Landmark Lovers Prepare for Next Fight

By [Dan Rivoli] Next year, Kiehl"s, a L"Oreal-owned skincare company founded more than a century and a half ago, will open in an Upper East Side building as historic as the company. But preservationists that pushed to get 841 Lexington Ave. protected in the recently expanded Upper East Side landmark district are dismayed that the new tenant"s plan insufficiently restores the building. Theater architect Thomas Lamb's who has several other landmark works in the city's designed the five-story Colonial Revival-style building on the northeast corner of Lexington Avenue and East 64th Street in 1929. As Kiehl"s prepares to move into the first two floors of the building, Landmarks Preservation Commission approved a plan that calls for repairing damaged exterior limestone and replacing the exterior front entry doors and the windows. Local preservation group Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts, however, wanted the commission to disapprove of the plan because the entire building needs to be restored. â??We worked really hard to have it included in the expanded Upper East Side historic district, said Tara Kelly, the executive director of the preservation organization. â??We"d like to see the building returned to its former glory. Kenneth Laub, who runs a real estate firm and chairs an East 64th Street neighborhood association, considers the deteriorated building an affront to the East 64th Street that he and his neighbors invested money to beautify. He has been trying to get the building"s owner, GEF Development Corporation, to restore the exterior since the building was empty. Now that Kiehl"s is the new tenant, Laub wants a plan to fix the aged building that"s at the â??gateway to our streetâ?¦. The first thing you recognize, he told the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Laub points out the building"s aesthetic flaws: the stained limestone, the black stucco that covers red brick and the copper cornice that is now a dull green. â??We continue to employ various ways of getting the landlord and tenant to recognize they are part of a community and a very important street in New York City, he said. He asked incredulously why this building would be designated a landmark only for the city to allow such a plan. â??The Landmark Preservation Commission says the building is important, Laub said. â??Yet the Landmarks Preservation Commission will approve a plan that doesn"t do the building justice. But Kiehl"s application to make changes to the building met the commission"s regulation, spokesperson Elisabeth de Bourbon said. She added that they are unable to force the building"s owner to make the changes as well. â??The owners are not under any obligation to restore a building just because it"s been designated, de Bourbon said. â??They don"t need to be changed unless they"re in a state of disrepair, meaning they"re structurally unsound or propose a risk to the integrity of the building. Andrea D"Alessandro, a representative of the building"s owner, GEF Corporation, said restorations that the city"s landmark commission requires will be made. D"Alesasndro was uncertain that the owner would go beyond that and restore the entire building. â??We are also joining in with Kiehl"s in order to maintain the same look that the landmark commission approved, D"Alessandro said. â??I don"t have any more information beyond that. Laub, the chair of the East 64th Street neighborhood association, believes that the man behind GEF Residence Corporation, French businessman Alex Bongrain, should shell out the money to fix the building. (D"Alessandro, the landlord"s representative, said there is â??no one person behind GEF Residence Corporation, but Bongrain is involved.) â??Mr. Bongrain, Laub told the landmark commission, â??is a multi-billionaire who could easily afford a few dollars to fix up this façade.