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Curbed New York: In Two Bridges, judge lands another legal blow to contested towers

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Curbed New York - Scan the Lower East Side waterfront and the first thing you’re likely to spot is a 72-story skyscraper known as One Manhattan Square jutting high above the neighborhood.

It may appear conspicuously misplaced among the area’s low-slung apartment buildings and public housing complexes, but the luxury condo tower was allowed under the property’s existing zoning, and its skyline-altering presence serves as a preview for its mostly low-income immigrant neighbors of what’s to come if three more towers are allowed to rise on the Two Bridges waterfront.

But that vision, for now, has ground to a halt.

. . .

“It’s a very significant ruling if it in fact leads to where we think it should, which is stopping these towers that would decimate this community and make it a totally different place,” says Ken Kimerling, the legal director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, who represents a coalition of local groups and residents in one of the lawsuits against the towers.

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https://ny.curbed.com/2020/2/28/21156413/two-bridges-towers-lawsuit-lower-east-side-chinatown