While hydrofracking was not listed on the packed agenda for Upper West Side Community Board 7’s first meeting of the new year last week, the contentious issue did receive a fair amount of attention during the public session of the meeting. The general consensus in the room was opposition to any fracking in upstate New York, which Gov. Cuomo appears on the verge of approving.

New York State Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, who represents District 67, stated that there should be “no rush” to approve fracking, citing the inadequacy of the Department of Environmental Conservation health and safety reports and the potential costs to the climate. Her firm stance on the issue was met with applause from concerned community members who attended the forum and board members alike. Several politicians and their spokesmen echoed this call for caution. The board has taken

New York State Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal

the position that fracking should not be done unless the safety of the water supply for 8 million New Yorkers can be assured, CB7 Chair Mark Diller said in a phone interview after the meeting.

Angela Fox, a concerned community member and head of an anti-fracking coalition called The Mothers Project, which emphasizes the danger to women and children who might be exposed to toxins, namely radon, in gas extracted by fracking. This danger exists whether or not New York State performs fracking itself, since the city pipes in fracked gas from other locales. “She painted the picture of a mother standing at the stove with a baby on her hip, cooking dinner on a gas stove using fracked gas and absorbing the toxins,” Diller said.

“Radon, a byproduct of fracking, is the second leading cause of lung cancer next to cigarettes,” Fox pointed out. “If we get Marcellus Shale gas from nearby, it doesn’t dissipate.” She is also, notably, the mother of Josh Fox, a prominent environmental activist who directed Gasland, a documentary that exposed the dangers of fracking.

It is questionable what CB7 can do to mitigate the damages imposed by fracking if Gov. Cuomo does decide to approve it in select areas upstate, but local legislators such as Rosenthal and newly sworn-in Sen. Brad Hoylman (who replaced Tom Duane) offered a few words on the issue. Both say they remain committed to continuing the legislative fight for their respective districts.

Having reached a consensus on fracking, the board got down to business on issues that proved thornier to reach agreement on, including some lengthy discussion on the Manhattan Core Parking Amendment, which affects off-street parking regulations in Manhattan Community Districts 1-8, such as how many spaces parking garages must set aside for monthly versus transient parkers. “Our concern,” said Diller, “is that we do not want to do anything that will encourage more driving to the Upper West Side.”

Additional reporting by Amy Zimmerman.

Laurence Tamaccio lives near the West Side Highway, the part that exposes its aged, rusty underbelly and concrete legs, held high above Riverside Park South. In his view, it’s an eyesore—and he wants to cover it with vines and waterfalls.

“Seeing it on a daily basis, it started to sort of wear me down aesthetically,” he said.

Tamaccio, an architect who describes his job as “making things that look awful look better,” posted slides of his High Line-esque vision on YouTube. Trellises and ivy cover the highway’s pillars from 61st Street to 72nd street in the digital image of Tamaccio’s dream.

Tamaccio, who lives on Riverside Boulevard, has launched a petition to achieve community support, though it hasn’t circulated widely yet.

Community Board 7 passed a resolution to support “continued exploration,” but Tamaccio says, “The community is not as aware as it needs to be.”

Community Board 7 Chair Mark Diller said it’s safe to say that no one finds the highway attractive. He added, “I have not heard other proposals to beautify the highway.” He has heard, though, efforts to keep the highway elevated for people who use the park beneath it.

Heather Lipton of 140 Riverside Blvd. said, “Vines would be gorgeous,” though she hadn’t considered the highway to be an issue before.

“After a while you kind of get used to it,” said Leslie Pilcher, 31, of West 63rd Street.

Tamaccio doesn’t believe painting the highway would be enough.

John Hart, an artist who has lived nearby for over 20 years, disagrees. “A light blue would be better,” he said, to “blend it in with the sky.” The vines on the structure, he said, “would draw more attention to it.”

Jerry Julian, 45, who has lived in the area for several months, said he agrees with Tamaccio that the structure needs to be reworked. “I would love to do what Boston did with the Big Dig and put it underground,” he said.

There have been efforts to rebuild the highway underground. It was originally elevated from 72nd Street to Chambers Street but a downtown section collapsed in 1973, leading to a project called “Westway,” which died after years of controversy. Then there was a plan for the Trump (later Extell) developers to rebuild the park and bury the highway but necessary federal transportation funds have yet to be acquired.

