Save the Bowery?

What will it take to get Community Board 3 to see that the Bowery is being overdeveloped with the same speed and rapaciousness as the LES south of Houston? Both areas are currently commercial zones (C6) and both are being overrun with hotels. The Bowery is doubly threatened -- it's closer to NYU, the dorm-building Goliath.

What's worse, when the DCP has finished its current rezoning of the East Village and LES, all the developers, unable to build in those neighborhoods, will be buying up the Bowery lickety-split, if they haven't done so already. The rezoning of the LES will spell the end of the Bowery as we know it. Meanwhile, the Community Board is working on a plan for 3rd & 4th Avenues north of ninth street as if the Bowery didn't exist.

Maybe the Bowery doesn't exist to the politically hopeful on the CB. Could it be that 3rd & 4th Avenues get attention because there are so many voters -- affluent voters! -- living in the high-rises between 3rd & 4th Avenues, but the low-income residents of the Bowery area's low-density tenements and the men's shelters have neither many votes nor much money to contribute to the next political campaign?

Why isn't the Bowery on the CB agenda? Concerned neighbors here have already performed the CB's work by surveying the entire Bowery for height, density and commercial/residential character. We have the data; we've told the CB that we have the data. What's the excuse for further delay?

Don't wrack your brains for the answer. The CB will come up with excuses. They always do.