Chair Louis questions building height relative to surrounding homes
Chair Louis asks how the proposed height relates to surrounding buildings. Palatnik compares the 95-foot building to nearby 66-75 foot buildings and a taller C8 building, arguing it is contextual.
Can you please go over again how the height of the proposed building relates to surrounding homes and businesses?
Yeah, that's up.
If we can go back to the picture that I showed a few minutes ago.
Which page?
I'll get to the page to tell the person controlling the screen.
I think it was page eight.
So this picture is helpful because it shows you the heights of surrounding buildings.
Coney Island Avenue is not necessarily the avenue that you've seen any development on in my lifetime, in fact.
I don't believe I've seen much developed in my lifetime.
I think I can count the number of buildings and new buildings, specifically residential, that have been built in this part of Coney Island in one hand.
So you don't see much taller buildings.
That's what...
The city of ES and the work that your committee is doing is hoping to change.
But you can see on the side streets some of the proliferation that has occurred through the years.
For example, on Avenue M, you can see over there at the top of the page a whole host of larger, taller, newer buildings which have been constructed that are 75 feet tall, 71 feet tall, 66 feet tall.
We're at 95 feet tall.
So we're somewhat consistent with those, but even more so consistent with the building immediately across the street from us in the C8 zone, which was just built as well, which I would dare say is too tall for the neighborhood and overwhelms the community.
I don't think many people in the area are a fan of its height, but it towers even over the property by 50 feet.
And as I mentioned a moment ago, Avenue K is zoned R7A, which is analogous to what we're requesting here.
So although those buildings that are in R7A are older buildings, which look mostly like they're pre-war buildings built in the 30s, 40s, or maybe some post-war.
definitely 50, 60, 70, 80 years ago.
So none of those buildings have any affordable housing.
All of them are older buildings working with old electrical and mechanical systems and don't have any of the modern amenities that most people would want.
Ceiling heights are low, things like that.
So I think the building that we're requesting is a good example of a modern contextual building, albeit a little bit higher than what's on the side streets.