“People are under the impression that ultimately it’s going to be underground,” Tamaccio said. There is space for a tunnel, but after Hurricane Sandy sent Hudson River water onto the park, Tamaccio thinks it’s less likely the tunnel will ever be built.

There are skeletal ramps from the old highway, protruding from the new one above the park south of 72nd Street. Tamaccio sees these shelf-like pieces as potential waterfall areas.

He says the skeletal strips of old highway have preferable structure, upheld by arches. The elevated track for the 7 train in Queens also has a pleasing pattern of arches, he says, but most of the highway over Riverside Park South seems like a “patch-up” job.

His plan has grown to include gray water catching systems to make use of drainage pipes and a year-round café to assist with funding—though after Sandy, the café should be elevated, he said.
Drawing from how the High Line came about, Tamaccio says the next stage is to form a nonprofit organization. He’s talking to experts, officials and collaborators.

“It’s my community and it affects thousands of other people,” he said, adding, “It’s part of the Manhattan greenway.”

Riverside Center South, a project of Extell Development Co., is the planned residential and commercial community that is slated to begin construction this year on a 77-acre site along the Hudson River between West 59th and 72nd streets.

When Extell came to the Community Board in 2010 with initial plans, a move triggered by the Uniform Land Use Review Process, the community demanded several changes. One of the most important was that the company build a new school to accommodate the influx of children, which Extell agreed to. The other community concern, a need for affordable housing, will now become a reality as the development of Building 2 gets under way this fall.

“The way that the deal kind of got struck [initially] was they were offering a certain amount [of affordable housing] that would last only 20 years,” said Mark Diller, chair of Community Board 7. “We wanted more than that—we wanted a portion of it to be on site and we wanted it to be permanent.”

The Dermot Co. has purchased the building rights for Building 2 (which will be at 15 West End Ave., at the corner of West 61st Street) from a joint venture between Extell and the Carlyle Group, and has agreed to an “80/20” market-rate to affordable housing ratio, a move that gets the company a better financing rate. The victory, however, comes from the fact that the company will be building the full 20 percent requirement on the site, instead of putting some of the units off-site, which often happens—legally—with large development projects.

The board resolution approved of the Dermot Company’s plan to make 127 of the 616 units in Building 2 affordable housing units, which will be available to individuals earning $23,000 a year or a family of up to four earning $43,000 (figures that represent 50 percent of the Area Median Income). The company also agreed to certain stipulations about how those units would situated in the building—for example, they cannot all be clustered on one or two floors and must contain the same percentage of studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom units as the market-rate units.

Some board members expressed concern that the development leaves out moderate-income housing, which is also in demand in the neighborhood.

“Yes I’m voting for this, I’m very grateful for all the points, but I just want to make it clear that the developer is getting a better rate of interest because these units will be available to what I would call poor people as opposed to moderate-income people,” said board member Helen Rosenthal.

A few others expressed an entirely different concern. Page Cowley, an architect and the co-chair of the Land Use committee, said that she was casting a negative vote not because she disapproves of the affordable housing, but because she disapproves of the building’s new design.

“This community board and subcommittee spent about two and a half years watching the master plan for this amazing parcel grow, and all the sudden … it is being sold on to a developer who is building a differently shaped building,” Cowley said. “It seems petty, but when you looked at the original proposal, it was of a very unique character.”

The original renderings that the board approved during the ULURP process were designed by Christian de Portzamparc, a Pritzker Prize-winning architect.

“We spend a lot of time on the Upper West Side looking at quality of life issues and the way that we look at our buildings,” Cowley said, noting that she would be writing a minority report to include with the board’s official approval. “If we’re worried about flowerboxes on a rowhouse, I don’t understand how this development could not go though another review of how they’re going to divide the parcels up and look so different.”

According to the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), New York City’s homeless population has exploded to overwhelming proportions. This unexpected surge purportedly justifies the creation of disruptive fly-by-night shelters, including two buildings on West 95th Street scheduled to receive 200 adult families by the end of this month.

Surprise, surprise … not really. Since 2008, homeless numbers have been trending upward almost without exception, growing an average of 0.5 percent per month, and approaching a whopping 30 percent increase over the past five years. Nevertheless, West Siders have been dealing with homeless “emergencies” for decades—no time to find or build appropriate locations, to hire and train qualified staff, to safeguard existing tenants, to prepare neighbors, or even to properly assess the needs of clients before they are placed. Most importantly, no time to keep people at home in the first place.

