Open letter to Community Board 3

Esteemed members of Community Board 3,

Time is running out to save the oldest avenue in New York, the Bowery. Once the City's LES rezoning prohibits out-of-scale hotels east of the Bowery, developers will dig up the Bowery, edging development and displacement toward Chinatown.

The CB3 197 Zoning Task Force plans to propose a new zoning plan for the east side of the Bowery (the side in CD3), pending the funding and execution of a study of the area, a lengthy process. By the time the City implements such a plan two years or more from now, the Bowery will likely have been overrun with hotels. Such a new zoning plan will face a fait accompli of development.

There is, however, a means for CB3 to save its side of the Bowery from becoming the next target of hotel development:

LESRRD, the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors and the Coalition to Save the East Village all asked the City to include the Bowery in the City's current LES rezoning. These Scoping Hearing public record requests give the CB leverage now. A public letter to the Borough President and City Planning indicating that without a rezoning now, the City is handing over the Bowery to developers, will place the burden of responsibility on the City for not including the Bowery in the rezoning plan. The City will be compelled either to take action or accept responsibility for hotel development.

The Community Board must ask City Planning publicly what it intends for the Bowery.

The question must be put publicly , not privately. The goal is not to gather information but to put the case openly that if no rezoning=huge hotels then the City must take responsibility for abandoning the Bowery to hotels or act now. If the City doesn't respond to the public question, then the City is admitting its intention to open the Bowery to luxury hotels.

The City's position on the Bowery should be a matter of public record, and CB3 should not allow the City to get away with hiding its intentions any longer.

In lieu of a clear, public position from the City, the CB Task Force has been speculating that it's useless to fight to get the Bowery in the rezoning because:

1) the City doesn't want to rezone the Bowery. (If that's the reason then why has the CB3 Task Force begun to work on a separate, new rezoning plan for the Bowery now?)

2) the west side of the Bowery is in a different district and DCP doesn't zone one side of a street. (But DCP zones single sides of streets all the time; DCP Deputy Director for Manhattan has plainly told me that one-side-of-the-street- zoning is and was never a problem for them.)

3) DCP does whatever it wants. (If that's so, why has the CB3 Task Force been working for a full year on a rezoning of 3rd & 4th Avenues, an area the City has publicly and insistently refused to rezone?)

The CB has no reason not to ask publicly, now:

What does the City want for the Bowery?
City delay = huge luxury hotels.

A separate zoning plan will be completed too late.
Please ask DCP publicly now!

Respectfully yours,
Rob Hollander
LESRRD (LES Residents for Responsible Development)

Phil DePaolo tells it like it is

Mayor Bloomberg, Second Mayoral Debate, November 1 , 2005:
“This is an expensive city; it always has been, probably always will be.”

We have seen first hand the devastating effects of the New York City housing boom on the residents of our city, mainly low income people who cannot afford to live in their apartments with all the rent increases applied to rent stabilized apartments.

In the 1970s, when no one was developing, the 421a program was a wonderful plan. The original intent of the law establishing the 421-a tax abatement was to encourage housing development in an area where market rate development was not occurring and would not occur without the tax abatement. In return a developer could expect that by the time the full tax on the building had phased in, tenants would be paying rents that were high enough to cover the higher tax bill. But now the incentive is used as nothing more than a come on to entice prospective buyers of luxury units. The abatement is a crutch for developers that costs the city millions in tax revenue, dollars badly needed to fund affordable housing and improve the city's increasingly overloaded infrastructure.
The 421-a program has subsidized over 100,000 housing units since the program’s inception. However, according to a 2003 report by the Independent Budget Office, only about 8% of the units were affordable to low or moderate income families. The cost of the program to the City of New York has grown 150% in the last four years. Another report by the Pratt Center for Community Development also found that while the 421-a program did subsidize the building of more than 100,000 units since 1971, again only 8 percent of them were actually affordable for low and moderate income residents and with soaring rents and record numbers of homeless the city and state must continue to do what they can to fill the void.

