By Sophia Rosenbaum

Chocolatier Jacques Torres’ business is booming at his Brooklyn shop—but melting on Hudson Street.

Torres attributes the success of his Dumbo outlet to the area’s rezoning, which sparked a residential boom. He’s hoping the same will happen in Hudson Square, an area in west Soho, where a rezoning plan that would change the area from largely a manufacturing district to a mixed-use district is the subject of dispute.

“If you want a neighborhood, you have to bring character to the neighborhood,” Torres said. “A small bar. Someone who can make bread. People selling books, a small grocery store. All of those things make a neighborhood.”

Torres and other Hudson Square business owners got a glimmer of hope for their rezoning plea Oct. 18, when Community Board 2 nixed the proposal but set the stage for a compromise. The board wants building heights set out in the zoning plan lowered, more open space put aside and part of the adjacent South Village to be landmarked.

“It’s a cat-and-mouse game,” board chair David Gruber said about the preservation of the South Village. “We have to save it from getting knocked down, because if it lags too much behind, we’ll lose a lot of buildings.”

Trinity Real Estate, which owns 40 percent of the property in Hudson Square, has been working for a decade on promoting the rezoning project, which would affect a 34-block swath bounded by the West Side Highway, Morton and Barrow streets, Sixth Avenue and Hudson Street, and Canal Street.

About 4 percent of the area is currently designated as residential, which translates to a few hundred people, according to Lloyd Kaplan, whose law firm represents Trinity. Kaplan said the proposed rezoning could bring 6,000 new residents.

“It’s a significant gain, but hardly an overwhelming one,” Kaplan said. “It seems like the right kind of balance that would produce around-the-clock 24/7 activity that supports retail developments that are so important to the future of any area.”

Andrew Berman, the executive director for the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, said he was “pleased with the language” in the board’s recommendation.

“It seems as though the community board recognizes that this is absolutely essential,” Berman said. “Rezoning will only accelerate the destruction of the South Village.”

The zoning proposal calls for building-height limits of 320 feet on avenues and 185 feet on narrower side streets. The board wants to limit building height on avenues to 250 feet for buildings with affordable housing and 210 feet for those without. On side streets, the board wants a maximum of 185 feet with affordable housing and 165 feet without.

Berman believes the board’s height limits are still too high, saying the numbers encourage out of character high-rise buildings.

“Hudson Square is more densely built up than Soho and the Village, but it’s not Midtown,” Berman said. “They come too close to allowing the mistakes that have already happened, like the Trump Soho building.”

But local merchants see rezoning as much-needed progress.

“It’s just the evolution of the city, and it happens all the time,” said Peter Howlett, director of design at the upscale furniture showroom George Smith, which has a branch on Hudson Street.

Nicholas Balint, manager of the Hudson Square Pharmacy, believes it’s inevitable that bigger chain stores will inhabit the area without zoning changes.

“You’re going to get a Jamba Juice and a J. Crew next to 200-year-old buildings,” Balint said.

Balint and Torres, who both referred to Hudson Square as a “ghost town” at nights and on weekends, are hopeful the rezoning will bring new life to their businesses.

“How can this neighborhood live like this?” Torres asked. “We need people to come to this neighborhood to make it alive.”

Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons

More than 100 neighborhoods around New York City have applied for “traffic calming measures,” according to a statement issued by Transportation Alternatives, after Mayor Bloomberg unveiled his new “slow zone” program. The Department of Transportation has so far granted 13 safe zones, which reduce the speed limit in designated neighborhood areas from 30 mph to 20 mph. Speed bumps and additional signage are also being implemented in these zones.

Transportation Alternatives reports a pedestrian has an almost 100 percent chance of surviving a collision with a car moving at 20 mph. Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said: “the likelihood of dying after being hit drops from 70 percent to 5 percent if drivers reduce speeds from 40 mph to 20 mph.” The majority of all crashes fatal to pedestrians also take place on neighborhood streets, and speeding is the primary cause of these accidents, taking 45 lives in 2010.

Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Paul Steely White called the decision “a victory for these neighborhoods.”

The DOT implemented the first safe zone in the Bronx last year and has since been taking applications for others. Installation of a safe zone requires approval from the local community board. TA’s Michael Murphy said the decision is also influenced by the rate of traffic crashes in a given area.

