LG building could spoil pristine views

Preservationists are rising up against a corporate building that they say threatens to blight Riverdale’s view of the Palisades.

Wave Hill, Riverdale Nature Preservancy and Friends of the Hudson River Greenway in the Bronx are among the local organizations lobbying to stop an eight-story, 143-foot corporate headquarters from being built in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., where it would protrude above the treeline and mar views of the rocky cliffs across the Hudson River.  

LG, an electronics company that is currently based in Englewood Cliffs, is outgrowing its space. After receiving approval from all local governing bodies, the company announced plans to build its North American headquarters on a 27-acre piece of land opposite Fort Tryon Park, in Washington Heights. 

“It’s going to essentially take a wonder of nature and put it in a man-made frame,” said Paul Elston, president of Friends of the Hudson River Greenway in the Bronx, who lamented that the structure would be setting a “terrible precedent.”

  Those who stand in opposition to the building’s design say it could be the first on a slippery slope toward transforming the prospect from leafy green to hard-edged steel and glass.

Development is circumscribed within 200 feet of the cliff face, but LG’s headquarters is not within that zone. The proposed corporate headquarters was the basis for a zoning change that extended the building height limit from 35 feet to eight stories. 

Since 1900, when the Palisades Interstate Park was formed by the governors of New York and New Jersey, its natural beauty has been jealously guarded. When, in 2000, Alpine, N.J., attempted to put up a cell tower on land donated to the park by John D. Rockefeller, it was forced — thanks to lobbying by many of the same groups opposed to the LG building — to disguise the structure as a giant evergreen tree.  

If the project goes through as planned, it would set a precedent for developments along the three-mile length of Englewood Cliffs’ jurisdiction, which stretches to just opposite of West 247th Street.

“If this unloosens the dam of building this gorgeous thing will be spoiled forever,” Wave Hill Executive Director Claudia Bonn said.

George W. Perkins, who built Wave Hill as a family estate, was named by New York’s then Governor, Theodore Roosevelt, to be the first chairman of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission. From his perch at Wave Hill he was ideally situated to keep an eye on the majestic cliffs and the growing system of parks and parkways around them.

Proponents say the LG building will be an important economic engine for Engelwood Cliffs and that it will be environmentally friendly. It was designed, they say, to be the largest building in New Jersey to be awarded Platinum LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification by the U.S. Green Building Council.

LG purchased the land in 2010, public hearings were held in Englewood Cliffs in 2011 and variance approvals — which then morphed into zoning changes — were approved in 2012. 

News of the development was slow to find its way to this side of the Hudson, but since it has, action has been swift.

When Ms. Bonn learned of the plan in October, she wrote on behalf of Wave Hill to LG’s chairman in the Republic of South Korea and the company’s CEO and vice president of public relations in New Jersey opposing the development’s height. 

In February, Community Board 12, representing Washington Heights and Inwood, passed a resolution detailing the history of the Palisades and opposing obstruction of the iconic steep cliffs, which boast extensive woodlands and plant life and hug the west side of the Hudson River for about 25 miles.

Concerned groups, including New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs, Scenic Hudson, Inc., New York-New Jersey Trail Conference and Natural Resources Defense Council, have formed a coalition, Save the Palisades, with the goal of altering the plan so that it does not protrude through the tree-line. 

The resolution notes similar concerns from John D. Rockefeller Jr. and such groups as Scenic Hudson, the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Fort Tryon Park Trust and New Yorkers for Parks. 

A presentation by Ms. Bonn at Community Board 8’s March meeting has spurred the board’s Parks Recreation Chair Bob Bender to introduce a similar resolution at his next meeting. 

Preserving the Palisades is serious business. And it’s an effort that has been ongoing since before the turn of the last century. According to Community Board 12’s resolution, in 1895, Englewood Women and the New Jersey Federation of Women’s Clubs launched a campaign to stop quarry operations there. The blasting of Indian Head — a prominent geological feature — galvanized preservation efforts and led to the formation of a unique interstate park. 

In 1930, John D. Rockefeller Jr. bought land atop the Palisades and extending 13 miles north, to the New York State border. He donated 2,500 acres to Palisades Park. And in 1983 the National Parks Service designated the Palisades as a National Historic Landmark. 

For his part, Englewood Cliffs Mayor Joseph Parisi said the borough — which has a residential population of just under 6,000, comprising 1,800 homes — depends on what he calls a “trillion-dollar mile” of corporations that make up almost 38 percent of the tax base.

He said he was concerned when Citigroup announced it was moving off the property and that LG was outgrowing its headquarters. It was then, he said, that a “lightbulb” went off.

While the zoning variance was wending its way through the appropriate channels, he said, city planners recommended the building height limit be raised not only for LG, but for an area three times the size of the LG property. The council reviewed the zoning change and voted for and passed it in the later part of 2012, he said. 

It was only recently that New Yorkers started calling the development “a tower” and drawing “exaggerated” versions of how visible LG’s headquarters would be from across the river, he said.

LG says it would have started construction last year if it weren’t for a pair of lawsuits by local residents, which then spiraled into widespread opposition to its plan. Altering it now, LG says, would cost millions.

“The objections were very limited at the time… and they got approval for the eight-story building,” Mr. Parisi said. 

He says building horizontally, as some opponents to the current plan have suggested, could interfere with six wetlands located on the property. And LG was quick to promote its commitment of $2 million annually to a nature education center. 

There is a mediation planned for May 1 between LG and interested parties. 

John Taylor, vice president of public affairs for LG electronics USA, gave no hints about how far the company might be willing to go to gain public support, but he took nothing off the table. 

As for the mayor, Mr. Parisi said anything is better than the vacant space he will be left with if the deal falls through. 

 “If they can come to an agreement and the project goes through — fantastic. My biggest fear is that LG is going to say ‘we’re leaving,’” Mr. Pansi said. 

With a nod to John D. Rockefeller Jr., who has taken up his father’s cause of preserving the Palisades, he said, “Basically I’m between a Rockefeller and a hard place.”