A huge problem we see is that affordable housing is calculated off of the HUD AMI charts, which groups all of NYC together, so that the median income for a family of four is 70,900, and 80% of AMI is considered low income. With a community AMI of $30,000 and average renter wages of under $14.00 an hour even at 60% of AMI most residents in Williamsburg and Greenpoint Brooklyn will not be able to afford the units proposed under Chairman Lopez's Bill. We also worry about the fine print in the new HDC programs, which now has affordable housing rent to income ratios going all the way up to 35%, when the entire country uses 30% as a standard. It seems like it might not be much, but if you do the math, that extra 5% really squeezes working families!

The current zoning incentives are not working, Inclusionary Zoning is not working and expanding the 421a program with the use of IZ will not stabilize low and middle income neighborhoods. It will kill them!

It's very important to focus on the luxury units which invariably change the economic demographics of less affluent communities and have the effect of forcing out the less affluent. The wealthy residents that move in have larger incomes putting pressures on local retail outlets to change the mix of amenities. Instead of hardware stores, affordable supermarkets and Laundromats, the commercial core changes to noisier bars, expensive restaurants, boutique food markets and so on. Stores offering less expensive goods can no longer pay the cost per square foot of the gentrified neighborhood.

While some affordable units are built, there's a larger net loss of affordable housing in the surrounding areas as real estate values and rents rise. With the loss of protections and enforcement of any meaningful rent regulation, surrounding neighborhoods are being torn apart.

I reject the idea that private developers need to have hefty 421a tax incentives to provide construction where the majority of the new units are market rate. Such developments are destroying low and working class neighborhoods, and the home to generations of immigrants are becoming unrecognizable.

If our elected are going to allow what is basically fair market rate housing to pass as "affordable" to residents of our City we need to hold our elected accountable as well.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition the Fair Market Rent (FMR) in New York for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,076 a month. In order to afford this level of rent and utilities, without paying more than 30% of income on housing, a household must earn $3,588 monthly or $43,051 annually. Assuming a 40-hour work week, 52 weeks per year, this level of income translates into a Housing Wage of $20.70 hr.

In New York, a minimum wage worker earns an hourly wage of $6.75. In order to afford the FMR for a two-bedroom apartment, a minimum wage earner must work 123 hours per week, 52 weeks per year. Or, a household must include 3.1 minimum wage earners working 40 hours per week year round in order to make the two bedroom FMR affordable.

I believe that this new Bill will not create substantial amounts of real affordable housing .At this time, market rate housing development is clearly occurring and will continue to occur in the city without the benefit of the 421-a tax abatement. Therefore, the tax abatement is no longer needed as an incentive. I believe this Bill as written still gives way too much to developers and will not stabilize communities that are being targeted by rezoning and gentrification. Once again the City and State have missed an opportunity to pass meaningful 421a reform and the low and Middle income residents of our City will continue to be the victims.

Phil

City-wide tenants union meeting

Spread the word --

City-wide Tenants Union Meeting!
to plan
A MAJOR FALL EVENT
on rent regulations,
on tenant protections,
on displacement, harassment, tenant law,
the failure of city agencies to uphold the law,
and the upscale overdevelopment of our city

Wednesday, August 15, 7pm
ANGEL ORENSANZ FOUNDATION
172 Norfolk Street
(one block east of Essex/Ave. A, just south of Houston)
basement level.
The Orensanz Foundation is a landmark of community organizing and the arts.
Grateful thanks to Al for donating his space!

New York is under assault from developers and landlords. Our legal rights and protections have been eroded, loopholes have been exploited and there is little or no regulatory oversight. Affordable housing that sustains communities is rapidly disappearing. We are in crisis.

UNYTE is a New York city-wide tenant's empowerment group formed to confront this crisis. We are a democratic grassroots organization open to all renters in New York: tenants organizing tenants into a powerful political voice to strengthen tenant protections, laws and regulations and ensure government accountability, transparency, oversight, responsibility and enforcement.

Come help us plan an event that will bring the city's attention to the needs of its people.

TENANTS UNITE!

Landmarks, repairs and the Tenement Museum

There's been a lot of hand-wringing about this Historic District for Orchard and Ludlow, from east Allen to west Essex.

The hand-wringing is not about the project itself, but about its initiator, the Tenement Museum. Several years ago, in an effort to acquire the building next door, the Museum tried to use eminent domain (!!) to evict everyone from it.

