Billionaire’s plan for a West Village mega-mansion gets green light from Landmarks

It’s champagne and caviar tonight for billionaire hedge funder Steven A. Cohen, who received the official go-ahead to build a massive, six-story, single-family mansion at 145 Perry Street today. The Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) voted almost unanimously in favor of the plan despite outcry from local residents and, most notably, Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) who had denounced the design in a statement as “starkly modern,” “fortress-like and massive,” and more like a bank or a luxury retail store you’d find in Miami or Los Angeles, not the “simple but charming” Village.

According to CityRealty, there are currently are two low-slung, nondescript brick buildings with shuttered storefronts located on the prime corner site. The site itself sits within the 2006 expansion of the Greenwich Village Historic District that was in part extended to preserve the two- to four-story scale of the block. The buildings will be demolished to make way for the new scheme which is comprised of two buildings: a large mansion and a smaller attached apartment-style house—again, all for one family.

Leroy Street Studio drafted the design which, diverging from the overall neighborhood aesthetic, features a cream-colored masonry exterior accented with bronze, terracotta and wood details, as well as deeply inset windows shrouded by wooden louvers and a perforated brick screen. The attached apartment house essentially flips that palette and is emphasized by more windows and bronze across its facade.

CityRealty writes that the main entry to the mansion will sit on Perry Street and inside there will be a grand curving staircase, fireplaces, an elevator and a private rear garden designed by Hollander Landscape Architects. The buildings will also be topped off by a planted terrace.

Previous concepts for the site. Left: Morris Adjmi for Scott Sabbagh. Right: Helpern Architects for Madison Equities

Per city records, Cohen purchased the lot for $38.8 million in 2012. But before he came along, there were two other major proposals floated for the site by developer Scott Sabbagh and Madison Equities: a seven-story, 93-room boutique hotel designed by Morris Adjmi in 2008 (seen above left), and then later a joint hotel and two townhouse development in 2009 designed by Helpern Architects (seen above right). While both plans were approved by the LPC, they never moved forward.

[Via CityRealty]

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