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City Sends Hotel Developers Back To Drawing Board
DeNiro, 63, appeared before both Community Board 1’s Landmarks Committee and the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) in June to ask for approval of the penthouse on his lush new Greenwich Hotel that was overbuilt by more than 1,000 square feet. To redo the structure, they said, would cost $1.5 million. Speaking to the LPC on June 17, DeNiro apologized for any “minor, little mistakes.” “We hope that they’re not misconstrued as being in any way wrong, or that we could do it because we want to do it,” he said. “We want to do what’s right for the neighborhood.” But several commissioners did not see the issue as minor. “There is a real problem here,” Commissioner Roberta Gratz told DeNiro and his developer partner Ira Drukier. “This is not an easy thing to let slide.” Even less friendly to the penthouse was Commissioner Roberta Washington, who was not on the LPC in 2004 when plans were initially approved. She said she never would have signed off on the penthouse in the first place.“When you look at the style of the penthouse, put on top of this gorgeously detailed brick building, I think there’s really a mismatch,” Washington said. In 2004, city agencies and Community Board 1 members signed off on plans for the 88-room hotel at 377 Greenwich St., including designs for a two-bedroom penthouse suite on top of the new building. The penthouse, which is nearly complete, is more than 1,100 square feet bigger than what developers were told they could build and steeper than the approved designs showed. The developers said it would cost $1.5 million to redo the structure.
During the Landmarks hearing, DeNiro told the commission that the $625-per-night hotel was a labor of love for him, and that any aspect of the building the commissioners found offensive would probably offend him as well. "We worked on this project a long time, to make it as good as we could make it,” DeNiro said. “I did it so it would fit into the neighborhood, so it would feel right.”On June 12, DeNiro and company took their case to CB1’s Landmarks Committee, winning its support for the legalization and even some praise. But two weeks later the full board voted to advise against it, 20 to 16, with two abstentions. Board member John Fratta said he didn’t think the illegal construction was an accident at all, and that DeNiro was attempting to charm his way through the approval process. Fratta said he also worried about the message the board would send to other developers were it to sign off on the construction. “I can’t believe that they made a mistake,” Fratta said. “I think they knew what they were doing, and DeNiro figured he could get away with it. This just isn’t right. In their appearance before the LPC, commissioners told the developers to make at least some changes to the penthouse design—including a reduction in the size and slope of the roof—before they return to the LPC for a final vote. Commission chairman Robert Tierney said he didn’t mind the penthouse as it stands (though he added that it might benefit from some “tweaking”) but determined that the commission needed to see the suggested alterations before rendering a decision.
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