Renovating a Tribeca loft or apartment

What this page covers

This page is for owners of loft and apartment units in Tribeca planning kitchen, bathroom or whole-unit work. Building permits come from the NYC Department of Buildings (DOB). Lot figures are for DCP's Tribeca-Civic Center neighborhood tabulation area (NTA, MN0102), five census tracts that also take in the Civic Center; it is a statistical area, not an official boundary. Structural alterations, additions and new construction are outside the work this page describes.

LPC districts

Four districts and an extension

LPC's Tribeca East report describes many blockfronts of ornate store and loft buildings, built when the area was the center of the city's dry goods trade. Inside a designated building, LPC lists interior work that needs a DOB permit, and interior work that shows outside, such as louvers and vents, among the work that needs its permit. In a loft, a new kitchen exhaust or a bathroom vent through a cast-iron or masonry facade is the item to raise first.

LPC designation reports

What the designation reports say about the buildings

LPC's reports for the other three districts describe three different building stocks, and the stock decides where a kitchen or bath can go and what shows outside.

• Tribeca South (designated 1992): mostly five-story store and loft buildings of the dry goods trade. Within twelve years of the 1851 railroad depot at Chambers and Hudson Streets, 80% of the lots had been rebuilt with them. The report counts stone fronts in over forty cases, brick in nearly twenty and cast iron in five, cast-iron-framed storefronts on virtually every building, and lots on the standard 25-foot width of the area's first houses.
• Tribeca West (1991): some 220 buildings, mostly store and loft buildings and warehouses built roughly 1860 to 1910 for the food trade, cold-storage warehouses among them. Their bases are cast-iron piers over stepped vaults and loading platforms, and many loading bays keep their folding iron shutters.
• Tribeca North (1992): warehouses dominate, most from the 1880s and 1890s, at least 50 feet wide and five to seven stories, with upper windows that often keep fireproof iron shutters. Narrow through-the-block lots run from Laight Street to Vestry Street.

For planning, those are two different floors. A 25-foot store-and-loft floor is long and narrow, so a bath in its middle is far from both the street and the rear wall, and its exhaust route has to be settled early. A 50-foot warehouse floor gives more room, but a new kitchen or bath can end up far from the nearest riser. Storefront framing, iron shutters, vaults and loading platforms are the features these reports describe as defining each district, so treat any item that touches them as an LPC question before it is priced.

What the lot data shows

Condo boards, a special zoning district and loft plumbing

Half of the area's homes (50.2%) are on condominium lots and about three in four units are on lots with 20 or more units; one- and two-family houses are rare (30 lots). In most Tribeca projects a condo board or managing agent reviews the plan under the building's alteration rules before the city does.

PLUTO maps 453 of the 622 lots with homes (73%) in the Special Tribeca Mixed Use District. Its Zoning Resolution chapter sets use rules, including a residential use modification, and bulk rules for subareas. Those shape buildings and their legal uses rather than a kitchen layout, but if a plan touches how a unit is used, ask a design professional first.

Open loft plans put kitchens and bathrooms where the risers allow. Long drain runs across a loft floor need slope, and moving a bathroom far from the building's stack is where cost and board questions start; settle the riser locations before the layout.

Flood maps in lower Manhattan

86 of the area's lots with homes (13.8%) are flagged on FEMA's 2015 preliminary flood map, against 59 (9.5%) on the 2007 map. A flag means part of the lot touches the mapped floodplain; it matters most for ground-floor and cellar space, and for equipment placed low in the building. Check the exact address on both maps before planning work at grade. Year-built values before 1940 cover 87.5% of lots with homes, accurate only to the decade.

Address-level checks

Before you open a wall in Tribeca: verify the address-level approval stack

1. LPC status. Search the address on LPC's Discover NYC Landmarks map. If the building is designated or inside one of the districts above, LPC says its permit is needed before DOB can act.
2. Loft Board status. Not every loft building is an Interim Multiple Dwelling (IMD). The Loft Board decides whether a building or unit is covered under the Loft Law, so confirm the address first. Where a unit is covered and the work is legalization for a residential certificate of occupancy, 29 RCNY §2-01(d) sets the Narrative Statement process: a statement signed by an architect or engineer is served on the occupants and filed with the Loft Board, and DOB will not issue the work permit until the Board certifies the process complete.
3. Flood status. The flood flags above do not decide whether the Building Code's Appendix G flood rules apply. In a special flood hazard area, 1 RCNY §3606-01 sets two separate tests. Under §3606-01(f), work is a substantial improvement if its cost equals or exceeds 50% of the structure's market value. Under §3606-01(g), an alteration that is not a substantial improvement needs market-value and cost calculations filed when its cost exceeds the greater of $40,000 or 25% of the structure's market value.

Tribeca brief: what to write down

1. The LPC map result for the building, and which district it is in.
2. The condo or co-op alteration agreement and the managing agent's requirements.
3. Where the risers and the gas line are, and which fixtures would move.
4. Anything that shows outside: vents, louvers, windows.
5. For ground-floor or cellar work, the address's status on both flood maps.

Room-by-room planning is on kitchen remodeling in Manhattan, bathroom remodeling in Manhattan and home renovation in Manhattan.