Large Upper East Side Storage Building Moving Forward, Plans Show

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Plans to demolish an Upper East Side parking garage and replace it with a large self-storage facility are moving forward, public records show, even as some in the neighborhood call the project a waste of space that would be better suited for housing.

On Friday, the Parkland Group development company filed plans with the city to construct an eight-story, 104,000-square-foot building at 424 East 90th St., between First and York avenues.

Since 1924, the lot has been occupied by a modest, two-story brick garage topped with an engraved sign reading "Weprin & Glass Building," named for the two Russian immigrants who built it on the site of a former brewery. In recent years, it has housed an Avis car rental.

Weeks after purchasing the building for $19.8 million, the Parkland Group filed plans to demolish it in April. Around the same time, the storage company SecureSpace announced it had signed a lease for the space, boasting that the Upper East Side has "over 200,000 residents and average income of $175,000 within 1-mile of the property."

While the facility may be welcomed by Upper East Siders with crammed closets and full drawers, others said the city should have stepped in to allow housing to be built there instead.

Ben Wetzler, a Democratic district leader who lives across the street from the garage, noted in an Our Town op-ed that the block has been zoned since the 1960s for heavy industrial uses — the result of an apparent bid to segregate the Upper East Side from East Harlem.

"[I]f we are serious about tackling climate change and unaffordable housing we need ambitious proposals to replace garages like this one with mixed-income housing and community space," Wetzler wrote, adding that the City Council should move quickly to rezone the block.

My op-ed in Our Town is out. Take a read on how NYC's history of bad City planning and environmental injustice now means self-storage is being built on lots that should be affordable housing.https://t.co/c3I2GP136a
— Ben Wetzler (@bd_wetz) April 15, 2021

In the ensuing months, however, the city has taken no such action. The newly filed plans show the storage center will stand 114 feet tall, designed by the New Jersey-based firm Tao.

No timeline has been provided for when demolition or construction will begin.