STUY TOWN — A group of elected officials is calling on the soon-to-be owner of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village to pull back the curtains on any plans to sell the property's development rights.
Comptroller Scott Stringer and other officials are concerned about the potential impact on the city if the buyer, Blackstone Group, moves forward with potential plans to sell off the complex's development rights, or air rights, to other developers without notifying the public.
When Blackstone announced the deal to purchase the complex for $5.3 billion while protecting approximately 5,000 below-market-rate apartments, they were also given air rights to the 11,200-unit property.
“New York’s communities are keenly aware of the potential impacts associated with air rights, and any plan to radically change the zoning of a large parcel of land must include the community’s voice,” Stringer wrote in a letter to Blackstone on Monday, co-signed by State Sen. Brad Hoylman, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, and Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh.
Stringer estimated that the complex may carry approximately 10.7 million square feet of buildable space, but the exact number has not yet been calculated by the Department of City Planning, officials said.
Blackstone has agreed not to use their development rights to build in the Stuy Town-Peter Cooper Village complex itself, but may seek to sell and transfer them elsewhere in the city, according to a City Hall spokesman and a Blackstone exec.
Air rights typically can be sold for millions. Earlier this month a developer paid $100 million for 200,000 square feet of development rights for a new development along the Hudson River.
Air rights represent the number of unused allotted space a developer could have built under the zoning rules on an existing property. Those rights become a valuable commodity that may be sold to owners of nearby lots who wish to develop bigger buildings.
The exact amount of air rights that exist on the Stuy Town-Peter Cooper Village complex remains unclear: a Wall Street Journal article put the available square footage at upwards of 700,000 square feet, while Stringer and the other politicians believe the amount could top 10.7 million square feet.
A Blackstone representative declined to give a figure for the air rights available at the sites. They said there are “no current plans” to use or transfer those rights.
Air rights can generally only be transferred from one owner to another on the same block, but are occasionally transferrable to lots farther away under the condition that it preserve a larger public good.
The city lets developers along the High Line, for instance, transfer air rights beyond their immediate vicinity in order to make it financially feasible to limit the height of buildings on valuable Chelsea land.
A City Hall representative expressed confidence that any transfer of Blackstone’s air rights would take place in the light of day by going through the city's required uniform land-use review process.
“Any transfer of air rights — the same rights that have existed at the complex since its construction — would be subject to a full public review, with any resulting residential development mandated to provide permanently affordable housing,” said City Hall spokesman Wiley Norvell.
