An abstract skyscraper next to the Museum of Modern Art that was supposed to rise as high as the Empire State Building was cut down to size yesterday by the City Planning Commission, which approved the project only if it’s slashed by 200 feet.
The tower, which would include exhibition space for the museum as well as a super-luxury hotel and apartments, would still rise 1,050 feet — about the height of the Eiffel Tower — on a small midblock lot on West 53rd Street.
Designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, the asymmetrical tower with a crisscrossing fabric of exposed steel columns was initially designed to reach 1,250 feet, as tall as the Empire State Building without the antenna.
While praising the design of most of the tower, city Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden said the design for the upper 200 feet wasn’t good enough to merit a place in the same level of atmosphere as the Empire State Building.
“This is a good project for the site and for the city,” Burden said of the reduced-size project by one of the world’s celebrated starchitects.
Planners like the design of the rest of the building so much that they made their approval contingent on the developer keeping the same “tapering, sculpted form and unique, asymmetrical” wall.
Residents along West 53rd and 54th Streets have opposed the project, even at the reduced height, because it would dwarf all the surrounding buildings and cast a shadow that would sweep across the neighborhood and reach into Central Park.
The tower was initially proposed to begin construction next year. A spokeswoman for the Texas-based developer, Hines, said they will continue to work with the city on “this milestone project.”
MoMA, which sold the lot to Hines in 2007, is slated to get 40,000 square feet of exhibition space in the tower.
“While we had hoped that the commission would approve the Jean Nouvel design as originally proposed, we are confident that the process will yield a project that contributes greatly to the architectural heritage and economy of the city,” said a museum spokesman.