SOHO — An 18-story condo tower may rise on the site of a Sixth Avenue car wash that closed over the winter, documents show.
Developers are seeking city approval to construct a 27-unit building with ground-floor retail on the northeast corner of Sixth Avenue and Broome Street.
City records show property owners Madison Equities and Property Markets Group plan to turn the triangular plot of land that until March was home to a car wash into a wedge-shaped condo tower, including four townhouses of about 4,500 square feet each.
The developers need approval from the city Board of Standards and Appeals to proceed because the land is zoned for industrial, not residential, use. They will appear before Community Board 2 on Wednesday to ask for advisory support for the zoning exception at the site, which was home to a gas station until 2009.
Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, plans to urge the city to reduce the size of the tower, which he said would be surrounded by buildings one to six stories tall, most of which date back to the 19th century.
"We believe that if this development is to be allowed a variance for residential development at this location, it should be at the size and density which is allowed for residential development in the surrounding area," Berman said in a statement.
The development site falls within a zone GVSHP has long fought for the city to landmark.
Madison Equities and Property Markets Group's lawyer did not immediately respond to an inquiry about how the tower would fit in with its neighbors, but documents submitted to the BSA point out its proximity to the 48-story Trump SoHo two blocks away, at Varick and Dominick streets, and the 18-story Hampton Inn Manhattan-SoHo, just one block away at Sixth Avenue and Watts Street.
GVSHP, along with neighborhood associations, is also fighting the construction of a condo tower one block north. The nonprofit God's Love We Deliver is planning to double the size of its Sixth Avenue and Spring Street building and sell its air rights to Quinlan Development Group so the company can build a 14-story tower. Opponents of the project say the building planned for 180 Sixth Ave. would block neighbors' views and light.
CB2's land use committee will hear a presentation on the Sixth Avenue and Broome Street development plan at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School, located at 272 Sixth Ave.
CB2 will issue an advisory vote on the project at its full board meeting 6 p.m. Thursday, June 20.
