Planners Hear Landmark Hotel Plan

A controversial proposal by Harry B. Helmsley, the realty developer, to erect a $65 million luxury hotel behind the landmark Villard Houses on Madison Avenue received conditional backing from architectural, business and civic groups at a City Planning Commission hearing yesterday.

The hearing drew protests from several members of Community Board 5, who argued that they had been given insufficient time to study the latest plans for the skyscraper, drawn up after months of negotiation among city planners, the Landmarks Preservation Commission and Mr. Helmsley's architect, Richard Roth Jr.

First proposed in 1974, the project has been delayed by lengthy reviews that resulted in several changes. According to the plan submitted at yesterday's City Hall hearing, the 775‐room hotel has been reduced in height from its original 57 to 51 stories, and threefourths of the office space that was to have been included has been eliminated.

Mr. Helmsley remains committed to incorporating the Gold Room and other prized interior spaces of the Villard Houses into the hotel's public rooms. The hotel's lobby would be situated off the courtyard around which the Villard mansions are grouped on the east side of Madison Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets.

A Sensitive Issue

The design of the hotel has been a sensitive issue because the Villard Houses, built in the mid‐1880's from plans by the celebrated architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White in the style of Italian Renaissance palaces, have been desginated city landmarks since 1968.

Under zoning rules proposed by the Planning Commission, construction on any building lot in the city containing a landmark would not be permitted without certification by the Landmarks Commission that the new structure would be compatible with the protected building.

The New York Landmarks Conservancy, the Municipal Arts Society and the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects gave their backing to plans for the now hotel but expressed varying reservations about the zoning amendments applying to all landmark sites.

From another point of view, spokesmen for labor and management in the construction and hotel industries argued for city approval of the new hotel to provide jobs and to help the city's tourist trade.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which owns the Villard Houses and has optioned the property to Mr. Helmsley, urged several changes in the legislation to facilitate the use of landmarks with out unduly obligating the developer.

The Planning Commissior will take further testimony on the Villard project at its next meeting, on June 30.

Two hundred residents of the north shore of Queens appear ed before the Planning Com mission yesterday to protest zoning changes that would allow construction of 500 town house and apartment units or a waterfront tract in Colege Point and development of 9C two‐family houses in the neigh borning shorefront community of Beachhurst.

The commission approved subject to final action by the Board of Estimate, a permit for a seaplane base at 34th Stree and the East River. When oper a tions start, the present sea plane facility at 23d Street will be discontinued,

The commission also ap proved zoning changes to alloy Marriott's Essex House on Cen tral Park South to conver some of its transient ??? rooms into condominium apart ments.