Looking sharp, but will it fly with the neighbors? (Durst Fetner)

Ms. Durst, baby bump hidden behind lectern. (Matt Chaban)

"My own feeling, and the feeling of board, is that we'd like this project to succeed," J.D. Nolan, chair of Community Board 4’s land-use committee, told The Observer. "The Dursts are great developers, and they have worked very well with us in the past. Nevertheless, this is a rezoning, and the public should benefit as well as the developer."

And so, the full board voted unanimously against Durst Fenter's new apartment building on the far West Side last night. One of the most dynamic designs of the decade, 625 West 57th Street calls for a swooping white pyramid that rises dramatically up from the Hudson like an origami dove taking flight. Designed by Danish wunderkinds Bjarke Ingels Group (aka BIG), the project has even decided to eschew LEED ratings in its quest for singularity.

Still, this was not enough to sway the board, which generally seems to like the design but still has too many issues with the details surrounding it to approve the project at its monthly meeting. The board's vote is merely provisional, though it will be given considerable consideration from officials down the line as they cast their vote for or against the project throughout the rest of the months-long public review process.

Last night, Helena Durst was in attendance to make her family's case, as she has for the past decade as the project has struggled from one plan to another—data center, car dealership, for-profit school, hotel. She looked appropriately pregnant for the occasion, which was held on the second floor of St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital (the maternity ward is on the seventh) on the corner of 11th Avenue and 59th Street, two blocks from where Ms. Durst hopes the 740-unit apartment building might soon rise.

"This is an asset for the skyline," she said.

But not yet for the community, at least in its view. Their singular issue is affordable housing, of which there will be some 150 units. The sticking point is that those apartments will only be reserved for low-income tenants for 35 years. The board wants permanent affordability, instead. "As a community board, we are supposed to do the best we can to preserve and maintain our communities and keep them going," Mr. Nolan said. "As we see our neighborhood changing, we see so much luxury housing going up, and we feel that is not contributing to the preservation of our neighborhood."

The Dursts argue they cannot make the apartments permanently affordable because they do not own the site but have instead signed a 99-year land lease with a family that has owned the property for centuries. Now, there are some 150 different family members who have to be negotiated with, and any changes to the amount of affordable housing would require a renegotiation of the lease. Since the Dursts will not own the site in perpetuity, it is not clear the land's owners would agree to a permanent affordable housing provision.

Still, Councilwoman Gale Brewer has also expressed concern about the permanence of the affordable apartments, and since she has the final say on the project, it could continue to be a serious issue.

Other concerns included the appearance of the building along 58th Street. Currently, all the retail is along 57th Street, with entrances, loading docks and mechanical systems on the 58th Street frontage. The board hopes those spaces can be rejiggered, with shops, trees, anything really to make the streetscape, which is nearly a block long, more appealing to pedestrians.

Parking is an issue in two ways. One, board members argued there were too many spaces for a project in the middle of Manhattan. Two, there is an issue with the access to that parking, through a two-way driveway that cuts through the middle of the site and connects to the Helena, a rental building also owned by Durst Fetner on the southeast corner of 10th Avenue and 57th Street. The board wants that space cut down to one lane, with a public plaza created out of the excess space this would free up. "Curb-side drop-off?" Mr. Nolan said. "What is this, Dubai?"

A small community facility building drew concerns because the Dursts have yet to find a use for the building, after a failed bid to have the Manhattan Children's Museum move in. Now, they are looking at other childcare spaces, like day care or early education. Mr. Nolan thinks an art space could be good, too.

"This has always been a place for actors, artists, stagehands," he said. "They need housing they can afford, they need places they can perform. Without them, it's not the kind of New York I want to live in."

To try and counter the local opposition to the project, Durst Fetner made a full political push last night, bringing out speakers and testimonials from the Community Preservation Corporation and Citizens Housing, Settlement Housing Fund and Planning Commission (on affordable housing); New York Building Congress, Regional Plan Association and the Partnership for New York City (on design and construction jobs); members of 32BJ (on service and operations jobs); and the Audubon Society (on how normal buildings have troubling bird strikes and this one will not).

Still, this show of support failed to sway the board to vote for the project.

