Well-heeled residents who shelled out millions for a posh pad at one of the East Side’s most exclusive addresses now have a down-and-dirty, garden-variety fight with City Hall on their hands.
At stake for the residents of tony 1 Sutton Place South – who count among their ranks everyone from actress Sigourney Weaver to media billionairess Anne Cox Chambers – is their treasured private garden, which the city plans to make part of a public esplanade park.
City officials say most of the building’s exquisite back yard is actually public property that was all but given away nearly seven decades ago through a $1-a-year lease, which has now expired.
So the Parks Department recently submitted plans to take back the lush land – which lies along the FDR Drive and includes a section between East 56th and 57th streets – and create much-needed open public space in the densely populated Sutton Place section.
“Our main intent is to have public waterfront access, particularly in a neighborhood that is one of the city’s least served for open space,” said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe.
But the co-op’s residents say they’re not losing their private back yard without a fight.
“One would assume that property values of the building would be affected by the city creating a public park there, so the co-op association in its own defense would have to do whatever it could to prevent it,” said George Gould, president of the co-op and a former undersecretary of the treasury in the Reagan administration.
The tale of the private garden dates back to 1939, when the city cut a sweetheart deal with the residents allowing them to lease the land for $1 a year.
That lease quietly expired Sept. 1, 1990. Residents at 1 Sutton Place – many of whom paid millions of dollars for their apartments – didn’t exactly shout to the world about the lapse, and city officials either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
The issue of who controls the green jewel then resurfaced several years ago, when the state Department of Transportation announced it was spending $140 million in federal funds to rehabilitate the area.
Benepe said the city recently submitted to DOT a proposal to expand the project to include the esplanade because it considers 1 Sutton Place’s back yard public parkland. He said that the revision should cost about the same as the original plan and that it is still under DOT consideration.
Additional reporting byBraden Keil
The tony condos
Their garden
Public park
Their view
Residents
Famous residents of 1 Sutton Place South include actress Sigourney Weaver (right), media heiress Ann Cox Chambers and hedge-fund tycoon Richard Perry.