Trump deals a crooked hand on condo-hotel

Trump deals a crooked hand on condo-hotel

Donald Trump and Downtown. The words just don’t seem to go together. But now The Donald is hoping to build his newest addition to the Manhattan skyline, a 45-story so-called condo-hotel on Soho’s western border in Hudson Square. On Wednesday, the empty lot between Spring and Dominick Sts. on Varick St. saw its first action in months as construction workers started installing a construction fence.

Whether a monumental building of this size belongs in this area of Downtown is one thing. Most local residents would stridently say it doesn’t and that a structure of that size — not
to mention the glitzy denizens it would cater to — is antithetical to this area’s very character.

On the other hand, many property owners and business owners, we’re sure, would support such a project, with its 400 rooms brimming with high-end shoppers.

Regardless of one’s position on the proposed building’s height — achieved through taking advantage of some liberal height restrictions on the avenue and purchasing neighboring air rights — there’s a fundamental problem with the developer/reality show host’s application. Namely, a fully condo-hotel project, a lucrative new breed of high-rise, is not legal at the site. The property’s manufacturing zoning allows a hotel that contains rooms that are available for daily rental. But residential use — and that includes condo-hotels, in our understanding — would not be allowed without either a variance first from the Board of Standards and Appeals or a zoning change by the Department of City Planning.

Trump is saying he’ll sell the units to buyers, who will own them as condos and can either live in them or rent them out to others as hotel rooms. But this all seems like residential use, simply in different guises, with the developer taking the profit up front.

Already Trump has tipped his hand as to the units’ real nature, in that the original plans he submitted to the Department of Buildings included kitchenettes in all the suites. D.O.B. told Trump this wasn’t kosher and he took the kitchenettes out.

Trump’s site and the nearby blocks may indeed need a rezoning. Most of the rest of Hudson Square was rezoned in 2003 to allow residential uses. Residents have been quietly moving into the neighborhood into supposed commercial units for years, and new zoning to allow for mixed uses may very well make sense to reflect the reality of what is happening Downtown. Similar zoning changes worked well in Tribeca more than a decade ago and allowed the neighborhood to grow.

But what Trump is trying to do in Hudson Square is a backdoor attempt to get residential use on the edge of trendy Soho. To allow this would merely encourage others to use the same sleight of hand in other manufacturing districts. Trump, who owns casinos, should put his cards on the table. Let’s call a spade a spade: This is mainly a residential project, not a hotel, and is too big for the neighborhood.