WEST VILLAGE — Village residents would prefer pricey apartments be built on Cornelia Street rather than allow the IFC Center to expand its theater there, several said at a community board land use committee meeting Wednesday night.
Weeks of back and forth between IFC leadership and the Cornelia Street Block Association resulted in the theater considering several alternatives to their original plan.
The initial proposal has the cinema building into the vacant lot behind it, which has been empty and unused for 80 years. No entrance or exit would be allowed on Cornelia Street, but the lobby would increase in size to prevent crowding on Sixth Avenue.
Residents balked at having a commercial facade on the quiet block, however, so the IFC considered:
► expanding less into the vacant lot, keeping their commercial entity off Cornelia Street proper;
► building taller on Sixth Avenue;
► constructing a mixed-use building that would include residential apartments;
► building a townhouse on Cornelia Street; and
► changing part of their design in a way that would not block the light of some neighbors.
The first and third options would not generate enough revenue to offset the cost of construction, IFC said.
The second also poses financial issues, as well as structural ones due to the subway infrastructure below ground and the fact that the height would conflict with the historic district.
The fifth option, which involves moving a staircase further into the building, would eliminate light interference to the top three floors of neighboring 18 Cornelia St., but do little else.
The townhouse option would generate less revenue for the theater because it would fall short of the development cost and result in 246 fewer seats than the planned 948.
But people at the meeting insisted they could make the apartments more expensive, and that 246 seats are a small compromise. And they insisted a commercial façade had no place on Cornelia Street.
"The IFC is missing the opportunity to create a true Village asset. What we have instead is the ass-end," said Cornelia Street Block Association President Dan Leigh.
"We want life on Cornelia Street," explained Land Use Committee Chair Anita Brandt after the meeting. "We don't want the back of a theater. It's a blank wall."
Gruber dismissed IFC's claim that apartments are not economically feasible.
"[That's what] they say — the numbers are always in their favor," he said. "These numbers are massaged. That's the true thing."
Community Board 2 member David Gruber insisted that residential development, whether apartments or a townhouse, would be "guaranteed money year in and year out, increasing every year... on a block that Taylor Swift lives on."
"What's important to us is that our landmarked residential streets don't have commercial on it," he added. "Expand on the commercial part of the lot and leave the other part for residential development."
The IFC has argued that more than 65 percent of Cornelia Street's ground floor spaces are zoned or currently used for commercial, mostly restaurants.
But Gruber and Leigh insist that it matters that there's no upper floor commercial.
And many take issue with the fact that IFC is only the tenant, not the landlord — applications like this are usually brought by a property owner.
"There's no crystal ball that says they're going to be there forever," Brandt said.
Gruber said he'd been told IFC will face a big rent increase when they renew their lease.
"If they can't make it, it goes back to the landlord," he said. "We would never entertain this for a commercial developer. We're only doing it because it's the arts."
The IFC did not immediately respond to that allegation.
Gruber also took issue with IFC supporters who say the theater is a Village institution, noting that it's been there "only" 11 years.
"They make it sound like it's been there for 100 years," he said. "It's not an institution."
"Someone said if they leave it will be chipping away at the fabric of the Village," he added. "I think if they build a big commercial building, that's also chipping away at the fabric of the Village."
