The City Council has cleared the way for Robert Gladstone and his partners to add more than 70,000- square-feet to their proposed mixed-use residential tower at 45 Broad Street.
Gladstone’s Madison Equities, along with partners Pizzarotti Group, Gemdale Properties and AMS Acquisitions, agreed to build two elevators at the J/Z Broad Street subway station in exchange for a 71,391-square-foot zoning bonus. The added square footage will be divided between the residential and office portions of the tower, representatives for Madison said.
The elevator work is expected to cost $20 million. The Broad Street station is one of 18 within the Special Lower Manhattan District — as defined in the city’s zoning resolution — where developers can pay for improvements in exchange for zoning bonuses at properties adjacent to the stations. In the lead up to the City Council’s approval of the Broad Street improvements, tenants of nearby buildings expressed concern that the elevators posed a potential security risk, the New York Times reported. At the same time, advocates argued that the elevators provided much-needed access to disabled riders when fewer than one of every five subway stations in the city is wheelchair accessible, according to the Times.
“It is a sad reality that most subway stations in our city are off limits to thousands of disabled New Yorkers and visitors,” Council member Margaret Chin said in a letter to the Council’s zoning and franchises subcommittee. “Until we make every station fully accessible, we will continue to fail in our moral duty, as well as in our obligations under federal law.”
The Broad Street supertall is expected to have 209 condo units and rise 1,115 feet above the Financial District. The residences will begin at 240 feet high and end at 952 feet — since the tower will be topped with a mass damper to counter the building’s sway.
Madison and Pizzarotti purchased the property in 2015 for $86 million. The following year, Gemdale shelled out nearly $70 million for a 81.3 percent stake in the project. The developers held a groundbreaking ceremony in April 2017 and expect the project to be complete by 2021.