Metro

This gas station is a landmark?!

What’s so historic about a BP gas station?

When the city in 2010 considered extending the historic district that protects SoHo’s ornate castiron buildings, the proposed new border included the unexceptional gas station at West Houston and Lafayette streets.

Station owner Marcello Porcetti — who hoped to turn his 11,000-squarefoot lot into a seven-story condo development — pleaded with local officials to draw the boundaries of the proposed landmark neighborhood to leave him out.

But the city ultimately voted to stamp the stinky gas pumps with historical significance, putting Porcetti’s development dreams on hold.

“As the gateway to SoHo, West Houston Street was determined to be so critical to its character that the vacant lots there . . .ought to be under [the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s] purview,” said Landmarks spokeswoman Lisi de Bourbon.

Because of the newfound “landmark” status that comes with being in a protected historic district, Porcetti now has to jump through hoops to get a project of any size off the ground. He even needed city approval to install new doors on a shed on his lot.

Any largescale design changes will involve timeand costconsuming public hearings and community input. Any development on the lot needs approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission to move forward.

“Commissioners make suggestions and can send you back to the drawing board,” said Mike Slattery, senior vice president of research at the Real Estate Board of New York.

Porcetti, who would not comment about his property, has been caught up in a landmarking explosion across the city — a move that developers say shrinkwraps the city and hampers growth.

And he’s just one among legions of property owners who face steep hurdles to development once the city locks them in historic territory.

“Building in NYC can be very challenging,” said James Nelson, partner at Massey Knakal Realty Services.

“Firsttime developers can be shocked by the amount of red tape to get things done. If they don’t have the right team in place, it could lead to a long, drawnout project.”

Under the Bloomberg administration, the city has aggressively sought to preserve the character of old neighborhoods, with a significant push to create new historic districts in the outer boroughs as well as in Manhattan. And many developers claim the city is wrongly using the landmark designation of a building or a historic district as an urbanplanning tool to curb growth.

“Including the gas station to control the entrance to SoHo — that’s just city planning, not landmarks,” said Slattery. “There’s no historic fabric and no SoHo character there. The gas station should have been left out and could have been left out, and it wasn’t.”

The gas station was purchased by Porcetti’s father as a “Gaseteria” in the mid’ 70s and leased to BP in 2003.

And it wasn’t the only property included in the historic district that doesn’t scream “SoHo.”

In the 2010 expansion of the castiron district, 49.6 percent of the buildings included were vacant lots, garages or parking lots, according to REBNY.

Porcetti has already modified his blueprints, sources said, hiring architect Rick Cook—the designer of the Bank of America tower at 1 Bryant Park — to build a smallerscale glass office building with retail on the ground floor. Porcetti is expected to present his plans to the commission in the coming weeks.

And it won’t be the last time the Landmarks Preservation Commission has the power to decide the fate of development plans on an unremarkable site.

The city is currently seeking to create or expand eight historic districts encompassing 3,162 more properties.

In Manhattan, 300 buildings in the East Village and the Lower East Side would be considered “historic” artifacts, and another

745 buildings would be included on the Upper West Side, under the new plans.

In Brooklyn, Park Slope’s historic district would be expanded to include an additional 577 buildings, and a new area of

Crown Heights would lasso another 640 buildings under Landmarks control. The largest plan would landmark a swath of Ridgewood, Queens, to conserve 900 buildings.

About 3 percent of all buildings in the five boroughs are currently considered official New York City landmarks. Most of those fall within the city’s 107 historic districts and 16 extensions, which the city has decided represent a specific period or style of architecture.

But preservationists argue there’s still plenty of room for growth in Manhattan.

There’s no danger of the entirety of the city becoming a giant landmark district,” said Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. “Critics would say landmarking hasn’t kept pace with rate of development. What one generation might not value, the next sees as charming or significant. Virtues of neighborhoods change over time.”

Community leaders say neighborhoods need protection from overzealous developers.

“We shouldn’t gerrymander historic districts to benefit developers,” said Sean Sweeney, president of the SoHo Alliance.

“There’s a gas station in SoHo now, but maybe in 100 years it will be historic if they don’t build anything else there.”