FIT awaits $52M savior for new building

alternate
text
Renderings of the FIT building on 28th Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues (source: SHoP Architects)

Budget cuts this summer have left a sleek glass tower proposed for the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Chelsea campus in limbo, and now the school is hoping the project will be saved by a private donor.

According to the Architect’s Newspaper, the state awarded the State University of New York school located between Seventh and Eighth avenues at 27th and 28th streets, half of the $148 million needed to complete the SHoP Architects-designed project in 2003. (SHoP is also the firm behind the Barclays Center in Atlantic Yards.) The rest, it said, would need to come from local funding within 10 years. In 2006, the city contributed $2 million to the project, prompting the state to match it, so the architects could finalize the design. But after budget battles this summer, the city only designated $20 million for the project, leaving the school $52 million short of its price tag.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

The SHoP plan calls for a 100,000-square-foot, LEED Gold-certified building on 28th Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues with a “woven glass facade” that better showcases student designs.

The local community board has supported the project, and the city recently approved a rezoning of the campus to encourage development of the area. Edison Properties is using the new zoning laws to build a residential complex on a 225-by-75-foot vacant lot down the block at 249 West 28th Street. [ArchPaper]