Unfinished business

It happens that in one week I received emails from folks asking about several unfinished buildings — or in three cases, holes in the ground — and I have plans to follow up on each. It won’t be easy — developers are never keen to answer emails, especially from small fries like me. But I will give it a try.

In the meantime, this is list of sites that are in the works but stalled. Comment with any others I should add so we can keep a running tally.

360 BROADWAY / 65 FRANKLIN
Construction on the 210-story building started in December 2020; demolition a year before that; and plans were revealed a year before that. So it’s been since 2018 that neighbors have been living with what is clearly a problematic site at 360 Broadway/65 Franklin. Original estimates were that the building would be completed in 2022. It’s still a hole in the ground and T. wrote to say that there is now a stop-work order and construction has halted.

65 WEST BROADWAY / 59-61 WARREN
The buildings that once housed Mariachi’s, Racoon Lodge and Mangez Avec Moi, among others, were demolished in 2016; we have had an empty lot on the corner of West Broadway and Warren ever since. Rakers — the steel supports on the site — are attached to 57 Warren, above Korin, as a precaution. The slab is in place, but there are never workers on the site.

45 PARK PLACE
Last I had a post on 45 Park Place — the supertall that made national headlines for having an Islamic cultural center so close to Ground Zero — it was stalled out due to financing issues. Construction was halted in late 2019, and the building looks exactly the same as it does now — the one above was taken last week. Now I notice the sales site is also stalled out: you can no longer check availability. As J. wrote: “I can’t imagine the city would allow a building to go unfinished with cranes still up.” Believe it.

317 BROADWAY
At least it’s not a hole in the ground, but it is an eyesore. The proposal here was for a 20-story residential building with Morris Adjmi Architects as the architect of record. Permits were filed in June 2020.

 

16 Comments

  1. 45 Park Place is currently in a foreclosure battle in court, hopefully it will resume in a year. Certainly not ideal how slow the process is for these issues.

    Essentially the developer stopped paying the construction bills. His lenders want to repossess the tower and find a different developer to finish it. But the property is actually made up of two lots, with one half (unbuilt) supposed to be some sort of nonprofit center, and its air rights transferred to the high rise condo.
    Since the developer is not in default on the adjacent property, he is threatening that if they seize the condo he will pull back his air rights, thus forcing the condo to get half dismantled at the expense of whoever takes over the project from him.

    It’s a sticky situation to say the least.

  2. I phoned the number for Hap Investments, the developer for 360 Broadway/65 Franklin Street in order to get a better idea of what was happening at that site. There was a recording to leave a message and when I attempted to leave a message the mailbox was full.
    If anybody does have an update on what is happening it would be greatly appreciated.
    https://hap-ny.com/project/65-franklin-street/

    • 02/23/2022 – A3 – FULL STOP WORK ORDER SERVED
      ECB Violation #: 35639912H
      Comments: Inspection of 19 stories New building, now on foundation level, work in progress.. Observed cracks at adjacent buildings due to excavation operation, creating an immediate hazardous condition and making building non compliance. Stop all work for the entire site provide safeguard property and provide adequate Safety Measures for construction operation going forward. DOB # 022322CE01JG01 # 2342.

      https://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/OverviewForComplaintServlet?requestid=2&vlcompdetlkey=0002790907

      • The two buildings adjacent to the site have enormous cracks from the construction and are definitely in jeopardy of collapse. Those buildings are hundreds of years old! The construction has been awful for those living around it with constant pounding, especially during the pandemic when we were all working and schooling from home. The crazy thing is with all the digging they’ve done, they’ve hardly gone down deep.

  3. Re 360 Broadway/65 Franklin, I think you meant 210 feet, not 210 stories. Although any day now I would not be surprised if …

  4. What about 19 Park Place? Did it ever get a CO, people closing/moving in?

  5. There hasn’t been any work on 45 Park Place in at least 2 years, probably more. The construction netting is torn to shreds and it looks like nobody has been there to inspect it. My question, does NYC inspect the (abandoned) building and more importantly the massive crane on top? Isn’t it dangerous to just leave all this unattended? Are we sure that after all this time it is still securely affixed.

  6. The hole at 65 West Broadway is so frustrating. It’s a great corner, and the neighborhood lost some excellent spots in Mariachi’s, Saleya, Racoon Lodge. To just have that spot sit empty for 5 years is terrible.

  7. Thank you for looking into this. I’d also love to know what’s happening with 250 Church and 33 Leonard.

  8. Re 65 W Broadway/ Warren. I’m very interested in this -having just move here from London and living opposite. Hope we haven’t made a noisy mistake. There has been a little activity on site recently , removing bills from the fence and minor things. But scanning the QR on the building permit suggests a new permit has been issued for construction to start, though I am not the expert on how to interpret the “last action”

    https://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/JobsQueryByNumberServlet?requestid=1&passjobnumber=121190497

    And on 6/16/22
    “ NEW BUILDING – CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT – FENCE
    NEW 10 STORY RESIDENTIAL APARTMENT BUILDING WITH RETAIL USE ON LOWER LEVELS.”
    https://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/WorkPermitDataServlet?requestid=3&allisn=0003911338&allisn2=0002844317&allbin=1090819&passjobnumber=121190497

    Does anyone know if those indicate anything about construction to begin?

    And by the way, thank you for an excellent local resource! The site is great!

  9. 65 WEST BROADWAY / 59-61 WARREN

    “the steel supports on the site — are attached to 57 Warren, above Korin, as a precaution”

    I’m not so sure how precautionary the supports are, one only needs to stand across the street from Korin and look from the ground floor to the roof between 55 and 57 Warren. The gap between buildings goes from zero to 10 or so inches at the top floor. 57 Warren is definitely leaning into the pit that was 59 Warren.

    Google street view shows this pretty clearly, as well as the change in the gap from Racoon days till now. The demolition and construction is most definitely the cause.

  10. Work at 65 Franklin/360 Broadway had progressed slightly (thought it was tough to tell if it was to address damage to the neighboring buildings or actual progress to the site) but nobody has been onsite for an entire month. Work has completely ceased.

    • Partial Stop Work Order still in place as of 4/28/2022:

      “WORK ALLOWED:CONSTRUCTION OF CAP BEAM @ COMPLETED SECANT WAL L ONLY NO OTHER WORK ALLOWED ***CSE AUDIT***#2799”

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