That's not easy to forget. People are reluctant to support anything initiated by the Tenement Museum for the sake of that memory and its lesson. But this landmarking project is a good one that benefits residents and the community at large, not just the Museum.

All the opposition I heard to the Historical District project has come from property owners. Well, of course -- their properties lose value if they can't sell them to developers to demolish and build skyscraper hotels. Personally, I don't think the right to make a huge profit by demolishing history and putting tenants at risk deserves protection. If they were good landlords all those years before this real-estate surge, I'm sure they can continue to be good landlords without it now -- especially now, when there are so many new market-rate tenants paying and arm and a leg to live in their buildings. Two arms and two legs if you count their roommates. I can't imagine that any landlords in the LES are hurting.

Residents don't lose anything in this deal. In fact, I think they will come out ahead, not having to deal with landlords and developers trying to squeeze them, but just with landlords. The only repairs that will be more expensive will be external repairs. How often do you complain about the pointing of your exterior brick? I never have. Most of my complaints are about heat, hot water and plumbing. These will not be affected by Historic District status. From the Landmarks Preservation Commission:

"You do not need a permit from the Landmarks Commission to perform ordinary repairs or maintenance chores. For example, you do not need a permit to replace broken window glass, repaint a building exterior to match the existing color, or caulk around windows and doors. If you have any doubt about whether a permit is needed, call the Commission at (212) 669-7817."
http://www.nyc.gov/html/lpc/html/faqs/faq_permit.shtml

Strategic error: last chance for the Bowery

CB3 is planning a new zoning study for the Bowery. Once it is finished, they will draw up a zoning proposal for City Planning. It'll all take about a year and who knows how long before the City responds if ever. To further this plan, they intend now to speak to DCP privately to ascertain what the City will consider for the Bowery.

This strategy, though well-meaning, is both strategically misguided and destined to produce too little too late.

By not publicly questioning the City on the Bowery, and by starting a new plan for the Bowery, the CB is taking on the burden of responsibility for the future of the Bowery and taking it off the City. That's an egregious strategic error. It means the City won't have to answer for anything, even though it's the City alone that has created this problem by leaving the Bowery out of the rezoning.

By the time the CB has a plan to present to the City for the Bowery, the Bowery will already have been developed and the City will blame the CB for it. And the City will be right.

Fortunately, the CB can still act strategically. LESRRD, the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors (BAN) and the Coalition to Save the East Village all asked at City Planning's Scoping Session that the Bowery be included in the rezoning. These public record requests give the CB leverage now. A public letter to the Borough President -- indicating that without a rezoning now, the City is handing over the Bowery to developers -- will place the burden of public responsibility on the City for not including the Bowery in the rezoning plan. The City will be compelled either to take action or to accept responsibility for hotel development.


The reasons CB3 gives not to fight to get the Bowery returned to the zoning area do not hold up under scrutiny. CB3 has said that it's useless to fight to get the Bowery in the rezoning because:
1) the City doesn't want to rezone the Bowery
(if that's the reason then why has CB3 begun to work on a rezoning plan for the Bowery now?);

2) the west side of the Bowery is in a different district and DCP doesn't zone one side of a street
(DCP zones single sides of streets all the time; DCP Deputy Director for Manhattan has plainly told me that one-side-of-the-street- zoning is and was never a problem for them);

3) DCP does whatever it wants
(if that's so, why has the CB been working for a full year on a rezoning of 3rd & 4th Avenues, an area the City has openly refused to rezone?).

CB3 should stop stalling and ask publicly, now: what does the City want for the Bowery?
No rezoning now=huge luxury hotels

St. Brigid's a year later

From the Committee to Save St. Brigid's:

--This Friday marks one year since the demolition of St. Brigid's was begun by the archdiocese, one year since the bulldozing of a hole through the East wall and the smashing of the stained glass windows.

There will be a rally at 7:30 AM outside the Church. Politicians and press will be attending. Please turn out to make our ongoing presence and resistance known.--

They've got a website too:
http://www.savestbrigid.com/

Good things at the Community Board

Two important items coming up at the July 24 Community Board meeting:
1) Historic Landmark District for Allen, Orchard, Ludlow & Essex
2) rewording the liquor license moratorium resolutions

1) The CB will vote to aprove the Lower East Side Preservation Coalition's proposal to create a Historic Landmark District of a substantial portion of the LES from Houston down to Division, Allen east to Essex. The LESPC has done an excellent and comprehensive job putting it together: an important project every resident dedicated to LES preservation can support.

