Artists In Shadow Of A Planned New Building

By Nick Pinto
POSTED APRIL 1, 2008

Champion Parking, the owners of a parking lot on White Street between Broadway and Lafayette, want to rezone the two blocks east of Broadway between Walker and White Streets. That means changing the M1-5 mixed industrial zoning to C6-2A commercial zone. And for Champion Parking, it means the chance to put a profitable 120-foot-high apartment building on their lot.

But for artists living and working in the buildings adjoining the lot, the prospect of a new building rising as much as 120 feet above them casts a shadow on their work and livelihood–literally.

As Champion Parking goes through the city approval process for the rezoning, neighbors are urging that the building height be limited—either to the roughly 85 foot height of surrounding buildings, or, at most, to 105 feet. Their aim is to preserve what matters most to artists: light.

Inside 85 Walker Street, on the other side of the block from the proposed building site, every floor is occupied by artists, each of whom relies on the light from the south side to do their work.

On the top floor, Christopher Deeton creates abstract paintings on huge canvasses beneath a vaulted skylight 20 feet above. He worries that if the new building goes up as high as its owners want, it will affect his work.

“It’s hard to describe the importance of light,” he said. “This place has a certain vibe to it. It’s timeless. You can listen to Miles Davis in here and it seems like he could be just around the corner. You don’t know if it’s 1940 or 2008. That’s an essential aspect to the creative process. If you lost the light, it would break the vibe.”

Deeton’s wife, Yvette, moved into the space as a child in 1969. Her father, the painter Paul Georges, was among the first in a wave of artists who colonized the industrial wasteland that later became Tribeca. With Georges came the celebrated artist Red Grooms, who still lives and paints on the ground floor.

“We’ve seen the neighborhood change through the years,” Yvette Deeton said. “It’s unrecognizable now, with all of the luxury buildings and everything. There are still artists around here, but a lot have left. If they owned, they sold. If they didn’t, their landlords evicted them. That’s the way of the world.” Even so, she said, she feels an obligation to try to limit the height of the proposed building. 

On the second floor of the building, painter Sydney Licht is also concerned about losing her light. She paints still-lifes by the natural light from her southern windows, which look out over the parking lot.

“I work here because I think New York has a special light,” she said. “That’s something valuable to painters. They have the right to build on their property, but I think in the broader context we need to ask ourselves: Do we really want to force all of our artists out of Manhattan?”

Next door at 81 Walker Street, Jacob Getz says he is the person who will be most affected by a towering new building on the parking lot site. A photographer whose home and studio is lit almost exclusively by a wide bank of curved skylights running the length of his south wall, Getz uses the abundant natural light for much of his work.

He said that his light will suffer no matter how low the new building is, but the smaller it is, the more hours of light he can salvage.

 “This is my career,” he said. “I’m scared about how this is going to affect my business and the look of my work.”

On March 25, Mary Habstritt spoke to Community Board 1 on behalf of the Weinstein family, owners of the venerable White Street industrial merchandiser General Tools, as well as several area buildings.

She said that the rezoning would increase property values, but that other factors should be taken into consideration as well.

“We want to insure that what is built is appropriate to the character of our neighborhood and does no harm to the artistic community,” she said.

At that meeting, the board voted to recommend the zoning change, but to limit the floor-area ratio to 5.5 to minimize building height and mass. But the new commercial zoning allows a 6.02 floor-area ratio, so it is unclear whether the City Planning Department will make an exception on the basis of CB1’s recommendation when it rules on the zoning change.

Juan Reyes, a lawyer representing Champion Parking, said his client is listening to neighbors’ concerns, agreeing to house its mechanical infrastructure in the basement of the new building instead of on its roof, and abiding by a restricted floor-area ratio recommended by the Community Board.

Neighbors of the site are trying to stay optimistic that they will be able to coexist with the proposed building.

“So far we have had a voice,” Licht said after the CB1 vote. “The community board has been very open to our situation. I just hope moving forward that all the parties can stay involved and we can come up with something that works for everybody.”

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