CHELSEA — The owner of the oldest house in the Chelsea Historic District is battling preservationists over the source of flooding at the property — with the new landlord using the alleged damage it caused as a means to renovate the 1830 home against advocates' wishes.
Since the owner of the landmarked house at 404 W. 20th St., between Ninth and 10th avenues, filed an application with the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to alter the home, members of advocacy group Save Chelsea have been fighting the plan they say would “demolish” the building and turn it into a “megamansion.”
In a letter to LPC chair Meenakshi Srinivasan dated May 22, Save Chelsea's executive board refuted what they described as owner Ajoy Kapoor’s claim that the house was “neglected” by its previous owners — Save Chelsea member Lesley Doyel and her husband, Nick Fritsch — leading to the flooding.
However, the former owners and local advocates claim the flooding was a result of Kapoor not heating the property this past water.
“According to the plumber who has serviced houses for decades, this failure happened eleven months after the house was purchased by the new owner, and resulted from pipes that burst when the house was left unheated over the winter,” the letter states.
Save Chelsea, along with the Council of Chelsea Block Associations, several preservationist groups and elected officials including Councilman Corey Johnson, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, will stage a rally and press conference in front of the home on Saturday, June 4, Doyel said on Friday.
“It’s really an effort to say the LPC is not protecting this landmark building — they’re being lackadaisical about the whole thing; they’re not demanding… that a forensic engineer go in and look at the house,” she said.
Save Chelsea members maintain Kapoor — to whom Doyel and her husband sold the home last year — is trying to demolish all but the facade of the house “on the grounds that it is structurally unsalvageable."
“The commission should consider whether the aim of replacing the house with one of over twice its area is not behind the dubious, unauthenticated case that it must be demolished because it is deteriorated beyond hope of preservation, a familiar argument of owners who are merely unwilling to preserve their landmark properties,” the group wrote in its letter to the LPC.
The Commission was “misled” about the state of the house by Kapoor’s architect, William Suk, and Kapoor’s attorney at a public hearing on April 19, the letter claims.
Suk did not immediately respond to request for comment on Friday.
An LPC spokeswoman on Friday said the commission "did not approve the application as presented" at the April 19 hearing, and "asked the applicant to return for a future public meeting to respond to the issues raised at the hearing."
"All of the information received is under consideration by the commission," she wrote in an email. "In addition, any new information will be entered into the record and considered by commissioners."
A flier publicizing the rally maintains LPC approval of Kapoor’s plans would “give unscrupulous developers the green light to demolish and/or irrevocably alter landmarked buildings within historic districts throughout all of New York City.
“Landmarks is being very, very lax in this, as they are with other properties,” Doyel added.