2) Over the last two years I and others have complained to the CB that the State Liquor Authority ignored our liquor license moratoria because the moratoria violate due process . Under the old moratorium resolutions, the CB would deny, without a hearing, any liquor license in a moratorium area: the bar owner would not have to appear before the CB but go straight to the SLA.

Everyone deserves a fair hearing under the law, even a bar, otherwise there can be no rule of law. Without due process, CB3 pro forma denials were considered by the SLA to be improper abuses of authority, abrogations of legal charge and therefore meaningless grandstanding.

In every case in which they threaten to undermine residential, cultural or commercial life, liquor licenses should be denied by the CB -- but after a hearing, not without a hearing. The hearing establishes through due process under the law the specific facts that the SLA must consider. The new moratorium wording will require a due process hearing in which the bar owner will have to show how the liquor license will improve and not harm the neighborhood.

If you can attend the CB full board meeting, please express your support for these two items. You may sign up 6:15-6:30 to speak for two minutes at the public session which precedes the voting session.

CB3 full board meeting
Middle School 131
100 Hester Street
(Eldridge & Forsythe )
July 24, 6:15pm

It's happening everywhere

Take a look at the NY Press
CHAIN INVASION
Neighborhood haunts lose out in the restaurant renovation battle

By Jill Colvin

"From Yorkville on the Upper East Side to Astor Place in the East Village, the bar and restaurant landscape is becoming shinier and more corporate, and, as in the Heights, robbing residents of their cozy long-time local dens."
http://www.nypress.com/20/29/news&columns/feature.cfm

Report on the Scoping Session

For those who missed the June 25 Scoping Meeting:
A couple of us presented the case for including the Bowery in the City's rezoning plan -- David Mulkins of 5th Street was particularly eloquent -- but most of the testimony in the evening session I attended was devoted to support for the Community Board's 11-point plan, the best features of which are unfortunately beyond the purview of zoning: the tenants' legal fund and the anti-harassment & anti-demolition measures to protect tenants.

Below is a generalized comparison of just the differences between 1) the City's proposal, 2) the CB's 11 points, 3) the LESRRD alternative, and 4) the current zoning. Instead of talking zoning jargon, I'm translating F.A.R. into stories of a typical tenement with a 70'X25' floor-space. The translation is not exact, but it's better than reading jargon:

DCP (the City's plan)
Most streets and avenues: construction no larger than 6 tenement-sized stories (4FAR)* height cap: 75-80'

Houston, Delancey, Chrystie, D: construction no larger than 8 tenement-sized stories (5.4FAR) , but 9 tenement-sized stories (7.2FAR) if 20% affordable housing is included height cap: 120'

The Bowery is left out of the plan


CB3
Avenues: construction no larger than 5 tenement-sized stories (3.45 FAR) or 7 tenement-sized stories (4.6FAR) if affordable housing is included
Most side streets: construction no larger than 4 tenement-sized stories (3FAR)

Houston, Delancey: 7 tenement-sized stories or 9 tenement-sized stories with affordable housing
Chrystie: 9 tenement-sized stories or 12 tenement-sized stories with affordable housing


LESRRD
All streets and avenues including the Bowery: construction no larger than 5 tenement-sized stories (3.44FAR), but 6 tenement-sized stories (4FAR) with affordable housing


CURRENT ZONING
All streets and avenues: no larger than 5 stories (3.44FAR ) but much, much more is allowed on large, combined lots if a community facility (e.g., dormitory) is included north of Houston or a hotel south of Houston. If you can bring enough lots together, you can build to the sky. Hotel owners are cashing in on the south of Houston zoning as I write. Hotels cannot be built north of Houston, under current zoning, except in the commercial zones on 3rd Avenue and The Bowery. That's why it's so important to try to get the Bowery included in the rezoning. If the rezoning goes through without the Bowery, developers, unable to build any more huge hotels south of Houston, will line the Bowery with them all the way down to Canal, and Chinatown will become the next frontier for the bulldozer Gentrification.