“Speeding on our streets is really a matter of life or death,” said Sadik-Khan. Others, however, are more suspicious: “The DOT’s programs seem to be doing everything they can to increase congestion,” said Robert Sinclair, an AAA spokesman.

The 13 approved zones are expected to be installed by 2013, reports am NY. 

The locations currently planned are:

* The Bronx: Mt. Eden, Baychester, Eastchester, Riverdale
* Brooklyn: Boerum Hill
* Manhattan: Inwood
* Queens: Corona, Elmhurst, Jackson Heights/East Elmhurst, Auburndale
* Staten Island: New Brighton/St. George, Dongan Hills, Rosebank

—Alissa Fleck

The Department of Education rolled out a new rezoning plan last week in the hope of settling the growing problem of overcrowded schools in Lower Manhattan and increasing waitlists for kindergartens.

But it looks like the DOE is the only one that is content with this new rezoning plan.

While the DOE looks to new zones as the answer, parents, elected officials and Community Board 1 see only one real resolution to this problem: Open more schools as the population increases.

“I have a lot of heartache because a lot of parents say they don’t want zoning to be a rebalancing tool,” said Michael Markowitz, council member of the Community Education Council for District 2, at the DOE’s Nov. 8 rezoning proposal meeting. At the meeting, the DOE’s Elizabeth Rose presented its latest proposal, outlining new zones for children in Tribeca, the West Village, Chinatown and the Financial District.

The rezoning will only go into effect if the CEC approves it within the next 45 days, though CEC and CB1 members think there is a possibility they may extend this time limit for the sake of pending amendments.

The latest proposal looks to relieve pressure on P.S. 234 on Greenwich Street, a school that grapples with waitlists yearly. It also creates a smaller zone for the Peck Slip School, set to open in 2015, and changes the zone of the newly opened Spruce Street School, P.S. 397.

According to the latest plan, a new zone for the upcoming school at the Foundling Hospital location in Chelsea will be instituted when it is opened in 2014, along with one for the Peck Slip School. Another major challenge was a split of Tribeca’s zones—under the proposal, children who live east of West Broadway and north of Murray Street will be zoned for P.S. 1, in Chinatown. These children are currently zoned for P.S. 234 and P.S. 397.

“We asked the DOE to leave the P.S. 234 zone the way it was and they decided to take the northeast piece and send it to P.S. 1, which doesn’t have room—and parents don’t want to go there anyway,” said Paul Hovitz, co-chair of CB1’s Youth Committee.

“This plan brings zones in line with what the community needs and what schools can provide, and addresses the feedback we heard during our last proposal,” said DOE spokesman Frank Thomas.

There was widespread criticism, especially from the CEC and CB1, about the Peck Slip School, which just received an increase of seats. Before children can enter the school itself at 1 Peck Slip, they are attending classes at its incubation site at the Tweed Courthouse.

Currently, Tweed offers room for two classrooms per grade, though when Peck Slip opens there will actually be four classrooms per grade. A shared request from the CEC and CB1 was made to increase the incubation classes to three per grade and tackle exactly what a few rooms on the bottom floor of Tweed are being used for.

“Even if it means putting staff in a trailer for a year, I want to see it happen,” said Shino Tanikawa, CEC president. “We gained another section in the school but the zone is smaller.”

Until Peck Slip is opened, students attending classes at Tweed will automatically be transferred into the specified zone for Peck Slip, if the plan is approved. But Rose argues that increasing the number of classes in Tweed doesn’t work—there’s not enough room and trailers cost too much money for a temporary expense.

The last time the DOE rezoned Lower Manhattan due to its increasing population was three years ago. While parents, community members and the CEC bickered with the DOE over the flaws of its plan, there was really only one solution they all agreed on: open more schools to relieve the pressure instead of shuffling kids around neighborhoods.

“Don’t split up communities like parts of northern Tribeca” said Julie Menin, president of CB1, at the CEC meeting. “Additional schools in the Community Board 1 district are needed for additional growth in areas.”

“They basically rezone to respond to new schools,” said Hovitz following the meeting. Currently, Hovitz and CB1 are coming up with amendments to the rezoning plan, although he is unsure if they will actually be used if requested by the CEC. The DOE has not responded on whether amendments to the proposal are possible.