"We hear their concerns and we will continue to work with them on a solution," Jordan Barowitz, the Dursts' director of external affairs, said after the disapproval vote. "That being said, I think is a very compelling project for the community and the city. It provides desperately needed market-rate housing and 150 affordable units for decades. And it's an innovative and inspiring design. Great design makes for great places, which makes for a great community."

Update: The story has been modified to clarify that the full community board disapproved of Durst Fetner's building last night, not the land-use committee, though it also disapproved the plan at a meeting earlier in the summer. The story also misstated the location of the Helena. It is on the corner of 59th Street and 11th Avenue, not 10th Avenue. The Observer regrets the error.

Jamestown's plan would stack two new multi-story spaces on top of the complex. Above the 10^th Avenue side, the company would add an eight-story glass office building; and a 12-story boutique hotel would sit atop the east side of the complex. The proposal to build these structures--which, admittedly, may be of dubious aesthetic appeal--has become a subject of outrage for longtime residents who have witnessed the Chelsea Market building's transformation from old industrial complex to developed neighborhood hot spot over the past two decades.

The real estate company seems surprised at the backlash (the Times reported yesterday that Jamestown has been "taken aback by the uproar"), but may have allies in nonprofit group Friends of the High Line. To build the plan's structures, the company would have to obtain a zoning variance that would also require them to contribute roughly $17 million to help fund improvements to the High Line project.

Chelsea Market isn't a designated landmark, but the plan will still have to go through reviews by the community board and the City Planning Department. Given Manhattan's boundaries, vertical expansion in the neighborhood is inevitable--it's just a question of whether economic function or aesthetic appeal will win out in this particular battle.

asterling@observer.com 

Durst Fetner Residential brought their idea for the pyramid-like 57th Street apartment complex to Community Board 4 last night to a mixture of adoring fans and skeptical residents.

The project, first immortalized in comic form, then a City Planning-ordered fly through video, would be Mr. Ingels' North American debut after several critically acclaimed projects in his
native Denmark.

"City Planning is brain dead," a man clad in suede pants and a tweet jacket told The Observer in a thick Eastern European accent. "There's a lot of conflict."

If there is, then the kind of conflict peddled by Hell's Kitchen and Clinton residents is of the most cordial kind. The board members seemed almost smitten by the project, or at least more so than a rezoning proposal on nearby 11th Avenue that the board
eviscerated, pushing back The BIG/Durst presentation 40 minutes.

Many in the crowd were most impressed by the ambition of the project.

Mr. Ingels called his plan a way to fuse the density of a New York skyscraper with a Copenhagen garden. The final project will be "a way for Clinton/Hell's Kitchen residents to really connect to the waterfront," he said, while not taking away the river views currently enjoyed by residents of the Helena, another Durst residential property.

Not that there won't be roadblocks in the way. The thought of more rezonings--this project sits just two blocks north of the aforementioned 11th Avenue rezoning and is just a block south of Extell's huge Riverside Center--caused plenty of pained looks and squirming on the part of the board members.

The rest of the community's concerns were summed up by the West Side Neighborhood Alliance, an affordable housing group. "The neighborhood is now becoming sort of a bastion of experimental architecture," one of the group's members said. "What [this project is] offering the community is an iconic piece of architecture. I do think you really need to think about what else might benefit the community."

That, for Durst and Ingels, means affordable housing, which right now is projected, but not locked in, at an 80-20 split--a deal that would also reap the developers building incentives. Many members of the board were relatively silent on issues like public green spaces, which they complain are few and far between in Hell's Kitchen, and parking during the meeting, but they chimed in that affordable housing needs to be included in perpetuity.

Attendees did seem placated by the retail space and cultural programs built into the current design. The retail, which includes one large retail space and several other, smaller ones, got a positive response from the group. City Councilwoman Gale Brewer did point out that the larger space should not include a Costco, a swipe at Extell's plans, or a Walmart, a company the City Council is currently at war with.

Current plans give the cultural program 170,000 square feet on the third floor with an entrance on the southeast corner of the building. One potential tenant is the International Center of Photography, currently housed in another Durst property at Sixth Avenue and 43rd Street.

As for the sustainability features of the project, one speaker asked if the project would be built to LEED standards. Any queston of that was quickly quelled when another attendee replied, "Of course it will be LEED-certified. It's Durst."

mcoyne@observer.com