All three rezoning proposals would end the community facility/dormitory and hotel bonuses. The DCP plan would bring upscale development, only 20% of it affordable, to Delancey, Chrystie, Houston and D.

The CB3 plan would bring less development to the avenues, 30% of it affordable, more significant development, 30% affordable, to Houston and Delancey and huge development, 30% affordable, to Chrystie.

The LESRRD alternative would bring, in effect, no development at all of any kind.

The controversy in rezoning in a nutshell: to get 20% affordable housing, the neighborhood must accept the development of 80% market-rate housing. The CB's 30%-70% is better, but still not good from a preservationist point of view.

It's been my position that inviting developers in will irreparably harm the LES/EV. The neighborhood would be transformed into an upscale playground -- more banks, bars and chain stores. No more Loisaida. Lots more pressure to evict low-rent long-time tenants. As the wealthy are drawn to development, the trend will edge towards Chinatown, threatening one of Manhattan's few remaining vital, ethnic communities and New York's first outsider immigrant neighborhood -- it is the site of Five Points.

If, however, the entire neighborhood is capped, including the Bowery, the rich will have to invade someplace else, and that someplace else will become the trendy place to be and the pressure will shift off us. That would help save what's left of Loisaida and the affordable housing that's still here.

* FAR is a measure of volume, so it's not the same as number of stories. With an FAR of 1, you can build a one story building covering the entire lot or a two story building covering half the lot or a three story building covering a third of the lot etc. In New York, buildings generally must leave 30'-deep courtyard space, so an FAR of 3.44 works out to at least 5 stories. If the building is built more shallowly, it could rise higher. All the above plans include height caps as well as FAR caps, but the FAR caps are more important because they limit the actual amount of space the building occupies regardless of its shape.

Saving the Bowery

The Community Board zoning task force will meet this Monday, July 16, 6:30, 184 Eldridge Street (between Rivington & Delancey -- University Settlement, Speyer Hall) to discuss rezoning 3rd Avenue as well as the Bowery between 1st and 7th Streets.

I do not know why the rest of the Bowery going south to Canal is not on their agenda: it's much more vulnerable to development than the area north of Houston. There is little left to save on the CB3 side -- the east side -- of the Bowery north of Houston. There are, however, several important men's shelters as well as a couple of remaining historic buildings. But the place is changing so fast that googlemaps' satellite photo may as well be of a different street.

If you go to the meeting: The Bowery is currently zoned commercial, mostly C6-1, just like the area south of Houston where the crazy-huge hotels are being built -- that's why crazy-huge hotels are going up on the Bowery too. And that's why the Bowery needs protection: if the LES south of Houston is rezoned to exclude big hotels, where do you think they're going to be built next? The Bowery.

The Avalon complex that extends from 1st Street to just south of Houston (the Whole Foods building in glass and steel that makes me fear for the future of the world) actually has a special zoning all to itself. It is the face of Inclusionary up-Zoning. This is what happens when government serves the development market first, people second. You get a few units of affordable housing included in the development, but what kind of street-life is a glass wall a block long? And who can afford Whole Foods? What neighborhood is this?

Petition to save the Bowery

The window of opportunity is still open to save the Bowery from overdevelopment: City Planning is accepting submissions for its zoning study until July 5. Now is the time to sign the petition to save the Bowery and distribute it to your contacts.

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/BAN62007/petition.html

Please help.

Here is the petition notice from the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors:
>>We are continuing our petition drive to Save The Bowery. The character of the Bowery, including Chinatown, Little Italy and the Lower East Side, is being quickly destroyed with all the new development in the area. The history of this area should be preserved.

The new luxury buildings, and hotels will further destroy the quality of life for all of us living in the vicinity. There will be more traffic, more noise, more sidewalk congestion, more air pollution, etc.

Please take a minute to sign our petition, and please forward this to your email lists. We are asking the City of New York to do an Environmental Study to evaluate the how our community will be affected by this development, and then to mitigate the negative impact.

