Post 11: The origin of this blog, Save the Lower East Side

As always, with the exception of public figures, I use altered names to protect the individuals in this history.

Early in the process, when the Task Force had formulated its principles, I asked David, the chair, whether it would be okay with him for me to explain to my email network, LESRRD, what the CB was planning. Up to then, there was little awareness that the EV and LES were being rezoned. The name of the Task Force was not “Rezoning Task Force” or “Land Use Task Force” or some other comprehensible English equivalent, but “197-a Task Force” an entirely opaque and obscure name of no meaning or informational content to any ordinary resident.

I expected David to agree, and I was asking simply as a kind of courtesy to let him know ahead of time that the word would be spreading abroad. I did not expect his response, which was to ask that I not inform the public of what the CB was up to. This struck me as both unethical, suspicious and inappropriate. For better or worse, I chose to ignore his request even though by asking him I was implying that he could decline.

Rather than simply announce the CB’s plans, I started a blog with the purpose of explaining in the simplest yet accurate terms exactly how zoning in general works so that the public would be able to understand fully what was being planned. This was the beginning of the Save the Lower East Side blog, its first posts “Zoning for Dummies”. Those posts are still accessible on the blog. I also published an article explaining the EV/LES rezoning and its implications, so far as I know the only accurate, detailed and comprehensive piece in the public domain. As I learnt in time, even the members of the Task Force did not have a complete grasp of zoning, and because they did not formulate a detailed plan, but instead presented only their desiderata to DCP, they never had to deal with the details of the zoning itself. They understood the height caps, but did not seem to understand that DCP’s plan included an increase of FAR – the allowable buildable space given to developers. In other words, the Task Force members seemed to believe that the DCP plan was a downzoning and promoted the plan to the public as such, not knowing that it was in fact an upzoning.

The height caps were themselves not innocent. The average height of EV buildings were around 60’, but DCP determined that the local “context” was 80 to 85 feet. When DCP announced a town hall on the zoning proposals, I made a quick survey of the neighborhood measuring the number of stories of each building on 11th Street, on First Avenue and on Houston Street. I would have surveyed the entire neighborhood but time did not allow. To my surprise, the average mean height on 1st Avenue was under 5 stories. There were a great many three and four story buildings and only a few six story buildings. Along with the width of the avenue, this is one reason why among all avenues in the city you can see so much sky on First. By contrast, the side streets are considerably taller, mostly built in the 1880’s and 90’s with Old Law tenements six or six and a half stories tall, the stoop and sunken first floor accounting for the half story. The number of buildings in the EV east of 3rd Avenue taller than six stories could be counted on one hand and only one taller than seven stories. This survey "Contextual Height in the Lower East Side North of Houston Street" is also archived on this blog.

I submitted the survey to DCP at the town hall, but never heard back from them.