The developer has tinkered with the plan for more than a year since the public first saw renderings of the proposal in 2008.

The latest rendition of the five-building, mixed-use project was shown at a March 17 meeting of Community Board 7’s Riverside South Working Group.

In Extell’s new plan, 1.8 million square feet of commercial space was replaced with 2,500 apartments, totaling 2.4 million square feet of residential space. Twelve percent of that is planned for affordable housing.

The overall size of the project, which spans from West 59th to 61st streets between West End Avenue and Riverside Boulevard, was trimmed by 5 percent, to 3 million square feet. Two western buildings in the proposal were also scaled down by approximately 130 feet each, and parking spots were reduced to 1,800 from 2,300.

A rendering of the proposed Riverside South development.

Extell announced that a hotel planned for the development, which has been a key part of the proposal from the outset, will have 250 rooms. The developer also committed to provide funding for a K-8 school to accommodate the influx of residents.

Some components of the plan remain unchanged, however, including a street-level auto showroom, underground car service center and movie theater.

As is expected with any large-scale development, Upper West Side residents near Riverside South have complained about the project’s density and size.

“I’m hoping that they’re seeing we’re responsive to some of their demands and requests,” said Extell’s project manager, Donna Gargano, of the community. “I believe this community still is voicing certain concerns and they will be discussed as we go through the [Uniform Land Use Review Procedure].”

During this city approval procedure, the Riverside South plan is likely to change again. The final approval must come from the City Council, which hinges on Council Member Gale Brewer’s support, as is customary in local land use issues.

The proposal is already larger than was outlined by the guidelines that Riverside South agreed to—known as the “restrictive declaration”—after the 1992 rezoning of the area, which transformed the property from a manufacturing site to a residential and commercial area.

“There are still unanswered questions, but it’s a good start,” Brewer said of the newest Riverside South proposal.

Brewer said that height and density are still concerns, considering the restrictive declaration allowed for only a 2.7-million-square-foot development when real estate mogul Donald Trump wanted to develop the land.

“It needs to go down,” Brewer said.

Meanwhile, Metro North is searching for a new site to build an Upper West Side train station. The agency was eying Riverside South, but the tracks would have to curve.

“It’s not possible to build a station [at Riverside South]. You have to have straight tracks. Otherwise you’ll have gaps where people can fall in,” explained Marjorie Anders, a spokesperson for Metro North.

Anders said Metro North is still committed to an Upper West Side train stop, but options north and south of Riverside South come with problems. There are building foundations abutting the tracks up to West 71st Street that leave little clearance for a train. There are also curved tracks on West 50th and 51st streets. But anything south of West 50th Street would be too close to Penn Station.

“It’s tough to find a good spot,” Anders said.

REchirp.com works with a similar concept: Interested buyers or renters go to the website, browse the listings and make a bid or a “chirp.” If your chirp is accepted by the owner, you get to start negotiations.

REchirp creators Marc Blum and Andrew Green came up with the idea after years of living in New York and moving from apartment to apartment.

Upper East Sider Marc Blum came up with the website REchirp with partner Andrew Green. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

“It was always a tedious process to find an apartment—dealing with brokers, Craigslist, the New York Times. And we thought there should be an easier process of finding real estate in the city,” said Blum, who has a background in both online and traditional advertising.

The childhood buddies were raised on the Upper East Side and currently live at Normandie Court, on East 95th Street, with their families. Figuring that people bid to get the best rates on insurance, hotel and car prices, the duo guessed that people would probably also be willing to bid to buy or rent an apartment. Combining Blum’s background in advertising with Green’s previous work in technology and consulting, they came up with the idea for the real estate website. After working on the start-up for almost two years, REchirp went live a few months ago. The site, now Green and Blum’s primary endeavor, has four full-time employees and is run out of an Eighth Avenue office.

“The biggest differentiator of www.rechirp.com is that when a user searches for a property, they do not search by price,” Blum said. “The idea behind the site is that when a user sees a property they are interested in, they submit a ‘chirp,’ which is a dollar amount they would be willing to pay for that apartment.”

The creators hope that users can submit chirps anywhere from 10 percent to 40 percent below the listed price. This would give the broker an incentive to work with the bidder and start negotiations at the chirp amount.

