BY YANNIC RACK | Lower East Side residents are pushing back against another enormous residential tower set to rise right next to Extell’s gigantic One Manhattan Square development on the East River waterfront, which they fear will destroy their quality of life and possibly even displace senior citizens.
The developers of a new 77-story building slated for 247 Cherry St. in the Two Bridges neighborhood received a hostile welcome from Two Bridges Towers tenants when they presented their plans for the mixed-income project last Wed., Apr. 27.
“You’re destroying the neighborhood. The landscape is going to change completely,” complained one resident. “How are you different from Extell? This is not Battery Park [City] — please don’t bring this here.”
The design and development team — JDS Development Group and ShoP Architects — are planning the project together with Settlement Housing Fund and Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, the two nonprofits that own Two Bridges Tower at 82 Rutgers Slip and the neighboring Two Bridges Senior Apartments next door at 80 Rutgers Slip.
The new 600-unit rental building, which will include roughly 150 permanently affordable units, will be built using $51 million worth of development rights, mostly purchased from the neighboring 80 Rutgers.
The lot for the building’s base currently houses a one-story addition to the senior apartments with a multipurpose community room that will eventually be replaced in the new development, according to the developers.
Next to the community room, another one-story building, which was home to a pharmacy and still has two retail storefronts, will be demolished later on in the project and replaced by a similar structure, possibly to house a replacement for the sorely missed Pathmark supermarket that closed on the block in 2012.
The slender glass-and-terra-cotta tower, which is set to house studios and one- and two-bedrooms, would also cantilever over the existing senior building — one of the main points of contention for local residents.
“How are you going to put this there and not displace senior residents?” asked Trever Holland, president of the Two Bridges Tenant Association.
Locals also say the planned development’s size is far too much to bear for their dense community of low-income residents. But the project’s masterminds insist that it will benefit the community — with a range of amenities, like public open space and a new and larger community center, as well as the affordable units slated for the tower.
“There will be 450 units of market-rate rentals — is that a change for this neighborhood that is primarily affordable? Yes, it absolutely is,” said Alexa Sewell, president of Settlement Housing Fund.
“[But] is it a make or break for a neighborhood with thousands and thousands of units of housing? No.”
“We’re creating considerable new affordable housing. It’s a net plus of over 150 units,” added Michael Stern, JDS founder and managing partner.
Unlike at the Extell development, which includes a separate building for below-market-rate tenants, the affordable units at 247 Cherry St. would be “fully integrated,” as in scattered throughout the building, the developers said.
Sewell added that the money from the air-rights sale would also go toward significant improvements at the Two Bridges Senior Apartments building, including flood barriers and a renovated lobby, as well as the new retail space.
Additionally, the new tower’s ground floor would boast a brand-new community center open to the residents. A rooftop garden and landscaped outdoor space are also planned.
But community advocates said that’s not enough — and demanded that similar upgrades should be made at Two Bridges Tower next door.
“We have to make sure we’re not just getting chairs and some landscaping,” Holland stressed.
In addition, residents said they are already scarred from the ongoing construction at the Extell project, an 80-story condo tower, and demanded that building management fix cracks and other damage from that project’s foundation work before burdening residents with even more construction.
Since work started on the Extell project, cracks have appeared in some walls at Two Bridges Tower, and tenants complain of sticking doors and windows and shifting locks, which they said is caused by the vibration of the pile driving.
Sewell assured that there was no structural damage to the building, and committed to a follow-up meeting with residents to discuss fixing any dangerous damage.
The developers also promised they would work to minimize the new project’s impact, but admitted that the construction on the second tower — scheduled to start in about two years — would bring some level of disruption.
“We commit to always listen and to always be transparent,” Stern told the residents. “We’re going to develop a very rigorous noise mitigation plan. [But] it’s definitely going to have some impact.”
“There is no way to predict what will happen on a construction site,” Sewell added.
She said a line of windows on the senior building would likely have to be covered during the construction, and cautioned that some residents might have to be temporarily relocated, as well.
The Two Bridges landlords promised, however, that there would be no changes in affordability at either of the two buildings. However, they didn’t immediately react to a request from Holland about instituting a rent freeze to make up for the inconvenience.
“Take care of us!” one woman in the audience shouted repeatedly.
After the meeting, Linda Matias, an 82 Rutgers resident, said she and her fellow tenants were committed to doing anything they could to at least scale down the proposed project, if they couldn’t stop it altogether.
“We want to fight this. We don’t want them to build another 77-story building,” she said optimistically. “We lost with Extell. We don’t have to lose with them.”
JDS is currently developing two other “supertalls,” an 80-story high-rise at 111 W. 57th St. and a 73-story one at 9 DeKalb Ave. in Downtown Brooklyn.