Please click on the link below to sign our petition:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/BAN62007/petition.html

PETITION TO SAVE THE BOWERY FROM OVER DEVELOPMENT

The Bowery, which comes from the Dutch word "bouwerij" for farm, has always been significant in New York City history. Before the Dutch settled here, in the 1600's, this was a Native American trail. By the end of the 18th century the Bowery was lined with fashionable shops and mansions, which later became Restaurant Supply, and Lighting Districts. With its neighboring Chinatown, Little Italy and the Lower East Side immigrant communities, this is one of the most culturally and historically diverse regions of the City. The Bowery remains one of the last true north/south running streets in New York City.

This rich history is being systematically eradicated by unprecedented development. The low-rise character of the Bowery is being replaced by high-rise dormitories, boutique hotels and luxury buildings which are out-of-scale with the rest of the residential community, including the historic NOHO District. In addition to preservation issues, this development will have a horrendous effect on the "quality of life" for community residents - more noise, traffic, sidewalk and street congestion, air pollution, bars, clubs, etc. What was a commercial "daytime" shopping strip is quickly turning into a raucous nightlife district.

Most of the development is "as-of-right", meaning that it does not require a special permit or variance. Developers are simply taking advantage of existing zoning bonuses and the transfer of air rights, therefore environmental studies are not required.

We respectfully request that:
- The Department of City Planning include the Bowery in the current 197C Plan being drafted for the Lower East Side. - The Department of City Planning and City Council pass immediate legislation to ensure that this "as of right" development does not continue.
- The Department of City Planning perform an Environmental Impact Study and take measures to mitigate the negative impact of this development on our community.<

Scoping testimony

Friends,
If you care about living here
If you care about this place
If you care about history
If you care about the future
If you care about community
If you care about overdevelopment
If you care about the eviction of tenants
If you care about the warehousing of apartments
If you care about giant hotels and mega-dormitories
If you care about life in the Lower East Side & East Village

then tell the Department of City Planning Monday.

The DCP's Scoping Session is the moment for you to express what the community wants for the future of the LES and East Village. If you care about preserving this neighborhood from increasing development and gentrification, come forward and tell DCP that

you do not want construction on your rooftop,
you do not want demolitions and redevelopment,
you do not want to lose our broad, bright avenues,
you do not want upzoning,

that you want this neighborhood to survive as it is and has been for over a hundred years. A community. The downest, homiest, funkyest, realest, mixedest, anarchistest, leftest, best community in the world.

I will ask that the three following alternatives be included in the scope of the Environmental Impact Statement:
1. include the Bowery in the C4-4A zone,
2. do not increase the current 3.44 FAR on the avenues,
3. do not upzone Houston, Delancey, Chrystie or D.

1. Inclusion of the Bowery: the impact of this zoning on the Bowery could be devastating. Unable to build their hotels south of Houston, developers will look to the Bowery where hotels can still be built. The EIS must include a study of the Bowery. LESRRD asks that DCP extend the C4-4A zoning to the Bowery. Most Bowery buildings are four stories or lower. Nearly all the rest are only five stories tall. It is home to some of the oldest, most historic structures in New York (e.g. 185 & 357).

2. Keep the current 3.44 FAR for the avenues: virtually all of 1st Avenue and most of 2nd, A, B and C are lined with buildings 5-stories or lower , FAR 3.44 or less. Raising the FAR to 4 will mean rooftop additions all across the avenues. Landlords use the construction of extensions as a means of turning residences into construction sites to harass tenants out of their homes. Four-story buildings will be warehoused in preparation for demolition and redevelopment. The low-rise, broad, open Civil War context of the East Village avenues will be darkened beyond recognition and solely for money, no other reason.

3. No upzoning on Houston, Delancey, Chrystie or D: Inclusionary up-Zoning on Houston has already brought us the Avalon Building and Whole Foods. The character of the neighborhood cannot survive more 80% market-rate glass&steel intrusions. Added development causes secondary displacement of residents and mom-and-pop businesses. Let's keep developers away, let's not invite them in. A reasonable zoning for these streets: R7B (FAR 3, height cap 75 ft) perhaps with an inclusionary housing bonus to 4. That will ensure that no one currently living in affordable housing will be displaced for the sake of promises of affordable housing.

