Drawing showing bonus FAR on a real building.

February 20, 2013 6:55 AM

In New York, and many other cities, developers can build bigger buildings than would otherwise be allowed, as long as they provide amenities such as parks, schools, affordable housing, etc. I want to show students how this works by providing a photo or drawing of a real building, annotated to show how much of the height is due to these bonuses. For example, a drawing of a 50 story building, where the first 30 floors are unannotated, but then 30-35 are labeled "plaza," 35-40 "affordable housing units," 40-45 "subway entrance" and so on. I want it to be from a real building, and clear enough to show via a projector. I'm surprised this doesn't already exist, but I've done plenty of searching and can't find it.
posted by lenore to Law & Government (7 answers total)

But all those FAR additions would only be achieved by appealing to the zoning commission for a variance. There's no key that says: Xsf of park gets you Xsf of additional rent-able space. Right?
posted by amanda at 6:59 AM on February 20, 2013

Response by poster: Sure, in some cases (there are defined bonuses for affordable housing). But I just want an example - a real-life building that went through the variance process and was built.
posted by lenore at 7:13 AM on February 20, 2013

A quick Bing Search turns up some examples. You can get more by trying other search terms.

Here's one that consists of 120 units. Without the variance there would have been no housing built there at all.
posted by alms at 7:22 AM on February 20, 2013

You could try contacting The Skyscraper Museum; I know they had materials available for teachers a couple years back.
posted by dubold at 8:31 AM on February 20, 2013

Pretty much any building that has a Privately Owned Public Space, starting with the Seagram Building in NYC, etc. Here's an example of NYC's Inclusionary Zoning bonus where they basically give an FAR bonus if the building includes a certain amount of affordable housing. The PDF has a little diagram that illustrates the FAR bonus. A Google Images Search for "FAR bonus" will give you similar diagrams.
posted by suedehead at 8:48 AM on February 20, 2013

I'd take a photo of one such building and then just use Photoshop to overlay semi-transparent bars to indicate the portions of the building accounted for by each of the variances you describe.

Oh, and I'd use One Worldwide Plaza as an example; the building features bonus floors from outdoor public space, a subway entrance, and an underground theater complex.
posted by yellowcandy at 12:10 PM on February 20, 2013 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: I found what I was looking for, but it's very messy. I wish I could credit it, but I don't know anything about who made it. I think it's the Washington Mutual tower in Seattle.
posted by lenore at 6:09 PM on February 24, 2013