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Chelsea Backyards Being 'Chipped Away' by Home Expansions, Neighbors Say

By Maya Rajamani | April 19, 2017 3:50pm
 The owner of a building in the Chelsea Historic District hopes to add a penthouse and 11-foot rear extension.
318 W. 20th St.
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CHELSEA — Residential backyards in the Chelsea Historic District area are being “quietly chipped away” by townhouse owners looking to increase the size of their properties, according to neighbors who use the green spaces.

Despite an outcry from neighbors, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in September approved a developer’s plans to build a rear extension on the townhouse at 334 W. 20th St., between Eighth and Ninth avenues. The building is one of several historic townhouses on West 19th and 20th streets with connected backyards that form a collective courtyard.

On Monday, an architect representing the owner of a 25-unit single-room occupancy building down the street, at 318 W. 20th St., presented a similar plan to Community Board 4’s Chelsea Land Use committee.

The owner hopes to turn the four-story, 1837 Greek Revival-style townhouse into a single-family home, adding a penthouse to the roof and extending the rear 11 feet into the backyard, architect Rogelio Cambiasso told the committee.

318W20thSt

The existing front and rear facades, at left, versus the proposed front and rear facades, at right. (Barry Berg Architect pllc/CF Studio)

But around a dozen neighbors wearing matching green shirts — many of whom donned the same ones to protest the 334. W. 20th St. plans —  showed up to protest the proposal at Monday's meeting.

“The bulk that he’s proposing to build on the back [of the house] is just destroying the green space that we currently have,” 300 West 20th Street Block Association co-president Carol Ott told the committee. “If this continues, there will be no more historic courtyard on our block.”

The back extension would diminish the size of the courtyard, alter the uniformity of the home’s historic rear facades, and disrupt a delicate courtyard “ecosystem” filled with trees, flowers and birds, several residents claimed.

“It’s so, so sad to see this whole back area being quietly chipped away at, without anybody having any consideration for what it represents of the Chelsea area,” said Jane Edwards, who’s lived in a house on the West 19th Street side of the courtyard since 1964.

She added that the proposed roof extension would also cast a shadow on residents' gardens within the courtyard, which is divided up by fences.

Following the presentation and the public comment session, committee member David Holowka expressed sympathy for the residents, but pointed out that the LPC has approved similar proposals.

Opposing “modest” applications could make the LPC less inclined to take CB4’s concerns into account when more controversial ones are proposed, he explained.

In July, the commission approved plans the board and elected officials had argued would destroy all but the facade of the oldest house in the Chelsea Historic District.

“I don’t see this doing anything that we don’t approve on a regular basis… and I’m a little concerned about us picking our battles,” Holowka said. “...[W]hen another case like the oldest house in Chelsea comes up, it will seem like we’re just NIMBYs opposed to any development.”

Another committee member, Burt Lazarin, pointed out that the courtyard's fences designate individual backyards.

“I’d actually have some more sympathy if it was a physically common space, which it’s not,” he said.

CB4 member Maarten de Kadt, however, sided with the residents.

“I never understood why Landmarks, and why we, hadn’t paid attention to the historic nature of the backyard facades,” he said. “... [H]aving some sense of preservation of those backyards is, I think, an important thing for our community, and we’re missing an opportunity by not saying anything.”

The committee ultimately voted 5 to 3 in favor of writing a letter to the LPC asking it to reject the proposed 11-foot rear extension.

The letter will go before CB4’s full board next month.