Upper West Side residents have banded together in protest of a plan to add four luxury penthouse apartments to the roof of the Apthorp, the landmarked, 12-story condominium complex.
The preservation committee for Community Board 7 rejected the developer’s proposal yesterday, arguing that it would affect views of the building from the courtyard and the rest of the neighborhood. More than 100 locals, some of them Apthorp tenants, complained at the board meeting about the heavy construction and expressed concerns about the structural soundness of the building.
The plan calls for building duplex and triplex apartments, priced at $2,200 to $3,300 a square foot, to existing units on the top floor of the 105-year-old property at 390 West End Avenue, as The Real Deal reported in July.
“The quality of life of the Apthorp is a high priority to the Apthorp sponsors,” Bradford Wildauer, a partner at Area Property Partners, said at the meeting. Many residents, however, reacted with sarcastic laughter, DNAinfo reported.
Area Property Partners, a mezzanine lender during the original 2007 acquisition of the Apthorp by Maurice Mann and Africa Israel, took control of the property in 2012 after Irish Bank Resolution, the successor to Anglo Irish Bank, sold the mortgage debt to an Australian lender, as reported. Architecture firm Goldstein Hill & West designed the apartments. [DNAinfo] — Mark Maurer