Extell’s latest towering erection on West 57th Street is set to be revealed tonight at a last minute meeting of the Landmarks Committee of Community Board #5 more than fifty blocks away from the neighborhood surrounding the proposed development (which is set to include a branch of the Nordstrom department store in its base and a hotel and condos for the wealthy above). Sketches of that s base, a rendering, and a bird’s eye view of the mammoth building to be cantilevered over the landmark Art Students League, can be seen by clicking through below. Curiously, the gargantuan height of the proposed tower is not shown though you can click each image to see it full-size. Or perhaps, that’s not curious at all. As New York magazine’s architecture critic Justin Davidson wrote recently in a review of another Extell tower, “we bear the aesthetic cost,” of thoughtless, profit driven development. “In theory,” Davidson continued, “developers of these billionaires’ beanstalks pay for their portions of sky and light with architecture worth looking at. In practice, they judge design by their clients’ taste for glitz.” The meeting, at which public comment on the tower is welcome, will be held at 6PM tonight the the library on the second floor at Xavier High School at 30 West 16th Street. Please attend! UPDATE: The Community Board landmarks committee approved the Extell design, but it’s only the first of several hurdles the project must jump before it wins approval.