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Luxury Building Developer to New Yorkers: Haha Just Kidding, My 30-Story Tower Is Actually 90 Stories


July 7, 2015 | Prachi Gupta

Luxury building developer Bauhouse Group has performed some New York-style black magic on the residents of Sutton Place, allegedly tricking them into allowing the building of a 90-story luxury high rise in the Upper East Side neighborhood. According to the Daily News, the residents signed away air rights and zoning for what they expected to be a building of 30 stories, at most:

According to minutes of the Dec. 22 meeting, a shareholder asked Bauhouse executive Christopher Jones for details, including whether it would be “a 100-story building.” Jones replied that he was “unsure of exact height” and that “air rights would be a factor,” but the tower “will not be 100 stories, as of now expected to be 13 stories,” the minutes state.

A representative of another shareholder estimated that between air rights and zoning, the “building will be between 12-30 stories.”

That is not what happened:

“It appears the developer got the residents to sell the air rights by misleading them into believing the building would be no more than 30 stories,” said Arthur Schwartz, a spokesman for a number of the building residents. “Before the ink was even dry, the developer turned around and announced plans for a $1 billion, 90-story mega-tower, one of the largest condos in the country.”

If completed as (now) planned, the tower will stand 900 feet, making it one of the tallest residential buildings in the city.

(Photo: Several seconds)