A decades-old parking lot in Manhattan’s NoHo neighborhood is likely to become high-rise apartments despite a local fight against the project.
Advocacy groups and residents had opposed the plan, saying that it did not preserve the neighborhood’s historical elements and aesthetic and that the development would not provide truly affordable housing.
But on Tuesday the Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to approve the design plans for two high-rise apartment buildings on the lot at the corner of Great Jones and Lafayette Streets. Two members of the commission voted against the plan, and one abstained.
The buildings, designed by the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, will include 200 units, about a quarter of which will be affordable housing units that will rent at around $2,200 per month.
Andrew Berman, the executive director of the nonprofit Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, a leading voice of the opposition, said the group was “unhappy with the approval for the design.”
“I refute the argument that you have to pick between new housing and good design,” he said.
An earlier plan presented in April, which proposed one large building, was reworked after the commission and local opponents, including Mr. Berman’s group, took issue with the project’s scale, materials and architecture. Some residents likened the design to a “cruise ship” or “spaceship.”
A spokesman for the developer, Edward J. Minskoff Equities, said the proposal “is in keeping with the community’s character” and emphasized that it would add housing to “a site that previously functioned solely as a parking lot.”
A spokeswoman for the Landmarks Preservation Commission did not immediately comment.
The project’s timeline was unclear, but the commission must approve blueprints submitted by the developer to the Department of Buildings before the department can issue building permits.
The commission’s vote follows a loss for developers who wanted to build affordable housing for older people on the site of Elizabeth Street Garden in NoLIta. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration abandoned the plan last week.
And it comes amid a continuing housing crisis in the city. New York needs about 290,000 homes right now, and about 700,000 over the next 10 years, according to a draft report released this week by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the Department of City Planning.
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