The Hotel Gansevoort billboards morass might be over.
The Real Estate got a triumphant email on Friday afternoon from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which has opposed the billboards:
“We have just received news that the City has ruled that the controversial 8-story high billboards at the Hotel Gansevoort in the Meatpacking District are in violation of zoning rules.”
The boards’ fate now seems to hang with hotel owner Michael Achenbaum:
The owner of the Hotel Gansevoort can now take down the signs, as we and many area business and community leaders have been calling for, or he can try to correct them and keep them up. Because the owner has said publicly that putting up the billboards were a mistake he would change if he could, now is his chance to do so.
The Real Estate has a call out to speak to Mr. Achenbaum.
UPDATE: A rep for Mr. Achenbaum emailed this statement on Friday afternoon:
“The hotel has not received any notice of a violation from the DOB. The address mentioned in [the preservation society’s] letter–352 West 13th Street–is not the address of the Hotel Gansevoort and not the address filed on the application for the billboards (both 18 Ninth Ave.). Until we receive this notification, this is all the information we have available at this time.”
– Tom Acitelli
