aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Saturday, June 16, 2007

NYC apartment building fued

I’ll be in NYC in a week or so. I love the city and used to thoroughly enjoy digging in to zoning and real estate issues like those presented by the proposed bulbous triplex penthouse apartment suspended over the house next door on 15th Street between 6th and 7th. I actually kind of like the design as pictured; I’m not so sure my friends in the neighborhood will.

The argument that it makes everyone’s property more valuable doesn’t fly with them (like Manhattan real estate prices would otherwise fall???) and I agree with critics who point out that the city allowing the curb cut and interpreting the Sliver Law to allow exceptions for penthouses is a travesty not in the neighborhood interest but is, rather, a sop to rich real estate developers at the expense of the quality of life of the existing residents.

The couple building this project would balk if we applied that characterization to them. But the story in the Times Real Estate section Sunday, headlined Not in My Front Yard, suggests they’re hardly strapped:

Long before they began the current project, the couple spent five years creating the apartment next door - a place like no other in the city. It contains a two-story-high waterfall that flows into an 18-inch-deep river set into the living room floor.

The river, which is home to 10 large koi, follows the outline of the Yangtze, a feat the Raths accomplished by building a Styrofoam model (following a National Geographic map that they enlarged), setting the model onto the building’s foundation, and then pouring the concrete floor around the model. (The final step was using gasoline to dissolve the Styrofoam, Mr. Rath said.)

Now Plexiglas sheets cover the river, to keep out the Raths’ daughters and cats, Sunrise and Rosie.

The Raths did much of the construction work on their apartment themselves, even carving out the basement using five-gallon buckets. All the while, they lived on a sailboat in the Hudson River or under plastic sheets in the building, where for six months there were no plumbing fixtures, only a hose.

Interestingly, the whole process is being chronicled by documentary filmmakers. I would love to see that film!