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Agency Testimony

Architect Labaris presents 21-31 46th Avenue building design

New York City Council · Sep 9, 2026 · starts 1:33:47 · 2 min 43 sec

Architect Nick Labaris presents the illustrative building design: 115 feet tall, setbacks above the seventh floor to mirror the adjacent building's windows, ground floor retail scaled for smaller tenants, and a respectful gesture to maintain light coming down to the street.

Nick Labaris

Okay, thank you, Rich.

Nick Labaris

Thank you all for your time today.

Nick Labaris

So if you could go to the next slide, please.

Nick Labaris

Next slide, please.

Nick Labaris

So this illustrative building, next slide, please, is 115 feet tall.

Nick Labaris

We have a little bit over 80 units in the building.

Nick Labaris

And we've taken great pains to really consider the site urbanistically because we back this very nice plaza.

Nick Labaris

Next slide, please.

Nick Labaris

Okay, so we've taken great pains to kind of treat this plaza well and also be as good neighbors as we can.

Nick Labaris

So to that end, one thing that we noticed when we first started looking at the site was that there were windows in the building that is right to the east of us.

Nick Labaris

So we tried to mirror back that condition.

Nick Labaris

And you can see over here that we've set back up above the seventh floor on both sides.

Nick Labaris

Next slide, please.

Nick Labaris

And once we get to these renderings, next slide, please.

Nick Labaris

You can see what the effect is over here.

Nick Labaris

So we've maintained the light coming down to the street, and we think that this is a respectful gesture to the neighborhood.

Nick Labaris

There will be lots of ground floor retail.

Nick Labaris

It's scaled such that it could be some smaller grain type of retail.

Nick Labaris

We think that this will be something that will only be additive to the plaza.

Nick Labaris

We think we think.

Nick Labaris

that this is well set up for F&B for the plaza.

Nick Labaris

And one thing that came up was that there was a potential issue with shading.

Nick Labaris

So Christina can speak to that more comprehensively.

Nick Labaris

But in some, we don't think that we're really taking anything away.

Nick Labaris

We have something that we think is a great site to make a pleasant backdrop to the plaza.

Nick Labaris

And we don't think that there's anything that's going to be...

Nick Labaris

let's say, like, deleterious to this block, other than the fact that there will be some sort of building being built, you know.

Nick Labaris

So you'll have the normal stuff that you have to deal with.

Nick Labaris

Excuse me, when you have a construction project.

Nick Labaris

So with that, I would actually like to pass it over to Christina just to talk about the shadows really quick.