A general alternative proposal for the entire district including the Bowery:

* maintain the current 3.44 FAR,
* remove the community facility bonus,
* cap heights at 70 feet (3.44 FAR = an average 5 story tenement, so the added height won't threaten existing tenements.)


The closest existing contextual zonings would be R6A and R7B and for south of Houston, C4-3A. Zoning designations like these but with 3.44 FAR would fit the neighborhood like a glove.

Don't forget to sign the petition to include the Bowery:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/BAN62007/petition.html

Scoping Meeting for the Environmental Impact Statement on the EV/LES Rezoning:
Department of City Planning,
Spector Hall,
22 Reade Street
June 25, 2-5pm, 6-8:45pm

The Scoping Meeting explained

1. What is a Scoping Meeting and why is it so important?

Ordinary residents (!) can get their concerns included in the rezoning.
Zoning=the future: housing & community preservation or development, displacement, eviction.

Before the Department of City Planning (DCP) can rezone a neighborhood, it must study the "environmental impact" of the rezoning -- the impact on population density, on construction and development, on mass transit, on traffic, on local businesses.

The Scoping Meeting is a hearing at which DCP will consider what to include in the scope of this Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). It is the one, big chance for the ordinary citizen to propose additions or revisions -- "alternatives" -- to the rezoning plan.

Since the plan has to go through both the Borough President's Office and the City Council, DCP is under pressure to include well justified, broadly supported alternatives, otherwise their plan loses credibility with the elected officials who must vote on it.

So Scoping is your chance to be heard where it counts.


2. What will happen at this Scoping Meeting?

The Community Board will present its 11 point alternative.
You can present your concerns too. I will ask DCP to
1. include the Bowery in the good preservation zone DCP proposed for the area from Chystie to Essex,
2. not increase the current 3.44 FAR on the avenues so that landlords can't destroy 1st & 2nd Avenues with rooftop additions and harass tenants with their construction
3. not upzone Houston, Delancey, Chrystie or D: to slow the rapid change here, we need to keep developers out, not invite them in.

Please join me. The more support for preservation, the more likely the neighborhood will be preserved.
Community pressure helped bring about the 11 point alternative. There's more to ask for. Let's ask.

And don't forget to sign the petition to include the Bowery:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/BAN62007/petition.html

Scoping Testimony

The Scoping Meeting on June 25 is the most important opportunity for community input into the impending rezoning of the East Village and Lower East Side. If enough of us testify, we can make a difference.

I will ask that the three following alternatives be included in the scope of the Environmental Impact Statement. This is just a sketch. I'll provide more detail soon for anyone who wants to join me:

1. Inclusion of the Bowery: the impact of this zoning on the Bowery could be devastating. Unable to build their hotels south of Houston, developers will look to the Bowery where hotels can still be built. The EIS must include a study of the Bowery.

2. Keep the current 3.44 FAR for the avenues: virtually all of 1st Avenue and most of 2nd, A, B and C are lined with buildings 5-stories or less , FAR 3.44 or less. Raising the FAR to 4 will mean rooftop additions all across the avenues. Landlords use the construction of extensions as a means of turning residences into construction sites to harass tenants out of their homes. Four-story buildings will be warehoused in preparation for demolition and redevelopment. The low-rise, broad, open Civil War context of the East Village avenues will be darkened beyond recognition and solely for money, no other reason.

3. No upzoning on Houston, Delancey, Chrystie or D: Inclusionary up-Zoning on Houston has already brought us the Avalon Building and Whole Foods. The character of the neighborhood cannot survive more 80% market-rate glass&steel intrusions. Added development causes secondary displacement of residents and mom-and-pop businesses. Let's keep developers away, let's not invite them in. A reasonable zoning for these streets: R7B (FAR 3, height cap 75 ft) perhaps with an inclusionary housing bonus to 4. That will ensure that no one currently living in affordable housing will be displaced for the sake of promises of affordable housing.

A general alternative proposal for the entire district including the Bowery: maintain the current 3.44 FAR, remove the community facility bonus, cap heights at 70 feet (3.44 FAR = an average 5 story tenement, so the added height won't threaten existing tenements.) The closest existing contextual zonings would be R6A and R7B and for south of Houston, C4-3A. Zoning designations like these but with 3.44 FAR would fit the neighborhood like a glove.

