Nearly a year after the Landmarks C

Nearly a year after the Landmarks Commission did the same, the New York City Department of Buildings has approved the zoning plan for 837 Washington Street, a planned 6-story, LEED Gold mixed-use tower in the Meatpacking District.


Last week, the New York City Department of Buildings approved the zoning plan for 837 Washington Street, a planned 6-story, LEED Gold mixed-use tower in the Meatpacking District. The approval comes almost a year after the Landmarks Preservation Commission gave the project a thumbs up (necessary because the building is slated to rise above an existing 2-story Moderne-style warehouse that dates from the late 1930s and was once part of the Gansevoort Market).

As we noted previously, architects Morris Adjmi‘s design echoes the neighborhood’s industrial past: it features a metal and glass window wall set within an angular framework of gray steel beams that rotate around a brick core that ties it back to the warehouse below. Twisting as it rises, the dynamic of the tower is designed to echo the angles of the neighborhood streets until they bump up against the Manhattan grid above nearby 14th Street. Office floors will have views over the High Line straight out to the Hudson River and beyond, while planting beds along the edge of the floor slab will reduce stormwater runoff and benefit adjacent High Line landscaping.

Taconic Investment Partners and Thor Equities (which paid $55 million last December for a 75 percent stake in the project, according to The Real Deal) are the developers behind the glass-and-steel tower, which – according to its zoning plan – will include 28,000 square feet of retail and 27,000 square feet of office space, all just to the east of the High Line and the Standard Hotel.