In part one of a series on changes to the Hudson River waterfront in the West Village, we take a look at the pending development of the Superior Printing Ink factory along West Street. Click on the link below for recently reported details on these plans, plus our snapshots of one unlucky co-op preparing to lose its river views.
The waterfront property between West 12th and Bethune Streets has been an obvious potential development site since companies such as Rockrose first started colonizing the far West Village in the 1980's--so it's not as if anyone hasn't been warned that this site was "at risk." The Superior Ink company finally sold the property last year to The Related Companies, known for their large mixed-use projects such as the Time Warner Center and One Union Square. Anything approaching that scale would never work in an intimate neighborhood like this, and yet an adaptive re-use of the squat factory building also seems impractical. According to Julie Satow of the New York Sun, Related plans to tear down the structure and its brick smokestacks to build a 20-story 104-unit high-rise in its place. The company will turn to Gwathmey Siegel to design another biomorphic tower not unlike its Astor Place apartment house, with townhouses on Bethune Street. To move forward Related would have to get the site rezoned to allow residential use as well as a larger structure than currently allowed. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation has vowed to fight any zoning change. A proposal to include the site in a new historic district is also currently before the Landmarks Commission, and the final chapter in this saga has yet to be written. Below are photos we took of the site and of the adjoining building directly to the east--380 West 12th Street, a co-op with a number of what we would now term "buyer-beware" units which could be enjoying the last of their precious river views.
