NY's planning department is crazy if it allows any of those beauties to be destroyed. What is wrong with NYC? That is going too far. NY will soon be Hong Kong on Hudson.
Although I love modern towers, I'm actually now hoping that the rezoning fails now just because NY doesn't care enough about its heritage and won't even try to incorporate some of the nice facade elements into new towers. The developers unfortunately are just not interested. The Interconnie and the W are nice buildings, they should be saved, or at least the facade should be. If this keeps happening, NY will look like any Asian city and lose it's unique mix of old and new. Soon all the great old hotels will be few and far between in NYC... the Hotel Penn is doomed too.
Amanda Burden must be a paper tiger, or else she has no taste.