Gary Barnett came ready to negotiate.
Dressed in his signature suit jacket over a black T-shirt, the Extell Development founder appeared before an Upper West Side community board last month to make his case for a colossal residential tower — about the size of the Empire State Building without the tip — at the site of the former ABC campus.
The 1,200-foot building on Columbus Avenue between 66th and 67th streets would dwarf the others in the neighborhood, including the controversial 775-foot condo tower Barnett is building across the street.
Barnett is hoping to avoid a long legal battle, like the one over his other project, by offering to include an affordable housing component. The site’s current zoning does not require any affordable units, but Barnett is offering to build more than 100 across two smaller buildings to appease community members.
“What I’m getting out of it is just peace,” Barnett said at the meeting. “I’m not interested in a fight.”
Community board members and Council member Gale Brewer are ready to hear him out. They believe the Upper West Side’s last large buildable site should be used to help solve the city’s housing crisis, and are pushing for up to 30 percent of the project to be affordable.
“We definitely want a lot of affordable units and it has to be on-site,” Brewer said. “We have to have a tower, we’re aware of that.”
Extell paid Silverstein Properties and Seven Valleys roughly $930 million in 2022 for the former Walt Disney Company-owned ABC campus and scored at least $900 million in acquisition financing from Guggenheim Partners and Aquarian Holdings.
The developer filed plans in December for two smaller buildings on the property that would include affordable housing. But no plans have been revealed for the supertall, which could rise up to 1,500 feet under the current zoning. An Extell spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
After years of legal skirmishes, Barnett won the right to build the tallest tower on the Upper West Side at 50 West 66th Street in 2022. As that tower nears completion, Barnett is setting his sights even higher.
Barnett is scheduled to meet again with Brewer and the community board next week. By going to these meetings, he hopes to smooth the path for the project, even though he could legally build it under the current zoning. Although the site lies in a historic district, the city granted ABC a zoning exemption decades ago that allows more flexibility, according to West Side Rag.
“We are definitely not super-excited to have another enormously tall tower that is right across the street from an existing tower,” said community board member Seema Reddy. “But I do think that the feeling in the community at large has changed a lot in terms of the desperate need for affordable housing.”
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