Photo: The proposed rezoning from the Dept. of Education.

On Oct. 19, Community Board 2 rejected the St. Vincent’s rezoning proposal put forth by the Rudin Management Company. The official statement released by the board said that unless the concerns of the community, including height and bulk, health care delivery and affordable housing, among others, were addressed, the board would “deny each applicant.” The board further decided that “no upzoning, based upon the allowable bulk for community facilities, be granted to Applicant, and that only the allowable bulk for residential development be considered for this project at the site.”

Until it was forced to close in 2010, St. Vincent’s was Greenwich Village’s only hospital. The property is divided in three parts—the East Site, the Triangle Site and the O’Toole Building—bordering Seventh Avenue between West 13th Street and West 11th Street. Rudin Management, run by one of the oldest real estate families in New York, bought the hospital earlier this year for $260 million and have proposed a redevelopment plan to revamp the site.

Under the proposed plan, the site would be developed as a luxury residential complex, a health care center, a two-bed hospital and emergency center, a 564-seat elementary school and a 15,000-square-foot park. The residential complex would comprise seven buildings and five townhouses for a total of 450 housing units.

Although the Rudins plan includes a health care center, the Coalition for a New Village Hospital claims this facility will not be a full-service hospital. “It is just a Duane Reade on stretchers,” wrote Barbara Reuther, 76, a member of the coalition and a resident of the Greenwich Village since 1956, in an email. The Coalition has submitted a petition with 3,500 signatures to the New York City Planning Commission to oppose the proposed plans.

The Coalition for a New Village Hospital, an umbrella organization with around 8,000 members is demanding a full-service, 24-hour acute care, community-based hospital with a Level I trauma emergency center.

Residents are also worried about real estate prices, as new luxury condos in the market could inflate prices in the area.

“The plan ignores affordable housing. The neighborhood continues to cater to the wealthy. I have no rent control and I will not be able to afford the increased rent,” said David Alex Andrejko, a 24-year-old artist who resides in Greenwich Village.

Another group comprised of parents and parent-teacher associations, the Live and Learn Coalition, wants Rudin Management to contribute to the acquisition of 75 Morton St. for local public school space. Although Rudin has proposed a school on the property, the coalition says it would operate at full capacity as soon as it starts due to the influx of new residents in the proposed apartments.

The Queer History Alliance (QHA), a grassroots organization that supports the preservation and exhibition of New York LBGT history, wants an AIDS memorial to be built at the Triangle Site on 76 Greenwich Ave., a 26,000-square-foot open space.

In an interview before the hearing, QHA co-founder Paul Kelterborn argued that the history of St. Vincent’s, the “ground zero” of the epidemic in the 1980s, should be commemorated. The Community Board, in a resolution passed Oct. 20, supported this proposal.

Also at the hearing, however, were some groups that supported the Rudin proposal. Tammy Rivera, of the New York City District Council of Carpenters, said the Rudin plan will create jobs. Cheering her on were around 20 members of the Council of Carpenters.

John Gilbert, chief operating officer of Rudin Management, said the proposal would foster small businesses in the area. “We want to have a conversation with this community and we hope we can continue to have it,” Gilbert added. Rudin expects the project to create more than 500 permanent jobs—including 400 in health care.

Rudin Management is proposing a a small healthcare center and a school at the former St. Vincent’s site. Community members want a full-service hospital.
PHOTO BY ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Wymore likely made a bit a civic history by becoming the first transgender chair of a community board.

The Arizona native, who moved to the Upper West Side in 1988, has been on the board for 13 years. She said her proudest accomplishment has been the revitalization of the 59th Street Recreation Center.

As chair, Wymore wants to broaden the board’s agenda beyond zoning applications and permits.

“There’s a whole plethora of issues out there in the community around which there are no application processes, such as healthcare, senior citizens or housing,” Wymore said. “The community board has an opportunity to engage on these issues and make a difference.”

Rosenthal, who planned to run for City Council before term limits were extended, will stay on the board she has served on for more than 10 years.

Rosenthal said she is most proud of her push to provide detailed analysis of new developments in the neighborhood, increased meeting transparency and community outreach.

Rosenthal was also appointed co-chair of a mayoral task force on the future of community boards.

William C. Thompson, Jr.
New York City Comptroller

Letters have been edited for clarity, style and brevity.