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Call it the mystery of the vanishing park.
A decade ago, real estate developer Madison Equities promised to create "open park space" on East 57th Street. In exchange, it won the right to add three floors to the Galleria, a luxury, mixed-use project.
Now the company has begun work on a major retail-office tower next door. And those few neighbors who still remember the 1973 deal see no sign of the promised park. A foundation stretches the entire half-acre site at 57th Street and Lexington.
"They should be required to put in a park," declares Joyce Matz, a member of the local community board.
But Madison Equities contends a front-entry plaza (which will gain additional space for the new building) counts as the park for the decade-old Galleria.
"In every criterion of its design we feel the plaza fulfills our pledge," says Robert Gladstone, a principal in Madison Equities with his parents, Kenneth and Lucille.
"When you put your heart, lungs, mind and soul into a project and someone says you played a shell game, it's very disturbing."
No one exactly says there is a shell game at 135 East 57th Street -- the official name of the new tower -- but some people are suspicious.
"We're going to look at this very, very carefully," vows Joseph B. Rose, chairman of the local community board, which issues advisory opinions to the city Planning Commission.
"My understanding after reading documents from 1973," he continues, "is that something has been promised the community -- and we're going to make sure we get it."
Just what "it" is lies tangled in a web of old deals, new plans and legal wording. Like so many other development projects in Manhattan, 135 East 57th Street resembles a...