Honestly, though, it’s not all on DHS. The cause of this situation runs deeper than poor forecasting. City, state and federal policies on homelessness, housing, social services, zoning and commerce—all crafted with good intentions—often work at cross-purposes. We want more affordable housing, but have meager tools to address powerful counter-incentives. We want to create jobs, but foreclose opportunities to attract visitors and fuel local commerce. We want to prevent homelessness, but cut programs that keep families from losing their homes. We use safety violations to enforce zoning regulations. We let emergency shelters preempt long-term housing solutions. We have enough “pop up” problems to keep us busy for decades, but it’s time to do better.

Policies, like people, are interconnected. We need to look at the whole system, collect data and analyze trends, consider long-term consequences and work together to develop policies that make sense. Tenant leaders, landlords, developers, business owners, service agencies and policy makers on all levels are part of the system, and therefore, critically important to developing workable solutions. It will take unwavering commitment, meaningful collaboration and concerted effort to bring it all together, but anything is possible in the face of emergency. Let’s get to it.

is a systems engineer, entrepreneur and former Chairman of Manhattan Community Board 7. He is also a candidate for New York City Council representing the Upper West Side.

Photo by iheartfishtown, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

When the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) announced in July that it would soon move 200 homeless families into two residential West 95th Street Buildings, community members, elected officials and Community Board 7 (CB7) objected. The buildings were designed as single room occupancy units for low income residents, they argued, and were not equipped to provide treatment for the homeless’ large population of addicts and the mentally ill.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, City Council Member Gale Brewer, Assembly member Linda Rosenthal and Community Board 7 chair Mark Diller sent a letter to DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond at the time asking him to suspend efforts to place the homeless families in the two buildings, 316 and 330 West 95th Street.

Yesterday, DHS decided not to listen. The Department moved 10 of the families into the former building, with plans to add the remaining 190 – a total of over 400 new residents – to both buildings over the next few months, according to Diamond.

“We’re absolutely furious about it,” one of the buildings’ 71 existing residents told New York Post. “No one was told anything at all.”

Now, Stringer, Brewer and Rosenthal are joining with State Senator Adriano Espaillat, Community Board 7 and Upper West Side residents in calling on DHS again to suspend immediately all efforts to refer clients to the buildings.

“[T]he proposal to house 200 adults, who are currently homeless, in 100 tiny rooms at 316 and 330 West 95 Street on a temporary basis is poor planning, poor policy, and includes little if any transparency,” said Brewer in a statement. “The process should have included a substantive planning discussion with Community Board 7, elected officials, current residents of the two buildings, and responsible neighborhood leaders to find a solution to the need for shelter for homeless individuals.”

Stringer agreed. “New Yorkers understand that all neighborhoods share in the responsibility to provide housing to those in need,” he said in a statement. “But abruptly moving a 400-person shelter into a residential neighborhood in the dead of summer with no community consultation, no contract and no long-term plan only creates bad will and sets back the cause of fighting homelessness.”

“By failing to conduct a dialogue with the community and the elected officials who represent it,” said Rosenthal, “DHS and its former commissioner Robert Hess have disrespected thoroughly this neighborhood.”

According to a letter sent to Community Board 7 on July 19, DHS will be contracting with a company called Aguila Inc. to operate transitional housing facilities at 316 and 330 W. 95th St. They will house 200 adult families, which could mean upward of 400 individuals.

When determining where and how to house its homeless residents, the city is pulled by two laws that sometimes place a greater burden on certain communities. New York is a right-to-shelter city, meaning that DHS is responsible for providing a bed for every resident, every night. It also has to adhere to the fair share doctrine that calls for every community district to house an equal number of the city’s homeless population—in other words, the city can’t place a cluster of shelters in one neighborhood in the Bronx and leave other neighborhoods without any shelters.

But when the number of homeless New Yorkers comes close to the number of available beds, an emergency situation is created that allows DHS to site temporary transitional housing in neighborhoods without regard to the fair share rules. It’s this emergency loophole that has Upper West Siders upset.

“All of [the elected officials] have gotten lots of emails from residents in the community who are just fed up with the city placing people on 94th and 95th Street corridors when there’s a homeless emergency,” said Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal. “This is a decade already that they’ve looked at this area as the go-to place. This is a very generous and giving neighborhood, but I think the people in the neighborhood have just reached their limit.”

