Community board tells Trump Soho to wait on outdoor cafe

When the developers of Trump Soho built the 46-story hotel-condo in Hudson Square, they were allowed to build 20 percent bigger than zoning would typically allow by vowing to build an 8,161-square-foot plaza. According to the Villager, one year after the building opened the developers now want to take back some of that space for outdoor seating for the Quatro restaurant on the hotel’s ground floor.

Trump Soho representatives presented the plan before Community Board 2, which plays an advisory role in the City Planning Commission’s decision, arguing that the plaza attracts little public use and the cafe would invite people into the public space. But the community board asked Trump Soho to withdraw the application for a year. They say that because the public space only opened last Memorial Day, and was covered by scaffolding for several months after the fact, the success of the plaza is still undetermined.

Trump Soho has been a controversial project from the outset, as many residents believe the developers designated the hotel a condo-hotel in an effort to work around zoning regulations. Earlier this month, The Real Deal reported that the building’s developers, Bayrock Group and the Sapir Organization, were in talks with Prudential Douglas Elliman to replace Prodigy International as the project’s exclusive marketers. [The Villager]