For Tribeca Warehouse, History May Repeat Itself

By Matt Dunning
POSTED AUGUST 6, 2008

Developers of a proposed six-story apartment building in Tribeca didn’t have to look far to find the inspiration for their project. It was sitting right next door.

The building would be an aluminum-clad replica of the 1905 warehouse at 71 Laight Street, next to what is currently a parking garage. The warehouse would be renovated and converted into a mixed-use building, with each of the matching structures containing shops on the ground level, loft apartments on the upper floors and a 12-foot-high penthouse on the roof—32 new residential units in all.

“When we first started working on it, I was looking at what would be the most appropriate way to compliment the existing building,” said Morris Adjmi, the project’s chief architect, in a recent presentation to Community Board 1’s Landmarks Committee. “I felt that it was important to do an exact replica of this building, down to the last detail.”

Though the two buildings, located in the Tribeca North Historic District, would be identical in almost every way, including size, shape and exterior adornments, one key difference between the new building and old warehouse had some committee members particularly enthralled with the project. Under the proposal, the new building would be finished in panels of a marine-grade aluminum composite, etched and textured to resemble the original red-brick warehouse. Visually, the new structure would appear almost as a photographic negative of the old building.

“It’s a Warhol silkscreen of what’s already there, and I think that’s mind-boggling,” committee member Bruce Ehrmann said.

“It’s between genius and madness,” he added. “It’s quite extraordinary.”

The developers, 71 Laight St. LLC—a group of Spain-based investors including the development firm Grupo Arranz Acinas—plan to restore the original cornices and trimming, replace the windows in their original wood frames, re-point or replace the exterior bricks, and restore the damaged and graffitied exterior loading docks on Laight and Washington Streets.

The proposal includes the complete rehabilitation of the existing warehouse, built in 1905 as the home to a coffee and tea company and converted in the 1940s to a paper storage warehouse. Today, most of the building is still used for storage, while some of the units have been sublet as office spaces.

While CB1’s nearly-unanimous advisory approval of the design plans for the two buildings was certainly an encouraging sign the project will get the go-ahead and be built, Michael Sillerman, an attorney representing the developers, said there is still a long procedural road ahead before construction can begin. The conversion of the existing warehouse to residential use must meet the approval of the city’s Department of City Planning, while the construction of the new building has to be vetted by the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals. Before either of those applications can even be filed, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission needs to sign off on the historic preservation of the warehouse, the demolition of the garage and the design of the new building.

Sillerman said construction on the two sites could begin next summer at the earliest.

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