Rosenthal joined City Council Member Gale Brewer, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Community Board 7 chair Mark Diller in sending a letter to DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond, strongly urging him to suspend the efforts to move people into the West 95th Street facilities.

Part of the objection from local officials stems from the fact that these buildings were designed as single room occupancy (SRO) units, small, inexpensive rooms with shared bathroom and kitchen facilities that could provide permanent housing for low-income residents. But owners and landlords of SROs have a greater incentive to rent to DHS, which Rosenthal said pays $111 per room per day, adding up to much more than a typical $600 or $700-per-month rent on an SRO unit.

Locals insist that they don’t object to housing the homeless in their community, but that they shouldn’t be burdened with a sudden influx of homeless adults when they already have a high number of shelters.

“The Upper West Side in general, and this corridor of the West 90s in particular, currently provides shelter to the homeless and other vulnerable populations through a variety of facilities. These buildings collectively serve thousands of people,” read part of the letter to Diamond.

“This is not NIMBY,” said Diller in an email. “In fact, there are existing buildings being used to serve vulnerable populations as close as a half-block from the location. Rather, it is about achieving the right kind of balance for the vulnerable population, the other residents of the proposed buildings and the surrounding community.”

DHS did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article, and Rosenthal said that the agency has not been forthcoming with the community.

Robert Hess, a former DHS commissioner who is now the chairman and CEO of Housing Solutions USA, which will be merging with Aguila and operating the facilities, wrote in a letter to the Community Board that his company “seek[s] to meet [clients’] needs through a comprehensive continuum of care, knowing the lasting, positive change cannot occur unless the complexity of the problems our clients face is acknowledged and addressed.”

Hess would not speak with a reporter for this story, and his company repeatedly refused to answer any questions about the operations planned for 316 and 330 W. 95th St.

UWS residents line up Wednesday night to voice their concerns to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

More than 100 residents turned out for an Upper West Side town hall meeting July 19, where Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer fielded questions from concerned residents of the West 90s and 100s. The community pressed Stringer, City Council Member Gale Brewer and a panel of officials representing city agencies on such issues as the controversial Jewish Home Lifecare center, hydrofracking and an explosion of rats in the neighborhood.

The line of people waiting to step up to the microphone to say their piece stretched to the back of the room for the entire two-hour meeting. Armed with literature and, sometimes, unconcealed anger, community members and local activists pressed their elected officials for answers and action.

The most discussed issue of the night was the proposed construction of the Jewish Home Lifecare (JHL) center on West 97th Street. JHL, an organization that provides health care and support services for the elderly, seeks to build a new 20-story high-rise nursing home next to P.S. 163, an elementary school. Although the New York City Planning Commission has approved the application, Community Board 7 and local activists have continued to fight against the project.

Avery Brandon, who lives near 97th Street and whose kindergarten-aged daughter will attend P.S. 163 for the next several years, spoke out vehemently against the new building.

“A huge construction project like this can have untold effects on the health of our children,” Brandon said. “With the noise levels and the mental stress that this construction will cause, how will our children be able to learn?”

Brandon and other residents also cited increased congestion, dust and debris and decreased access to the block for emergency responders as potential negative consequences of the project.

On the issue of fracking, the focus of the conversation centered around the contentious Spectra pipeline, a proposed gas line intended to expand the delivery of natural gas to areas in New York and New Jersey. The project, which was approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in May, is slated to run along the coast of New Jersey and cross the Hudson River into Manhattan, bringing gas from the Marcellus Shale acquired through the process of hydraulic fracturing to New York City homes on the Upper West Side.

Residents at the meeting voiced the concerns of many critics of the controversial method, citing in particular what they said are particularly high levels of radon and other radioactive material in Marcellus gas. They emphasized the dangers of using radon-infused gas in New York City kitchens, which tend to be small and often poorly ventilated, as well as the potential effects exposure could have on children in the neighborhood.

Attendees also complained of a growing rat infestation on Upper West Side streets, a problem Brewer assured would be tackled next month in a block-by-block effort conducted by the Department of Health, and the New York Police Department’s ever-contentious stop-and-frisk policy, which NYPD representatives declined to discuss in detail last night.

