Lincoln Square is getting Billionaires’ Row-style towers

Call it Billionaires’ Square.

A cluster of soaring skyscrapers — like those of Billionaires’ Row, south of Central Park — is reshaping the skyline of the nearby Lincoln Square neighborhood.

The looming megatowers — to be filled with large and lavish condominium homes — are poised to transform the park block of West 66th Street. Since the late 1970s, much of the block has served as home for ABC Studios, which is moving downtown to Hudson Square.

The land occupied by ABC was granted a unique kind of zoning in 1993 — a quirk that basically allows massive Midtown-style structures to sprout in the midst of a residential area.

As usual, the new and soon-to-come residential towers are sparking controversy in the famously opinionated neighborhood of the Upper West Side.

Some neighbors object not just to the astronomical heights, but to the addition of yet more sumptuous homes for the wealthy rather than unpretentious apartments for ordinary folk.

“I’m not crazy about these tall buildings,” said Gale Brewer, whose City Council district includes the neighborhood. But these towers are “particularly egregious because they contain no affordable housing.”

Though housing units are being added on land where no housing currently exists, “the needs of the community are not being met by the housing stock being developed,” said Sean Khorsandi, executive director of Landmark West, a preservation and land-use nonprofit.

“We are seeing volumetrically enormous buildings with fewer units,” he told The Post.

The 775-foot-tall tower at 50 W. 66th St., nearing completion, is the tallest tower on the Upper West Side. It holds 127 lavish homes.

Current listings range from $6 million to $85 million, according to the Corcoran website. Shared amenities include several swimming pools, bowling lanes, a terrace with a fire pit — plus courts for squash, basketball and pickleball. The building is 70% sold, according to the developer, Extell Development, whose other sky-high structures include One57 and Central Park Tower on Billionaires’ Row.

The 50 W. 66th St. building will also house a synagogue, Congregation Habonim, which was outgrowing its dilapidated building, formerly on the site. Around 10 years ago, the congregation sold its property to Extell for $45 million. The synagogue, which was temporarily relocated, is slated to occupy a new space located on the 65th Street side.

The 50 W. 66th St. tower — on a site that sat mostly vacant for years — will likely be joined by another Extell tower, this one even taller and more elaborate. Plans call for 77 W. 66th St. to top out at around 1,200 feet — nearly as high as the former Twin Towers, which soared to 1,300 feet, or a quarter of a mile.

The planned ultra-luxury turbotower will cover a 2.4-acre agglomeration of several lots that hosted ABC Studios, including one through the block on West 67th Street that currently incudes a loading dock. When ABC arrived decades ago, the land included a warehouse and a parking lot.

Extell also bought air rights from nearby buildings, allowing it to add height.

“The building is 39 stories on paper, but as tall as a 77-story building,” Khorsandi said. That’s because some of the interior is consumed by mechanical voids, effectively lifting the building on stilts and maximizing those valuable postcard views for its well-heeled buyers.

Khorsandi notes that 400 luxurious units — the type of home that is typically not a billionaire buyer’s primary residence — consume the same space as 1,400 one- and two-bedroom units that could be occupied by regular neighborhood families.

Landmark West recently updated its website header to include the towers — in bright red — dominating the neighborhood’s transformed skyline.

More objections include the change of character of a residential historic neighborhood — although West 66th Street, where the crosstown bus heads west, is hardly among the area’s charming blocks — and the shadows that will be cast across Central Park.

“We are talking about alienating acres of parkland,” Khorsandi added. The group hired a zoning expert to draw up a “reasonable worst-case development scenario,” he said. It showed the shadows that a supertall could cast over Central Park, turning it, ominously, into Central Dark. Efforts to change the area’s zoning have been unsuccessful.

The ABC site “not only fully complies with all existing zoning regulations and requires no additional approvals, but it also represents the last buildable location on the Upper West Side suitable for a tall tower,” Gary Barnett, founder and chairman of Extell, wrote in a statement to The Post.

“We’ve already presented the project to the Community Board and Council Members, and the response — both to its design and our willingness to include affordable housing — has been positive. Given the strong sales at 50 W. 66th St., we’re confident this next development will be equally well received by the neighborhood.”

Current zoning doesn’t require affordable housing on the site, which constitutes some of the world’s most valuable real estate. In 2018, ABC sold its property for more than $1 billion; it was later resold twice.

Barnett attended a community board meeting in May, where he expressed willingness to include some kind of affordable-housing component.

At the meeting, he said he would be amenable to a “negotiated agreement” resulting in “an arrangement that everybody is happy with.” He also emphasized that Extell would include such housing voluntarily, rather than being forced by city requirements. “I’m not interested in a fight,” he said. “We have a basic possibility for a win-win here.”

The community board was “encouraged” by the recent discussion involving “a tentative plan to include some affordable housing onsite,” wrote Tibita Janeene and Seema Reddy of the community board’s housing and land-use committee, in a statement to The Post. Such housing is “a pressing need,” they wrote.

The meeting “was a welcome restart to a process that has been stalled,” they said, adding that they look forward to continuing the dialogue.

In 2005, the West 66th Street block was designated “Peter Jennings Way,” after the longtime ABC News anchor who died that year. Such honorary designations can be added or undone only by a vote of the City Council. So, despite ABC’s departure, Peter Jennings Way will stay, according to Gale Brewer’s office.

The West 66th Street megacluster joins a nearby skyline-defining condominium farther west in the Lincoln Square neighborhood — 200 Amsterdam Ave., completed in 2021. That building successfully fended off a complicated legal challenge that would have required it to chop off 20 stories of height.

The “penultimate penthouse” there is currently on sale for $35 million.

Much of the Upper West Side is landmarked, and there are few readily apparent development sites left for supertalls, Khorsandi told The Post.

“We expect more development along the Broadway corridor,” he said, due to a recent zoning change at the state level that could promote teardowns, which would be replaced by bigger residential buildings.

“A lot of stuff is built out,” Khorsandi said, “and this is the tipping point where, in order to extract more value, you have to build something bigger.”