SL Green pursues 1 Vanderbilt plan with de Blasio: sources

Undeterred by the demise of Mayor Bloomberg’s Midtown East rezoning plan in November, developer SL Green is pushing forward with negotiations to bring its 65-story 1 Vanderbilt plan to fruition under the de Blasio administration.

Unnamed sources told Capital New York that the developer is in talks with the city planning department about ways it could maneuver its planned 1.6 million-square-foot tower between 42nd and 43rd streets with or without a neighborhood-wide rezoning. Though SL Green had no comment for the news site, the publicly-traded company hinted at such a plan in a January earnings call.

“We are still moving ahead on all fronts with the expectation that this will be developed, the only difference being that as a result of whether the East Side zoning goes through or not, we may have alternate plans,” Marc Holliday, the company’s CEO, said during the call. “But I think we can accommodate that under several different scenarios, and that’s what we are working through now.”

A spokesperson for planning commissioner Carl Weisbrod told Capital New York that for the moment, “there are no updates” on 1 Vanderbilt, which would stretch higher than the Chrysler Building if all goes according to the developer’s plan.

Although outgoing Mayor Bloomberg’s 73-block rezoning plan for Midtown East was scratched in November, Mayor de Blasio has since vowed to revisit it, albeit with potentially significant changes. [Capital New York] — Julie Strickland