(Daniel Shapiro)
ROOM WITH A SKEW: Wall Street big shot Richard Handler, owner of this posh TriBeCa penthouse, is suing a neighboring building because the view from his pad is obstructed by a protruding elevator shaft (inset). (
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This member of the 1 percent is demanding 100 percent of his penthouse’s panoramic Manhattan skyline view.
The highest-paid banker on Wall Street in 2012 is suing the city and his neighbors to prevent the 360-degree views at his One York Street TriBeCa pad from being obstructed by a 600-square-foot box of metal bars.
Richard Handler, 51, CEO of Jeffries Group, whines in a Manhattan Civil Court lawsuit that the renovation of neighboring 50 Varick St. will cause him to “suffer real and irreparable harm.”
The actual roof of the Varick Street building is 30 feet below Handler’s view, records show. It’s just the elevator shaft bothering him, the suit says.
“The project’s new elevator vestibule to service the new roof deck will impair views from [Handler’s] apartment, and [he] faces significant noise and light impingements,” his lawyer says in the civil lawsuit filed this week.
Handler’s 6,000-square-foot penthouse is actually just a pied-à-terre. His permanent residence is a lakefront mansion in swanky South Salem, Westchester.
He made $45.2 million in compensation last year — dwarfing even the $21 million payout to Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein.
In the suit, the financier says he wants the city’s Department of Buildings to audit the project because he suspects it violates zoning codes.
Handler claims that the elevator shaft, a tiny cutout from the 20,000-square-foot roof deck, is too large and rises to 162 feet — beyond the area’s 120-foot limit.
It’s visible from one bank of windows in his kitchen, photographs in the filing show.
The project currently carries no building-code violations.
London fashion and advertising giant Spring Studios, whose clients includes Diane Von Furstenberg and Louis Vuitton, is remaking the Varick Street warehouse into a 3,000-person venue featuring photography studios, green rooms and a restaurant and bar.
“The neighbors are concerned that because there will be people using a space this size on a regular basis, it could generate a lot of noise and traffic at all hours of the day and night,” according to Community Board 1’s Michael Levine.
Handler also gripes about Spring’s liquor-license application.
“Use of the building roof deck as an outdoor event space and its concomitant noise will impair the use and value of [Handler’s] apartment,” the suit says.
But Levine insisted that Spring has “bent over backwards” to work with the neighborhood.
A community-board meeting on the liquor-license application is scheduled for April 10.
And a source close to the project, who declined to be named citing ongoing negotiations with the community board, said the rooftop will have no bar, and be used on a limited basis.
Spring has agreed to end any events at 11 p.m. on weekends, the source said.