MIDTOWN, NY — Midtown isn’t “thrilled” about the coming Las Vegas-style attraction to Eighth Avenue. And they fear that the worst case scenarios are just around the corner.
Residents sounded off on not only a mega-developer’s plans to build an indoor amusement-park style ride atop a 1,000 foot tower at 740 Eighth Ave., but also their strategy to get approval by classifying it as an “accessory use” to a hotel below, which allows them to avoid any sort of review or environmental study of the project
“Do I believe that amusement rides are appropriate for Midtown? Honestly, I don’t know,” said Community Board 5 land use chair Layla Law-Gisiko. “I have no idea. Maybe it’s fantastic. But what I know is that it’s a use that is not permitted.”
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“Nobody Says No To Extell”
As first reported by Patch in early June, “Billionaire’s Row” mega-developer Extell was able to avoid a potentially lengthy zoning review process for an indoor, 300-foot free-fall ride, which they compared to one at a Six Flags amusement park, by classifying the thrilling attraction as an “accessory use” to the 1,000-plus room hotel below.
A representative from Manhattan Plaza at last week’s meeting — home to 3,500 New Yorkers — said that tenants, many of who famously work on Broadway, were outraged by the plan and said that the theater district isn’t in need of aid to attract tourism.
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Another neighbor named Debra wondered how first responders would get to the massive tower, which would easily be one of the tallest in the city at a massive 1,067 feet tall, according to building filings, because the neighborhood is already so gridlocked, and questioned an Extell lawyer’s argument that similar rides are already flourishing in Midtown.
One such example cited by Paul Selver, an attorney from firm Kramer Levin representing Extell at the meeting, was RiseNY, a popular attraction and museum in Times Square.
Debra said that the “30-foot raised platform in an iMax virtual-reality experience,” was vastly different from the proposed 300-foot free-fall mechanical ride atop the mega tower.
She said that Extell’s vision “seems incredibly novel — and incredibly dangerous.”
Another member of the board’s land use committee, Dave Achelis, said the problem was simple: “nobody ever says no to Extell.”
Only Good Things Come From Free Falls
A zoning challenge filed on behalf of the Committee for Environmentally Sound Development said that the Department of Building’s decision to approve was effectively enacting new zoning law, which they say is outside of the agency’s prevue.
“The department made new law,” zoning expert George Janes wrote in the challenge, “law that it had no authority to make.”
Typically, an accessory use to a main building use means something that is common and customary — like a restaurant, cafe, parking lot, swimming pool or theater in a hotel — and historically the city has taken a narrow view on what can be deemed accessory to a principal building use, Janes told Patch.
But the Buildings Department signed off on the application, which cited similar rides in Las Vegas and other not-New York City places as justification for meeting the common and customary threshold.
Janes pointed out that in Las Vegas, officials there made special zoning rules for such uses, the opposite of what he says is happening at 740 Eighth Ave.
“That’s not a decision to be made by a Borough Commissioner at the Department of Buildings,” Janes said.
“It might be fine to turn Midtown into Disneyland, but I really, really would have liked to see City Council, City Planning, elected officials — like everyone weighed in on that,” he told Patch.
Selver told attendees at the Community Board 5 meeting last week that the coming attraction didn’t fit into the zoning law amusement park use-group since it was just a single ride. And plus, it would have “absolutely no negative impact” on its neighbors. Only positive impacts would follow, he said.
And other business groups in the area support the plan, like Times Square Alliance President Tom Harris, who told W42ST that “Times Square is no stranger to new experiential offerings to entertain the millions of people who visit each year,” citing examples mentioned in the Extell proposal.
Extell spokesperson Anna LaPorte told Crain’s that the building would provide “significant economic development benefits” for the city.
Are Hotels That Just Happen To Contain Casinos Next?
But residents at the meeting disagreed.
They’ve been through this before, many said. With the East Midtown Rezoning, Law-Gisiko said that “every single flag that this Community Board raised — and we were told it would never happen — this is exactly what happened.”
Now the concern is that this loophole would be abused by casino operators who would argue that their gambling houses could be accessory uses for hotels.
Law-Gisiko noted that normally such a request — like to have a 300-foot free-fall drop ride 500-plus feet in the air — would have to be added as a zoning text amendment, triggering all sorts of reviews and studies.
“If all the sudden we can claim that because something exists in Las Vegas, it is relevant in Midtown because we think that maybe it’s going to be beneficial, I think we rob ourselves of the opportunity to do things correctly,” she said.
“If we want to make the case that amusement rides are appropriate,” Law-Gisiko said, “let’s introduce a zoning text amendment, let’s study it.”
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