LG Electronics is pushing ahead with plans to start...

vice president-government and public relations, Wednesday on WNYC Public Radio’s Brian Lehrer Show. Demolition at the 27-acre site in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., will be complete by August, setting the stage for construction to begin on a new 490,000-square-foot headquarters that will feature a 143-foot-high, eight-story central office tower that’s at the heart of LG’s battle with preservationists, who have opposed the project. LG bought the property in 2009, seeking to consolidate headquarters spread across three buildings in Englewood Cliffs. The new headquarters is expected to open in 2017. Several groups, including Scenic Hudson and the New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs, sued LG in New Jersey Superior Court, seeking to overturn a height variance for the building that was granted in 2012 by the Englewood Cliffs Zoning Board of Adjustment. The approval allowed LG’s building to exceed Englewood Cliffs’ 35-foot height limit. The groups have since filed an appeal and briefs with the Appellate Division of the Superior Court that’s expect have a hearing either late this year or early 2015, the LG spokesman said. Preservationists have urged LG to redesign the building and New York State Parks Commissioner Rose Harvey asked LG in a letter on behalf of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, to lower the tower’s height. New York City and New York State’s Westchester County are across the river from the Pallisades. “Would it be possible to build it shorter and fatter, yes, but it would take years to go down that path and redesign the buildings and go through the approval process,” Taylor told Lehrer. “That won’t meet our business needs and it will delay the economic benefits for the state of New Jersey.” LG has said the new headquarters will increase its workforce in the Englewood Cliffs area to 1,200 employees by 2017 from the current 500 and to 1,600 by 2020. “We are proud of the project and we have been a good corporate citizen of Englewood Cliffs for 25 years,” Taylor said. “The building is designed to blend into the environment and reflect the surroundings.” Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Whitman, a Republican and also former administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, countered on Lehrer’s show that LG didn’t have to build the central tower. While LG has been a “good corporate citizen, in this instance we hope they would reconsider and do what we think is the right thing for everyone involved and keep this area,” Whitman said. “They could lay the building on its side and create the same amount of space for employees."