A Long Island City strip club is claiming in its second lawsuit in seven months that the city is trampling its First Amendment rights in a broader effort to rid the city of adult entertainment. TC Queens Entertainment, owner of the topless nightclub Scandals located in the shadow of the Queensboro Bridge, claims in the lawsuit filed Jan. 15 in New York State Supreme Court that the city is limiting the number of areas where clubs can set up shop or remain, by first legalizing neighborhoods for adult use, then later whittling away at them through subsequent zoning changes. “The city has engaged in a systematic campaign to shrink the adult zones,” the suit says, to “play whack-a-mole with the First Amendment.” The TC Queens lawsuit is an effort to block a Dec. 15 decision by the city Board of Standards and Appeals that makes the Queens Plaza club located at 24-03 Queens Plaza North as currently configured, illegal. [more]

A rendering of the development at 437 West 13th Street and Amanda Burden, chair of the City Planning Commission

Romanoff Equities received approval today for a shorter, but still contentious, new 10-story office and retail building at 437 West 13th Street in the Meatpacking District, adjacent to the High Line. The original proposal called for a 215-foot, 12-story glass tower, exceeding the manufacturing zone’s maximum floor area ratio of 5. The developers argued that the additional size — their proposal’s F.A.R. was 7.73 — would allow them to recoup the costs of an expensive foundation made necessary by soil conditions on the site and a portion of the land made unusable by the location of the High Line. Over the course of three public hearings on the matter, during which community groups argued that the tower would outsize its neighbors and replace a historic Meatpacking building, the proposal was scaled down to 201 feet, and then to 175 feet, or a 6.18 F.A.R., at which point it was unanimously approved by the Board of Standards and Appeals.
Even so, the approved proposal is 24 percent larger than traditional zoning laws would allow for that space. [more]