UWS residents line up Wed. night to voice their concerns to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. (Photo Courtesy of @scottmstringer)

At a packed town hall meeting on the Upper West Side last night, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer fielded questions from concerned residents of the West 90s and 100s. The community came out in full force, pressing Stringer, City Council Member Gale Brewer and a panel of officials representing various city agencies to address their complaints and fears about various neighborhood issues.

Between 100 and 150 residents attended the forum, and the line of people waiting to step up to the microphone to say their piece stretched to the back of the room for the entire two-hour meeting. Armed with literature and, sometimes, un-concealed anger, community members and self-identified local activists pressed their elected officials for answers and action.

Stringer, a contender in the Democratic primary for the 2013 mayoral race, addressed concerns ranging from construction to hydrofracking to rat infestation.

The most-discussed issue of the night was the proposed construction of a Jewish Home Lifecare center on West 97th Street. JHL, an organization that provides health care and support services for the elderly, seeks to build a new, 20-story high-rise nursing home next door to P.S. 163, an elementary school. Although the New York City Planning Commission approved the application, Community Board 7 and local activists have continued to fight against the project.

Avery Brandon, who lives near the 97th Street site and whose kindergarten-aged daughter will be attending P.S. 163 for the next several years, spoke out vehemently against the new building at the meeting.

“A huge construction project like this can have untold effects on the health of our children,” Brandon said. “With the noise levels, and the mental stress that this construction will cause, how will our children be able to learn?”

Brandon and various other residents also cited increased congestion, dust and debris and decreased access to the block for emergency responders as potential negative consequences of the project.

Later, on the issue of fracking, the focus of the conversation centered around the contentious Spectra Pipeline, a proposed natural gas pipeline intended to expand the delivery of natural gas to areas in New York and New Jersey. The project, which was approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in May, is slated to run along the coast of New Jersey and cross the Hudson River into Manhattan, bringing gas from the Marcellus Shale — acquired through the process of hydraulic fracturing — to New York City homes on the West Side.

Residents at the meeting last night voiced opposition shared by many critics of the controversial method, citing in particular what they said are particularly high levels of radon and other radioactive material in Marcellus gas. They emphasized the dangers of using radon-infused gas in New York City kitchens, which tend to be small and often not well-ventilated, as well as the potential effects exposure to fracked gas could have on children in the neighborhood.

Attendees also complained of a growing rat infestation on Upper West Side streets — a problem which Council Member Brewer assured would be tackled next month in a block-by-block effort conducted by the Department of Health — and the New York Police Department’s ever-contentious Stop and Frisk policy, which NYPD representatives declined to discuss in detail last night.

Students study Hebrew at another location of the Hebrew Charter Network.

A neighborhood that went to battle to fiercely oppose the opening of one charter school in the recent past is now set to welcome another with open arms.

The Hebrew Charter School Center is preparing to open its newest school in Community Education District 3, which covers the Upper West Side as well as parts of West and Central Harlem. Last year, many Upper West Side parents and politicians, as well as the community board and the Community Education Council (CEC), fought to keep a branch of the Success Academy Charter Network from opening there, mostly based on the fact that the school was to be co-located with the Brandeis High School complex.

Despite the vehement objections of education activists and two lawsuits, the school opened last fall and received 515 applications from within the district for 74 seats for the 2012-2013 school year.

But the Hebrew Charter school has received stamps of approval from the CEC and the community board and received its charter from the New York State Board of Regents in June, clearing the way for it to open in the fall of 2013 somewhere in southern Harlem. It will be called Harlem Hebrew Language Academy.

Mark Diller, chair of Community Board 7, said that one of the most attractive parts of the school’s application to the board was that it was committed to finding its own privately owned space and would not be co-located with an existing public school.

“It truly net adds seats rather than reallocating them,” Diller said in an email. “[The school also] has both a commitment to and a track record (at its sister school in Brooklyn) of encouraging applications from and actually enrolling and serving children with a variety of special needs, as well as English language learners.”

Diller said that the presentation made to the board focused on the value of bilingual education; how it can help those struggling with English as well as create a “level playing field” as all of the students learn Hebrew for the first time.

That element, the dual-language immersion program, is the other thing that sets the future school apart from other educational options in the neighborhood. The school will teach secular Hebrew, which board member David Gedzelman said is one of the ways they can attract a very diverse student body.

