In Manhattan, opposition to park-shadow towers gets louder
Dana Rubinstein
It was thirty-seven minutes into a widely publicized, heavily attended forum on “supertowers” and the shadows they cast on Central Park that the antagonist of the hour got his say.
He wore a black mock turtleneck and rimless glasses. And as the clock ticked toward 7 p.m. on Wednesday night, Gary Barnett, the developer of the tall, thin, Christian de Portzamparc-designed skyscraper whose shadow has come to cast a pall over the southern precincts of Central Park, walked to a podium at the New York Public Library and came to his own defense.
“Let’s say that in an ideal world, we had a zero tolerance for additional shadows,” said Barnett, to the crowd of more than 400 New York community board members, planners, preservationists, urbanists and real estate types. “What would be the tradeoff?”
His skyscraper, where a penthouse sold for $90 million, creates jobs, he said. So, too, will the skyscraper he’s building down the street, at 225 W. 57th Street.
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2014/02/8540569/manhattan-opposition-park-shadow-towers-gets-louder?top-featured-1
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