L+M, CIM unveil plans for two resi towers at 260 South Street

UPDATED, Dec. 2, 1:35 p.m.: L+M Development Partners and CIM Group unveiled plans to build two mixed-use towers at 260 South Street on the Lower East Side. The two towers will span more than a million square feet and up to 1,350 apartments combined.

The taller of the two towers will rise almost 800 feet. Twenty-five percent of the units will be set aside as affordable.

L+M [TRDataCustom] and CIM plan to build the towers on a parking lot adjacent to the Section 8 Housing complex Land End II, which they bought in 2013 for $279 million.

Because the towers will rise right next to the existing buildings, about 100 Section 8 apartments will lose their windows facing the East River. “But all of those apartments,” L+M’s Katherine Kelman told the Lo-Down, “also have windows facing east or west that are the legal light and air and they will continue to be used as they are now.”

The developers’ early plans call for an upgrade the existing buildings’ public areas by landscaping them and adding seating, children’s play areas, a garden and a lawn, among other proposals. L+M and CIM also plan to build ground-floor retail space along Cherry Street and add flood-protection walls to the existing buildings.

The project will still have to go through an environmental review process and win Department of City Planning approval. The developers plan to begin construction in 2018 and complete it in 2021.

The new towers will rise on the block adjacent to Extell’s 80-story condo development One Manhattan Square and JDS Development’s planned 77-story apartment tower 247 Cherry Street, forming a skyscraper cluster in the Two Bridges neighborhood.

In August, the Department of City Planning ruled that JDS and L+M’s projects and the Starrett Corporation’s 271-283 South Street won’t have to go through the lengthy Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) because they do not “require any new waivers or zoning actions.”

Construction at Extell’s One Manhattan Square is already under way. In September, Extell closed on a $500 million construction loan from a consortium led by Deutsche Bank and Natixis. [Lo-Down] — Konrad Putzier 

Correction: an earlier version of this post falsely included Extell’s One Manhattan Square as one of the three buildings the DCP ruled will not have to go through ULURP.