The plans for a Norman Foster-designed glass penthouse on the roof of a Manhattan apartment skyscraper for billionaire investor Bill Ackman have hit a snag.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission of New York City declined to vote on whether Ackman and his wife, Neri Oxman, could replace a pink stucco mansion atop the Upper West Side property with a more modern, floor-to-ceiling glass design during a hearing on Tuesday. The pair was instead told to reconsider their proposal.
Sarah Carroll, the commission's chair, lauded the design excellence while recommending that the second story be reduced. She didn't say when the next hearing on the idea would be.
The action came after Ackman's co-op building neighbors complained at previous community board meetings that the futuristic design looked like a flying saucer and was out of character for a tower built in 1927.
At Tuesday's meeting, Mary Breasted, a co-op tenant, said the proposed penthouse "looks like a Malibu beach home that got blown onto our roof."
Another resident, Belle Horwitz, pointed out that the proposal has yet to be approved by the co-op board, and that the proposal is opposed by seven former board presidents who live in the building.
“It’s almost mocking us,” she said of the design, which she described as “a deliberately discordant project whose sole objective is to call attention to itself.”
The glass penthouse, according to the plan presented to the landmarks commission, would be less obtrusively visible from the street than the old stucco flat, which wasn't part of the original building. The new house would be built at a lower height than the maximum permissible.
At the hearing on Tuesday, Ackman said he discarded an earlier idea because it was too obvious and spent the past two years refining the present design to make it more deliberate and unobtrusive.
“The last thing we wanted to do here was barge in and build something on someone else’s building disrespectfully,” he said.
According to public documents, Ackman and his wife paid $22 million for the property, which consists of four apartments.
The building is located in the Upper West Side/Central Park West historic area, however it is not a city landmark.