Unlike Bid on the City, the bids at REchirp are non-binding, and people can make as many bids as they want on different apartments. Thirty days after the property is listed, the site holds an auction—the first of which took place this month—in which buyers have to make a winning bid in half an hour. The bidding increments increase from $50,000 to $250,000 and the site gives the winning bidder 48 hours to make a down payment in escrow. Bid on the City also positions itself more as a high-end marketing firm for properties, rather than an auction house, and it is geared toward foreign buyers.

REchirp, meanwhile, hopes to cater exclusively to New Yorkers.

“I think the true distinction between us and them is that our chirps are not binding,” Blum said. “Moreover, we have thousands of listings that a home seeker can submit a chirp on, while there are never more than just a handful at a time with Bid on the City.”

So far, REchirp has almost 4,000 listings, mostly from Manhattan, and Green and Blum hope to add properties from across the city as the business grows. They are already working with nine brokerage firms.

Real estate brokers, meanwhile, are eyeing the new service with some skepticism.

“If people are putting bids without any financial commitment,” said real estate broker Joel Maskovitz, “they are not locked in. If thousands of people bid for fun, I am not going to pay to download false leads,” he said.

Brokers, he argued, already work to negotiate the best prices for owners.

“It would be bad for me to talk to anyone who is bidding low,” he said.

Michelle Araujo, a broker who works with NYC Vertical, pointed out that for the minimal fee of listing one property on Craigslist, she often gets hundreds of queries, many of which turn into customers or good leads. Without an in-depth knowledge of the city real estate market, she added, most bidders would be shooting in the dark on a site like REchirp.

Blum and Green, meanwhile, agree that their users have to have a certain sophistication to use the website. They say the service has been designed by New Yorkers for New Yorkers, and caters to savvier renters. They declined to specify exactly how many deals have been made through the site so far, but said that REchirp has helped a few home-seekers find an apartment of their liking.

“Our goal is not to replace Craigslist, New York Times or anyone,” Blum said. “Anyone who is online will go to a bunch of sites [while apartment hunting]. We are hoping REchirp is one of them.”

According to a statement released by the board’s Committee for Environmentally Sound Development, the proposed changes to the original 1992 agreement are substantive. In the original agreement, the area between West 59th and 61st streets was limited to 2.4 million square feet of developed space and 570 residential units; the developer is now proposing to increase the square footage to 3.1 million square feet and add almost five times the number of apartments: 2,750 units.

The residential buildings are also expected to be shorter than previously envisioned; to avoid the smoke emitted by the Con Ed plume at West 59th Street, the residential towers will be reduced to 640 feet and 400 feet.

The proposed development for Riverside South now includes more apartments, but reduces studio and office floor area. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

The development stretches from West 59th to 61st streets between West End Avenue and Riverside Boulevard.

Because the project is still in the pre-certification stage, the board decided to concentrate on what it deemed “core design elements.”

“Some of the issues of access, density and open space are what we want to focus on first,” said Mel Wymore, chair of Board 7.

In an email, Extell spokesperson George Arzt explained that the 1.8 million square feet of studio and office floor area has been replaced with 2.4 million square feet of residential space.

“In light of the 570 units already planned, the 2,500 apartments represent a reasonable increase,” Arzt wrote.

The proposed recreational spaces include a 21.5-acre waterfront park currently under construction, an open space between West 59th and 61st streets, and an enclosed rooftop space for a new public school, which will be built to accommodate the influx of families to the neighborhood.

“Extell is in discussion with the
Department of Education,” Wymore said. “It is very clearly a priority.”

While both the developer and community board agree on the need for a school, there is less certainty about whether the school’s recreational space will be open to the public, how traffic and parking issues will be addressed and how many guests the proposed hotel will accommodate.

Brenda Levin, an outreach consultant for the developer, described the proposed modifications as tentative.

“It is still in a design state,” said Levin, of the proposed changes in scope and land use that the project has undergone since the 1992 agreement. “I hope you understand that it is not inaccurate, but evolutionary.”

“The trucks are noisy. They have generators. And there’s cooking going on in residential areas,” Brewer said.

In response to a letter penned by the Council member, the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said it will request a sweep of the Upper West Side to bust vendors who are operating in prohibited areas or without a license.

The health commissioner asked that anyone who spots a potentially illegal food vendor call 311 and make a report that will be sent directly to the department.