Bill Ackman’s plan to build on top of a historic Manhattan building overlooking Central Park fails
Bill Ackman failed to convince New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to approve the Norman Foster-designed two-storey penthouse atop a Upper West Side building overlooking Central Park. Photograph: Foster + Partners
Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has been told to revise his plans for a penthouse apartment on top of a historic Manhattan building after his neighbours complained it looked like “a Malibu beach house that got blown on to our New York roof”.
Ackman, who has built up an estimated $3.3bn (£2.5bn) from his hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, failed to convince New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to approve the Norman Foster-designed two-storey penthouse atop a Upper West Side building overlooking Central Park.
Sarah Carroll, chair of the commission, told Ackman that the design had provoked such strong feelings from local residents – who described it as looking like a “flying saucer” or “temple to a titan” – that he must take it back to the drawing board.
She said the commission would not approve or deny the penthouse plan, and instead called on Ackman and Foster to reduce the size and scope of the project.
“We ask the applicants to continue to study this project,” Carroll said at the end of a community meeting on Tuesday night. “You are in the right direction, [but continue] thinking about how you can fulfil the design intent of this glass house on the roof by sinking it down, lowering it, maintain a more sort of horizontal quality.” She did not set a deadline for Ackman to resubmit his plans.
The decision came after a string of local residents and conservation experts spoke out against the design of the penthouse at 6-16 West 77th Street.
Mary Breasted, a novelist who has lived in the building for 14 years, said the apartment looked “shockingly out of place … like a Malibu beach house that got blown on to our New York roof”.
Christabel Gough, the secretary of the Society for the Architecture of the City, told the Zoom meeting of the Landmarks Preservation Commission that she could understand the appeal of the rooftop apartment for Ackman and his wife, Neri Oxman, but asked the commissioners to think about the effect on the rest of the city’s residents.
“Looking from the inside out, this item would undoubtedly be pleasing to those who Tom Wolfe dubbed ‘master of the universe’, but looking from the outside up [at it] this rooftop addition is problematic,” said Gough, who has attended almost every meeting of the commission for 37 years.
She said the “gigantic glass walls [providing] unobstructed view that make the outlook so desirable to the private owner” would turn the penthouse into a “dazzling beacon” seen from across the city and even from passengers flying into JFK airport.
Foster, the three-times Stirling prize winning architect who designed London’s Millennium bridge and Gherkin tower, and Berlin’s Reichstag parliament, compared the plans to Philip Johnson’s glass house in Connecticut. He told the committee that the penthouse was designed to be “very gentle” and “very respectful” to the original 1927 building.
Ackman, who bought the building’s existing pink stucco penthouse for $22.5m in 2017, said the current structure was decrepit and needed to be demolished. He promised the commission that the Foster-designed apartment would be a “great asset for New York City”.
Ackman said he wanted to ensure the apartment fitted into the environment, and said he had withdrawn a previous design because the second storey was “too visible”. “The last thing we wanted to do here was barge in and build something on someone else’s building disrespectfully,” he said.
The apartment was previously owned by feminist and gender politics author Nancy Friday. The author, who died in 2017, had over the years bought four neighbouring units in the building and cobbled them together to create the unusual 13 room apartment.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/17/new-york-billionaire-told-to-revise-plans-for-temple-to-a-titan-penthouse?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=edit_2221&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1637169437