Scoping Meeting for the Environmental Impact Statement on the EV/LES Rezoning:
Department of City Planning,
Spector Hall,
22 Reade Street
June 25, 2-5pm, 6-8:45pm

Scope it out

On June 25, the Department of City Planning will hold the public "scoping meeting" for the proposed EV/LES Rezoning. This is the critical moment for community input into the rezoning plan. You may address the agency for 3 minutes and submit your comments in writing as well. Soon I will post the comments I plan to submit myself.

Department of City Planning,
Spector Hall,
22 Reade Street
June 25, 2-5pm, 6-8:45pm

The DCP website has all the documents relevant to the scoping and the hearing:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/env_review/scope.shtml#evles

No answer yet

I seem to have hit a nerve with my explanation for why the 3rd and 4th Avenue study was completed before the Bowery study has even begun. No one has yet offered a better explanation or any explanation. I'd like to understand why the Bowery was not prioritized. I invite the explanation for all to read here.

Rezoning the Bowery

The Community Board Zoning Task Force Subcommittee will meet Monday, June 11, 6:30pm at 113 Second Avenue (between 6th & 7th Streets), in the NYU "Black Room." Rezoning the Bowery will be on the agenda.

The rezoning study for the triangle between 3rd & 4th Avenues has been completed and the CB is about to move forward on a rezoning plan. Meanwhile, the CB has only just begun to discuss raising the money for a study of the east side of the Bowery down to Canal.

Community groups have already studied the area for height and density. I'd like to see the CB accept these studies and move forward with a rezoning for the Bowery without delay. If the CB were to ask DCP for a 197-c plan as it did for the EV/LES rezoning, it would save a lot of time and make up for some of the time lost already.

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.

Wednesday is the big tenants demonstration around Stuyvesant Town. There will be all sorts of tenants advocacy groups and tenants unions there. The newest tenants union, UNYTE will be there at 14th & 1st Ave., 5pm.

UNYTE is organizing tenants at the grass roots -- a tenants union of, by and for tenants, completely democratic in form and substance. I've got high hopes for it. Tenants need an independent voice all their own. They need their own organized numbers to speak for them.

What's happening to housing in the city is shocking even by New York standards. From City Limits:
"This past October, Metropolitan Life Insurance sold Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, containing 11,250 units, to Tishman Speyer for $5.4 billion – the largest housing transaction in American history. In the seven months since, the new owners have doubled and tripled rents of many apartments.

In December, investors put Starrett City on the block. Starrett is the Unites States’ largest federally subsidized apartment complex, home to nearly 12,000 poor and working-class New Yorkers. The price was similarly staggering – $1.3 billion, or $221,000 an apartment, in a community where the average annual income is around $22,000."
Take a look at the statistics
NYC lost 9,272 stabilized units in 2005, a 50% increase over 2002 (NYC Rent Guidelines Board)
The number of median-income affordable units fell from 58% to 48% (Furman Center, NYU)
Median rent increased by 20% while median income fell by 6.3% between 2002 and 2005 (Furman)
For the first time in history the median share of income spent on rent has exceeded the 30% maximum burden a family should bear (Furman)
Low income unsubsidized renters now pay over 50% of their income in rent, up from 43.9% in 2002 (Furman)
Homelessness increased by 11% last year, by 17% among families (Coalition for the Homeless)

Environmental impact

I spent yesterday morning listening to the Manhattan Institute's latest whining over government process. They want to limit Environmental Impact Statements, the studies that disclose the full impact of out-of-scale developments and new zonings.

There is consensus that the EIS is not the best tool for community planning: it is expensive but it has no teeth, it's time-consuming but it doesn't engage dialogue with community voices or include a broader context of city needs.

Typical of the Manhattan Institute, their solution is to downsize it without actually proposing a replacement mechanism for real community and city planning. And, of course, limiting the application of the EIS would suit developers just fine. The less truth they are required to disclose to the public, the happier they are.

Until we have a mechanism that respects community input, the EIS is all we have to hold onto. And until they can come up with a constructive alternative, the Manhattan Institute might do us the favor of sparing us their whining.