Richard Blodgett has spent decades getting to know the Charlton Street community

By Rebecca Temerario

Richard Blodgett didn’t expect to fall in love with New York. After graduating from Middlebury College in 1962, Blodgett relocated to New York City for a job with the Wall Street Journal. In 1968, Blodgett moved to his current address. Forty-four years later, Blodgett remains a resident of historic Charlton Street, where he serves as president of the Charlton Street Block Association, a position he has held on and off for 10 years.

Blodgett instantly fell in love with Charlton Street because of the old houses and neighborhood charm.

“Everybody knows each other. I have a neighbor who has been here since 1941,” he said.
Charlton Street possesses a rich history; Aaron Burr is credited with the conception of Charlton Street, naming the road after Dr. John Carlton, a former president of the New York Medical Society. John Jacob Astor funded the street’s development, and George Washington once resided in the area. Other notable residents have included poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, singer Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary, and actress Sarah Jessica Parker.

As Charlton Street’s resident community builder, Blodgett “likes interacting with people—it’s a wonderful way to know neighbors and work together for the community.” Blodgett’s block association contains 325 houses on Charlton Street from Sixth Avenue to Varick Street. The Charlton Street Block Association is also responsible for the upkeep of Charlton Plaza, a neighborhood park.

“We have a lot of resident gardeners,” Blodgett said.

Blodgett also serves on the South Village Advisory Board, part of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.

“Dick has been the president of the Charlton Street Block Association for more years than I can count,” said Andrew Berman, head of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. “He is a neighborhood historian and has led fights to address traffic safety issues and to preserve the character of his neighborhood. He knows everyone in his little micro-neighborhood south of Houston Street.”

Blodgett not only knows his neighbors, he knows his restaurants and shops too. Speaking of a favorite restaurant in the South Village, Once Upon a Tart, Blodgett can say that he “was there the day it opened, twenty-some years ago.” Pointing to vintage pictures on the wall, Blodgett comments that Once Upon a Tart was once a bakery. He even knows the owner.

Blodgett’s role as community builder and historian doesn’t stop there. He has partnered with Berman and the South Village Advisory Board in order to historically preserve the South Village, and designate the area from Sixth Avenue to West Boulevard, between West Third Street to Watts Avenue. Unlike Charlton Street, which was designated as a historic district in 1966, that area isn’t protected from the possibility of buildings being torn down. Blodgett wants to change that.

Currently, Blodgett is involved with the Coalition for the Pedestrian Safety and Houston and Sixth. After a woman was killed near that intersection in August, the Coalition has petitioned the Department of Transportation for “a dedicated green light for pedestrians, so that they can cross while all traffic at the intersection is stopped,” said Blodgett. The Coalition collected 1,624 signatures on their petition, and is supported by New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Blodgett and the Community Board are currently awaiting a response from the DOT.

Blodgett has also been an instrumental voice in a proposed rezoning of Houston Square. The area near Trinity Church as it stands now is mostly commercial, but seeks residential zoning. Blodgett is working with Trinity Church on the issue of building height; he stresses that the tall buildings would change the character of Houston Square.

In his role as president of the Charlton Street Block Association, Blodgett has become an integral voice of his community. He has even penned an extensive history of Charlton Street. Blodgett will surely join the list of notable Charlton Street residents as future historians and community builders look back on his admirable service to his community.

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.”

City Approves East Village Landmark District
Neighborhood preservation groups secured a victory on Tuesday, Oct. 9, when the New York City Landmarks Preservation Society voted to approve the Lower East Side/East Village Historic District. The district includes 330 buildings and covers parts of the 15 blocks between Avenue A and the Bowery, and between St. Mark’s Place and Second Street in the southwest corner of the East Village. Local groups have been clamoring for such protections for years now, under mounting pressure from developers. The president of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman, lauded the approval, saying, “This neighborhood has been a mecca for artists, immigrants and innovators for the past two centuries. That proud and dynamic history not only shaped New York, but our nation and the world. Too much has been lost of late in the East Village to new high-rise dorms, hotels and luxury condos.”

Wall Street Collectors Bourse
The Wall Street Collectors Bourse returns for its second year at the Museum of American Finance from Thursday, Oct. 18, through Saturday, Oct. 20. The show, this year titled “Memorabilia of Finance,” includes items such as stock and bond certificates, autographs, medals, bank notes and coins, connecting them to historic events. In addition, there will be the “Inaugural Anniversary Celebration of Important Global Companies.” Some leading companies celebrating their anniversaries this year will offer objects or services connecting themselves with the news of the day—reminding the audience that their anniversaries are important on a larger historical scale.

Stuyvesant High School is scheduled to open the show with a ribbon-cutting on Thursday morning, and on Friday two important numismatic organizations will hold special events for their members at the Bourse. The featured speaker for Friday’s dinner at historic India House will be the prominent Belgian auctioneer and dealer Mario Boone. The auction, by Archives International Auctions, will be on Saturday, Oct. 20, in the gallery of the Museum of American Finance.
The Museum is free during the Bourse events. For more information, visit www.wallstreetbourse.com.

