SoHo is about to change along with a lot of the city, another victim of the gentrification and real estate wars. The city struck down an attempt to stop Donald Trump from building a 46-story residential tower by the Holland Tunnel because of a loophole. Once it is finished being built, many are afraid that the area South of Houston will be spotted with these thirty, forty or more story buildings, towering over what we know of the neighborhood now. The Donald obviously does not care, taking his conquest of the city to new heights (no pun intended).
From The Daily News:
What is not permitted is a residential use, so the new Trump tower must be packaged as a hotel and not as a condo building. But in a deal negotiated by city officials, the hotel rooms will be bought like condos.
"He's calling it a hotel but it's really going to be a building primarily for residential use," Sweeney said Monday.
Under the project's so-called restrictive declaration, no owner will be able to occupy a unit for a continuous period of more than 29 days in any 36-day period or for more than 120 days in a calendar year.
SoHo Alliance attorney Stuart Klein asked the city Department of Buildings to revoke the building's permit in a July 24 letter.
Klein, formerly the top lawyer with the Department of Buildings, said the 29-out-of-36-days rule would be unenforceable.
"It sets up a mechanism that's simply not going to be followed," he said Monday.
Shopaholics shouldn't fear of course, the trendy boutiques will stay in their area, as long as their economic output stays high. What is worrisome is that the SoHo we know is under attack from the most devilish real estate tycoon out there. My fear is that the neighborhoods that make New York the greatest city in the country (if not the world) is slowly being stripped down to a hollow shell of expensive monstrosities of glass, steel and concrete. Who knows, in a generation or two they might even come after Greenwich Village. If that happens, I for one will be on the barricades, metaphorically speaking.
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