Polluted Bldg. Near Columbus Circle Is Subject of New Brownfield Cleanup Push

The owner of a vacant building that once housed the award-winning DuArt film processing company, near Columbus Circle, must clean up what has become a brownfield before transforming it into residential space. If everything goes according to plan, around 40 units of housing could enter the market, and the building will extend from 12 to 17 floors. It was purchased last June from DuArt by Mandelbaum & Mandelbaum, a New Jersey-based LLC, for $29 million.

The structure at 245 W. 55th St. was originally put on the market for $48 million by DuArt in November 2022, The Real Deal reported, meaning that the film processing firm sold the property at a considerable loss. The real estate blog also noted that DuArt had worked with directors such as Spike Lee and Michael Moore over the years, and had processed and “developed” classic blockbusters such as Dirty Dancing and Forrest Gump.

Matters became complicated for Mandelbaum & Mandelbaum, however, after the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation alerted the new owners that they’d have plenty of remediation work ahead of them. Chemicals used by DuArt have permeated the building, in other words.

DuArt, which stopped offering film services in 2021, occupied the 12-story structure from 1922 to 2011; the DEC estimates about 90 years’ worth of volatile organic compounds have accumulated in the site’s air, water, and “soil gas.” The unhealthy “degreasing” and film cleaning chemicals used by DuArt include tetrachloroethene and a variety of tricholorethane, the DEC said.

The DEC strongly encourages “public” involvement during the Brownfield Cleanup Program, which requires fact sheets to be available at many steps of the process. The DEC says that documents for the W. 55th St. cleanup are deposited with Community Board 5, and with the public library on W. 53rd St.

The DEC highlighted “major” site issues that ought to be of public concern in a March document, such as that aforementioned soil gas. The agency described a potential process of “soil vapor intrusion,” whereby 245 W. 55th St.’s accumulated cleaning chemicals evaporate from the soil into “overlying buildings,” including those that aren’t directly under the building site itself.

This “can be of concern to local residents, homeowners, businesses, and several community groups,” the DEC wrote.

A draft environmental work plan submitted on behalf of 245 W. 55th St. LLC, the subsidiary of Mandelbaum & Mandelbaum that is responsible for the cleanup, reveals that the planned conversion to residential units won’t be complete for another four years (approximately). This may be a concession that the remediation work, and its passage to regulatory and public approval, will slow the building’s residential conversion. The DEC approved the investigative work plan on June 14, which was conducted by another LLC called Environmental Logic.

That plan, which was submitted in May (as a revision of a draft from April), also clarified that the developers plan on adding six new floors to the building. This will reportedly occur after they remove its top floor.

During a visit to the building by Straus News on August 12, construction workers could be seen milling about on-site, and extensive scaffolding covered the entire façade of the building.