Léman Prep School Hosts Compost Sale to Benefit Feeding Children Everywhere
On Oct. 3, Léman Prep hosted a fundraiser for “Feeding Children Everywhere,” a charity devoted to getting healthy meals to hungry children across the world. The school raised money through selling handmade compost, comprised of food scraps and other cafeteria leftovers, which the students have been storing in containers on Léman’s roof since September. The bundles of nutrient-rich compost cost from $5 to $15. Each parcel came with a packet of seeds, promoting sustainability and giving the compost a purpose even for those not used to gardening. Léman Prep is part of the Meritas family of institutions, which has sister schools throughout Latin America, Asia and Europe. Accordingly, Léman strives to make its students “see beyond the Manhattan harbor and engage in a conversation with others around the world.”

Mayor Announces Huge Gun Bust in Manhattan
One hundred firearms were seized and 16 gun traffickers indicted in what amounted to one of Manhattan’s biggest gun busts in the last five years, Mayor Bloomberg, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced last Friday.

The confiscations came after two ongoing undercover police investigations in East Harlem. In both cases, undercover detectives purchased dozens of weapons from illegal sources. At least 10 of the sold guns were reportedly bought in South Carolina and smuggled up to New York.

“This investigation illustrates both the problem of illegal guns being purchased in other states and brought here illegally, and the skill and dedication of the NYPD officers who take the guns off the street, often at great risk to themselves,” Bloomberg said at a press conference.

“There have been 127 shooting incidents this year in Manhattan, with 152 victims,” District Attorney Vance added in a statement. “Gun traffickers are bringing violence to our neighborhoods by selling illegal firearms—they are at the root of the problem of gun violence in this city.”

City Council Approves Seward Park Project
The Seward Park Redevelopment Project (SPURA) was approved last Thursday in a unanimous decision, to the delight of Community Board members, council members and many residents of the Lower East Side. The project will convert 1.65 million square feet of vacant city land into a space with commercial and community facilities, and 1,000 housing units, many of which will be permanent, affordable housing.

Councilwoman Margaret Chin, who spearheaded the modification of the City Planning Commission’s original proposal, said, “Today’s vote to approve development of the SPURA site is truly history in the making.”

The project has many provisions that would benefit local and low-income families.

Tears were literally shed by community members at a recent hearing about the future of the NoHo Historic District’s 19th century Merchant’s House, as they spoke fondly of the home’s significance.

Several groups including the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP), the Historic Districts Council and members and volunteers with the Merchant’s House Museum gathered before a Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) hearing Tuesday, Sept. 11, in support of the Merchant’s House.

Developers are approaching the LPC asking to build a nine-story hotel right next to the historic home and museum. The construction involves tearing down a 1945 one-story garage between Lafayette and Bowery. The GVSHP, Parks Department and other groups worry construction will undermine the home’s foundation and have other negative impacts on its structure. Advocates for the home also believe the hotel would be aesthetically out of character with its low-rise surroundings.

According to Judy Nash and Tony Onorato, members of the Merchant’s House museum who have lived in Brooklyn their entire lives, the 1832 home is the oldest untouched house in New York City, with everything left “exactly as it was.” The house maintains all its original 19th century furnishings, explained the couple.

“We’re here because it’s so important for this house to survive,” said Nash. Much too much of the city is gone because of reckless decisions.”

“If even the smallest detail is compromised, it’s a loss to all of us,” added Onorato.

Rosalind Gnatt, a professional soprano singer, has donated 10 years of service to the museum as a part of the Bond Street Euterpean Singing Society. The group regularly performs 19th century parlor music concerts in the home.

“The city deemed [the home] important enough to pour tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money into its preservation,” said Gnatt. “It’s not just a historic landmark, it’s a unique historic landmark.”

Diane Jackier, chief of staff of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, testified at the hearing that the home was landmarked in 1965 by the Landmark Commission, and was among the first designations.

Project designers, developers and structural engineers laid out their plan to monitor the Merchant’s House throughout construction to avoid any damage to the museum, but many expressed concern these measures were not adequate.

Community members in support of the Merchant’s House pointed out the house had already closed for over two years in the past due to structural damage resulting from nearby construction. They demanded certain protective measures be put in place prior to building, including a height limit on the hotel ranging from two to four stories and an agreement by developers to pay for any damage in addition to various proactive measures.

Sen. Tom Duane and Councilwoman Rosie Mendez also submitted testimony in support of the home, calling for certain preventive steps like vibration monitoring devices and geotechnical and catastrophe planning.

Pi Gardiner, executive director of the Merchant’s House museum, called the house a “miracle of survival” and asked the commission to deny the application outright. Gardiner said after thousands of hours spent in the home, she knew firsthand of its fragility.

In agreement with Gardiner’s assessment, the chair of the Board of Directors at the house, Nick Nicholson, reiterated a point he had made in the past: “It’s not a question of if [the house] will suffer damage, it’s how much.”

