On Monday Jamestown Properties, the new owners of New York’s Chelsea Market (they recently sold ‘the Google building” for $1.9 Billion) unveiled their plans for developing the East and West ends of the Chelsea Market.  While their plans leave the center of the building between 9th and 10th Avenues unchanged, they have proposed up to 240,000 SqFt of office space above the West end above the high line.

South-facing luxury condo owners at Related’s luxury residential building, The Caledonia,at 17th and 10th will surely not be happy about this assorted Rubik’s Cube box(es) on top of the low rise Chelsea Market potentially blocking their views of the Statue of Liberty and the Hudson River Park. 

Members of the community and Community Board were not impressed with the renditions (see photo), according to reports, despite the developers offering to put money into the fund for Friends of The High Line.  Looking at the photos of renditions I can see why.  Interestingly a walk up The High Line now offers up some truly interesting architecture from Frank Gehry’s IDC building at 19th and West St, to the Shutters Condominium as well as some of the Chelsea Modern on 18th and 10th.  It’s a contrasting view to look at the Empire State building past the modernity with the Chelsea Seminary as part of the backdrop.  

As others have suggested, my guess is that the developers have gone with a building design proposal that is larger than they hope for and probably obstructive in the hopes they can come back with something the community will accept that is perhaps smaller in scale.

I hope the developers will design something more to scale and creative and include community-friendly facilities and services that add to the neighborhood.