Anonymous 5:57: Community boards are both needed and entitled to have their opinion reckoned with. Just wait until you have your own backyard. Exactly how is trying to protect your neighborhood from uncontrolled development "Gestapo-esque"? Given your ad hominem age/hair color-trashing, I assume you are too young to remember what Gestapo was. Read up. It's history youth doesn't excuse you from not knowing.

I have to question, though, whether given the character of this particular neighborhood--right next to the MoMa, and in the heart of midtown with all the retail and the office high-rises--an artsy modern hotel/condo tower would really be outsized for the area. CB#5 may have lost this particular fight a couple of decades ago.