Apartments Coming To Historic Walter Camp Home

After more than a year of back and forth with the City Plan Department, the historic home of Walter Camp will be converted from office space into apartments. But only 13 apartments.

The City Plan Commission has given the OK for a Long Island developer to convert 1303 Chapel St., a three-story, Second Empire-style structure built in 1900, into the 13 residential apartments.

Developer Eyal Preis had initially hoped to put 19 apartments in what also was the former office space for the AIDS Interfaith Network. But the Board of Zoning Appeals denied his request for a variance and a special exception because he couldn’t prove a hardship or need for either. So his team worked with City Plan staff to come up with a development plan that could work.

The new plan moves away from originally envisioned micro-apartments. It now creates 13 one‑, two‑, and three-bedroom apartments and a four-story addition to the building instead of a previously proposed three-story building addition.

The project needed a special permit to allow for the conversion of the first-floor office space to residential space in a General Business District, or BA, and an RM‑2, or General High Density, zones.

Attorney Miguel Almodóvar said at last week’s City Plan Commission meeting, where the approval took place, that the 12 required parking spaces and a loading space will be tucked under the 5,000 square foot, four-story addition. The addition will feature two-story townhouse style apartments on the second and third floor. The project also will have bike parking space in the basement of the building along with other common amenity space.

He said the facade of the building will remain mostly unchanged except for the addition of a handicap accessible ramp.

“We will be preserving the historic value of this property,” he said. ​“The addition on the rear is the only substantial change other than the landscaping improvements and the removal of the curb cut.”

Almodóvar said the curb cut is nonconforming and will be removed. All traffic from the site will circulate one-way on Cofield and then back out on to Chapel Street. Estimated construction times is one year.

“It is a relatively straightforward project,” he said.

Michael Piscitelli, acting City Plan director, said that the team was to be commended for ​“a lot of extra effort to get the application into shape.”

“It is a significant distinctive building on Chapel Street,” he said. ​“I might speak for a very tired site review team that had to figure out the placement of the piers and the bollards to make it safe for the cars in the back. The applicants put in some time on this and should be commended.”