This was originally published on the SGR Blog.
Questions presented: Was it proper for Supreme Court to annul the determination by the Board of Standards and Appeals to approve a new 55-story condominium building at 200 Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan? For Supreme Court to direct the demolition of an unspecified number of floors from the building? And were legal proceeding moot because the building was substantially completed and the Committee of Environmentally Sound Development and the Municipal Art Society of New York failed to exercise continued due diligence to halt the project by not seeking injunctive relief at every stage of the protracted litigation?
The building lot was originally part of a single parcel of land, which in the 1960s consisted of five buildings along West End Avenue. In 1987, the DOB approved a subdivision into two separate parcels that included partial tax lots and, subsequently, two mergers with four other tax lots. In 2015, the DOB approved another zoning lot subdivision, creating two new zoning lots, both of which contained partial tax lots, and filed a declaration with the City Register. The pertinent subdivided zoning lot included the improved land at 200 West End Avenue, the unimproved land at 200 Amsterdam Avenue, and portions of four other tax lots.
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