We haven’t had any conversations or meetings with them since then. We don’t really know what the cause for the delay has been.”
A spokeswoman for Rockwood Architects, the firm responsible for the initial design of the hotel and penthouse, said none of the firm’s architects are working on the redesign. Attempts to reach De Niro and his business partners, hoteliers Ira Drukier and Richard Born, were unsuccessful.
DKC News, the public relations firm representing the hotel, said they are unfamiliar with progress on the redesign.
Last summer, the commission discovered that the penthouse it approved in 2004 had been built more than 1,100 square feet bigger than the plans shown to them, making the rooftop structure more visible from the streets below. At the time, the hotel’s developers characterized the illegal construction as a procedural misstep, and said they would work hastily to remedy the problem.
“We worked on this project a long time, and to make it as good as we could make it,” said De Niro while testifying to the commission in June 2008. “I did it so it would fit into the neighborhood, so it would feel right.”
Whatever the reason for the delays, DeBourbon said the LPC does not have a strict deadline for design revisions, so long as developers demonstrate a “good-faith effort” to fix problem. However, she said, “that doesn’t mean it isn’t on our mind.”