“We try to create integrated schools,” Gedzelman said. “We try to position our schools in geographic areas where the district itself is diverse so that we can create diversity.”

Gedzelman points to their school in Brooklyn, which he said has about 45 percent minority students, as an example of the makeup they hope to have for District 3.

“Our model of a dual-language program with modern Israeli Hebrew [means] there’s one constituency that naturally seeks out the school”—Jewish families—“and that helps to diversify the school,” he said.

Gedzelman said they’ve been working with churches and community-based organizations in Harlem to get the word out about the school and convince families that it’s not just for Jewish kids.

“Hebrew has gone through a lot of evolution over the last 30 years,” Gedzelman said. “It’s a modern secular language. It’s the language of the state of Israel, which has 7 million citizens—25 percent of the population is actually not Jewish.”

He said that Israel’s growing tech sector, as well as Technion—Israel Institute of Technology’s partnership with Cornell University to build a giant tech campus on Roosevelt Island in the next few years, makes Hebrew an attractive second language for any young children. One of the teachers at their Brooklyn school, an African American and a Muslim, learned Hebrew himself in order to teach gym classes in two languages, Gedzelman said.

The teaching model at the school will be based on immersive language learning as well as constant individualized assessment of students to tailor their learning. There will also be an emphasis on community service. The school plans to open with three sections of kindergarten students, 26 in each class. Its charter is currently K-5, but Gedzelman said they hope to expand up to 8th grade when they renew their charter.

The proposal would add 190 buildings to the Upper West Side’s Riverside-West End Historic District between West 79th and 87th streets. Although the proposal must go before the City Council, which has 120 days to make its decision, many who had been promoting the extension for years consider this small step a success

“This extension is a perfect complement to the existing historic district and deserves the same degree of protection,” said Robert B. Tierney, chairman of the LPC, in a press release. “A number of owners, block associations and preservation advocacy groups, in particular the West End Preservation Society, were instrumental in bringing this extension to fruition, demonstrating the broad-based support for the landmark protection of this historic neighborhood.
Josette Amato, executive director of the West End Preservation Society, said that since its founding in 2007, the organization has pushed for an extension of the district. The group commissioned a Columbia University study to evaluate the stretch of blocks in March 2009. As it turned out, the commission offered to expand the district even further than the society initially suggested—a welcome change for Amato.

“We had several representatives at the vote and we were just overwhelmed—we were so incredibly happy,” Amato said. “Some people in the room were actually breaking down in tears. We were just thrilled.”

Local resident Sukey Gutin, who lives on West End Avenue and West 85th Street, thinks the decision fosters an awareness of the neighborhood’s rich background.

“I’m absolutely delighted because we’re preserving some history, which doesn’t seem to mean much to most people,” she said. “This district is livable and charming, and I think it’s one of the last areas that can be preserved.”

Mark Diller, chair of the Upper West Side’s Community Board 7, said the Board “enthusiastically and overwhelmingly” supported the creation of the Riverside-West End Historic District.

“West End Avenue is a desirable neighborhood, and it can only remain so if it is preserved,” Diller said. “It takes government to do it, and I’m proud that my Board supported it.”

Local elected officials have also expressed their support for the district extension, and Amato said their help was instrumental in gaining the commission’s favor.

“Regrettably, West End buildings are being demolished one by one,” said Council Member Gale Brewer in a statement. “Unless we act, it will become just another hodge-podge of high-rise warehouses occupied by people who think of New York as a motel on the way to somewhere else.”

The extension is only one piece of a larger proposal under consideration. The commission will also consider extending the West End Collegiate District, from West 70th to West 79th Street, and the far northern end of the district, from West 89th to West 109th Street.
Despite this success, Cristiana Peña, interim executive director of LANDMARK WEST!, another group that advocated for the extension, doesn’t think future extensions will be a shoe-in.

“West Siders know better than to think of this as a fait accompli,” Peña said in an email. “Our continued collaboration and perseverance is critical.”

The extension has not achieved all-around support; the Real Estate Board of New York has spoken out against it, arguing that further landmarking would prevent property owners from making even the slightest changes to their buildings. The Board did not respond to requests for comment.

But Amato said that the landmarking will not heavily hinder building changes.

“We don’t see it as dropping development or freezing anything in time,” she said. “What we do see it as is having oversight or guidance on what changes will take place and what development will actually occur. We don’t think this will prevent anything from changing.”