City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, in a letter to the Board of Standards and Appeals, asked the board to deny zoning variances requested by the owner of 437 West 13th Street in the Meatpacking District, where Darryl Romanoff hopes to build a 12-story glass office tower. The Romanoff family is seeking zoning variances because the High Line covers about 27 percent of the property. The Romanoffs say that will mean additional construction expenses that will lower their return on their investment, so they want to build a higher tower. Preservation advocates say that the proposed project is out of scale with the area and calls for demolition of a historic building. The Board of Standards and Appeals is set to consider the issue again June 16. [more]

Darryl Romanoff hopes to turn one of his family’s Meatpacking District plants, at 13th and Washington streets, into a 13-story tower, a proposal that will go up for a vote by the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals tomorrow. Romanoff’s planned tower is four stories taller than allowed by local zoning, but the developer said a smaller tower would not be economically viable due to the costs of environmental clean up and of building next to the High Line. Romanoff said he wants the building’s tenants to be from creative fields.