Long-Delayed Tower Scrapped

Correction appended.

Columbia students will still have to lodge their parents and friends downtown when they come to town.

Plans to build a Marriott hotel on 125th Street-the first hotel slated for construction in Harlem in 40 years­­-quietly dissolved this August, leaving the site as vacant as it was before the project's 2003 groundbreaking ceremony.

"As of right now, the issue [of the hotel] is dead," said Christopher Bell of Community Board 11.

New York real estate giant Majic Development plans to sell the property to another string of developers, Vorando Realty, Integrated Holdings, and MacFarlane Partners, to build office and retail towers, according to an article in Crain's New York Business.

But community members and leaders are hearing rumors about what the vacant lot near Lexington Avenue will become, and when the construction workers will come back on the scene.

"Now anyone can come in there to build what they want," said Bill Perkins, a former city council member in Harlem and a candidate for state senate this year.

Perkins was one of only seven council members to vote against the project. Last week, he said the venture was "never properly financed to begin with."

The developers of the project made use of a clause in city law which allowed the council to decide to allow high-rise development on just one "spot" of the development, rather than the whole area, Perkins said.

Majic Development was not contacted upon the printing of this article.

Now that the plot of land has been re-zoned for high-rises, the developer can sell it with this more lucrative capacity included.

"They made profit doing nothing," Perkins said. The compromises reached between the developer and the community­­-such as bargaining for low-income housing and jobs-may have also gotten lost in the shuffle.

The lot's sale must undergo review by the attorney general's office, according to Crain's.

Correction: "Long-Delayed Tower Scrapped" (Sept. 6) contained an error about the timeframe of the Harlem Park project. The project was announced in 2003; the groundbreaking tok place in February 2005.