TRIBECA — In a big win for preservationists, a 116-year-old TriBeCa clock will keep ticking, a judge ruled Thursday, overturning a hotly contested, Landmarks Preservation Commission-approved plan to electrify the mechanical clock and turn it into a luxury residence.
The decision from Manhattan Supreme Court judge Lynn Kotler comes after a legal battle waged by preservationists, against the LPC and the developer of 346 Broadway, the home of the historic clock tower, to keep the landmarked clock from being electrified and shut off from public use.
In December 2014, the LPC voted to allow developers the Peebles Corporation and El Ad Group to move forward with their plan to convert the landmarked clock, which has been hand wound for decades by a city-appointed "official clock master," into a self-operating electric clock and making the clock tower, which sits atop the 14-story building, part of a private condo.
At the LPC hearing in 2014, commissioners debated whether the designation of the clock, which has interior landmark status, meant it couldn't be electrified or fully closed off from the public. The general counsel of the LPC even argued that the commission didn't have the authority to require an owner to do either.
“There’s nothing in the landmarks law that requires or gives the commission the power to require that this mechanism remain operable,” Mark Silberman, the commission’s general counsel, said at the public hearing. “Whether it’s electrified or someone is allowed to wind it, that is not something the landmarks commission can require.”
Judge Kotler, however, basically called that reasoning absurd, or, in her words, “irrational, arbitrary," and overturned their decision.
Kotler wrote that the LPC's role is to protect landmarks, so while there may not be a Landmarks Law that lays out the specifics of how to treat interior landmarks, they have the specific power to regulate sites in the best interest of the landmarks — that means keeping it mechanical and open to the public.
“The general provisions of the landmarks law vest the commission with the power to regulate an interior landmark,” she wrote. “That power must include the ability to direct an owner to maintain public access, since public access is a specific characteristic of an interior landmark.”
Controversy over the clock tower began long before the LPC's decision. The building, owned by the city, was for years mostly home to city agencies and administrative offices — and topped by a storied art gallery — but was sold to developers in 2012.
The sale forced the Clocktower Art Gallery, which had been in the space for nearly 40 years, to shutter, and left the clock in limbo.
Preservationist group the Tribeca Trust, which filed the suit, along with the Historic Districts Council and the dedicated clock winders, Marvin Schneider, 75, and Forest Markowitz, 63, said in a statement on their website that the judge's ruling was a "clear victory and an important one for landmarks law."
"In a world where developers run our city in a kind of tragic oligarchy, it is nice to be reminded that justice against the developers can sometimes still prevail," the Tribeca Trust wrote.
The LPC referred all question to the City Law Department, who's spokesman said they were reviewing the decision. The developers did not immediately return request for comment.
