CB1 Decries 'Heavy-Handed' Proposal to 'Activate' Landmark Tribeca Building

Detail from rendering shows the proposed triangular extension to 32 Avenue of the Americas at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Lispenard Street. Also shown, to the right of the planter, is an additional new entrance into the building. Image: Marvel

Looking to “enliven” the former AT&T Building at 32 Avenue of Americas, an important city-protected landmark, the building’s owner is seeking to make controversial changes to its look, inside and out. 

The 27-story building, housing both data centers and offices, is now 40 percent vacant and in need, owner Rudin Management says, of expanded retail opportunities. Towards that end, it is proposing a 1-story, 640 square-foot triangular extension at the northwest corner, plus new doors, windows and signage on all four sides of the building.

“This project started with the idea of how do we activate the base. It’s a very solid block, a building with not a lot of windows,” architect Tim Fryatt of Marvel, the firm in charge of the project, told Community Board 1’s Landmarks and Preservation Committee last month. He called the changes to the facade, which amend a 2013 approved storefront master plan, “targeted interventions” that “update” the building.

“It’s a building that architects stare at and the neighborhood all knows,” Fryatt added, “but a lot of other people walk by because it is so solid.”

Architect Makenzie Leukart, also with Marvel, noted that activity around the full-block building, bordered by Walker, Church, Lispenard and Sixth Avenue, is mostly limited to the Sixth Avenue side. “We are trying to distribute that more evenly and bring people around the whole space,” she said.

But Community Board 1, which is advisory to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, strongly rejected much of the plan, calling it “heavy handed” more than once in its resolution.

“CB1 feels that the quantity [and] breadth of these changes would substantially modify the master plan in an overwhelming and overbearing manner that compromises the goals of the governing masterplan and lacks any preservation purposes whatsoever…” the resolution states.

A hearing on the application before the commission, scheduled for Oct. 31, was postponed and is yet to be rescheduled. 

(On Nov. 6, Crain’s New York Business reported [1] that the building, with its increased vacancy rate, has received a credit downgrade.)

Last year, CB1 opposed [2] proposed changes to the building’s bronze-and-glass entrance and lobby lighting. The Landmarks Commission approved the proposal with modifications.

The landmark former AT&T Building, the third of three Art Deco style telecommunications buildings in Lower Manhattan designed by Ralph Walker, was completed in 1932, an expansion of the original 1914 structure. The others include the former Western Union Building at 60 Hudson St. and the Verizon Building at 100 Barclay St. The architects argue that the windows of the latter building provided guidance for those proposed for new 32 Avenue of the Americas storefronts. “We are looking at this language for inspiration,” Leukart said. 

But CB1 described the proposed facade openings and other additions as overkill. “You guys basically found every single square inch to put some sort of new thing,” Landmarks Committee chair Jason Friedman told the building’s representatives. “We feel like the building’s characteristics are being changed too much.”

A Rudin spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.