City Scraps Plan For 50-Story Private Tower At UES NYCHA Complex

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The New York City Housing Authority is scrapping a controversial plan to build a private 50-story apartment tower on top of a playground at an Upper East Side public housing complex in order to raise money for repairs, city officials announced Friday.

NYCHA pulled its application for the development Friday, more than two years after the city first announced plans to partner with Fetner Properties to build a mixed-income apartment tower at the Holmes Towers complex on East 93rd Street between First and York Avenues. Fetner would have paid the city $25 million to be used for repairs at the two Holmes Towers buildings.

"In keeping with the NYCHA 2.0 vision, we are reevaluating our previous plans at Holmes Towers so that we can continue to engage residents in a meaningful manner while also addressing the $58.9 million needed to improve their quality of life," NYCHA spokesman Chester Soria said in a statement.

Critics of the plan — which included NYCHA residents, local elected officials and the local community board — were concerned about the size of the tower, the use of special mayoral overrides to skirt zoning rules and the amount of money raised for repairs.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer sued Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYCHA in April to force the project through the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. The city is seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed in the wake of the decision to scrap the plan, a NYCHA rep said.

Local City Councilmember Ben Kallos said Friday: "We are grateful that NYCHA has heard our voices and agreed to begin a new more meaningful community engagement. We must find funding for billions in repairs and are committed to finding a way forward that supports public housing and builds more affordable housing."

Read Patch's coverage about objections to NYCHA's previous plan.

NYCHA is still planning to partner with Fetner Properties when new plans are announced for the site. The embattled agency will roll out its plan for a new community engagement process in the coming weeks, an agency rep said.

Fetner's plan for the site would have resulted in a 530-foot-tall tower with 339 apartments. Half of the apartments would have been offered at market rates and the other half would have been offered at regulated below-market rates. CEO Hal Fetner told Patch in previous conversations that suggestions that the developer did not conduct outreach with NYCHA residents were "hurtful."

"We remain committed to working with NYCHA to advance a project at this site to deliver new affordable housing, open space and much-needed funds for public housing infrastructure," a Fetner spokesman said in a statement Friday.