Doris Diether, well-known community activist and co-chair of Landmarks Committee with Community Board 2, teared up as she took to the podium to provide testimony.
“The Merchant’s House is a federal, state and city landmark inside and out,” said Diether. “How much more damage can this precious landmark endure?”

The LPC has left the record open, meaning community members are still able to submit testimony. The commission will convene again to discuss the construction plan at a future public meeting.

Community Board 2 (CB2) held a public hearing last week on a proposal to rezone Hudson Square, the burgeoning media district between West Houston, Greenwich and Canal Streets and Sixth Avenue.

Most workers leave the neighborhood after business hours due to its lack of housing and shops, but Trinity Real Estate, owners of more than 40 percent of the area’s properties, seek the city’s permission to transform the neighborhood into a bustling mixed-use commercial and residential community.

Local residents, business owners and activists attended the hearing to share their opinions on the company’s vision, and while most agreed that Hudson Square would profit from some level of rezoning, many worried that the current plan’s scale would damage the neighborhood’s identity.

Trinity representative Carl Weisbrod outlined the proposal, which aims, in his words, “to increase the area’s special appeal to creative companies, and to protect neighborhood character.” He explained that the plan would bolster retail and residential growth mostly by imposing restrictions—limiting the neighborhood’s currently-uncapped building dimensions, banning most building demolitions and conversions and prohibiting large hotels and nightclubs from opening without special permits. Regulations would require wide buildings to reserve ground-floor space for retail, and Trinity would provide a 444-seat public elementary school at its own expense.

The plan wants to cement Hudson Square as a “walking neighborhood,” said another representative, who promised high street walls, rows of boutique shops, many trees and bike lanes. Weisbrod claimed that Trinity expects the area’s residential capacity to increase up to 3,400 units (including 20 percent affordable housing) within 10 years, with construction beginning around the end of 2013.

Some attendees enthusiastically supported the proposal, urging CB2 to recommend the plan to City Hall “as it is.” A few speakers lined up at the microphone to applaud Trinity for considering the community’s requests for building-dimension limits and a local school.

“The neighborhood needs density to allow for a sustainable middle class,” agreed one resident. “You need to have enough buildable area in a neighborhood so that developers will come and build.”

Many other attendees, however, questioned the price the neighborhood would have to pay for development. Zack Winstine, co-chair of the Greenwich Village Community Task Force, contended new retail space would only create more banks and chain stores that would homogenize the neighborhood’s industrial, historic character.

“I’m worried about the loss of the smaller historic buildings in the area,” he told Our Town Downtown after the hearing. “Allowing residential will greatly increase the incentives for developers to knock down these buildings and build highly profitable new residential structures of the maximum size allowed by the new zoning.” He noted that smaller commercial tenants also could be priced out of the area.

Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, shared Winstine’s concern: “The proposed building heights are just out of scale for the neighborhood. On the Duarte Square site, it would allow a building as tall as Trump SoHo, and on other major avenues it would allow buildings of 320 feet in height, which is significantly taller than virtually any other building in the neighborhood except Trump.”

Berman and Winstine have joined other community leaders in demanding reduced building dimensions in Hudson Square as well as landmark protection for the neighboring historic South Village, which they argue also would be at risk for over-development. Other speakers called for the preservation of more open space in the area, a commitment by Trinity to build a connection between the neighborhood and Hudson River Park on Spring Street and fewer development restrictions on properties not owned by the real estate company.

The debate is just beginning to go public, with another hearing scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 19, at the Fire Museum on Spring Street. CB2 is one of multiple committees that will consider local opinion and critique the plan over the next several months, before Trinity submits its final draft of the proposal to City Hall for approval next year.

Photo Courtesy of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation

The City Planning Commission voted today to approve an amended proposition by Jamestown Properties to upzone Chelsea Market. This plan allows for new structures to be built atop the 9th and 10th Ave ends of the complex, a modification zoning regulations currently prohibit, according to a statement by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP).

The next step is for City Council to vote on the decision—the Council has 50 days to hold hearings. The Council’s approval would be the final step in ratifying the plan.

In 2007 the GVSHP got Chelsea Market listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places. GVSHP claims the renovations would ruin this important landmark—the former NABISCO headquarters where the Oreo cookie was founded. GVSHP Executive Director Andrew Berman said the expansion would introduce more traffic and congestion to an area already “bursting at the seams.”

GVSHP is urging City residents to contact Speaker Christine Quinn and express their disapproval for the plan, which will be voted on by the Council in coming months.

—Alissa Fleck

Greenwich Village. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

by Adel Manoukian

A historic house at 186 Spring Street may be torn down by owner and Canadian developer Nordica, but not if the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) has anything to say about it.

The GVSHP has recently discovered that the 1824 house, formerly owned by Beastie Boys member Adam Horovitz, has historic significance in early gay and AIDS activism. It served as a “gay commune” right after the 1969 Stonewall Riots—a series of violent demonstrations against a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village. Residents of the house in the early 1970s included Jim Owles, the first openly gay candidate for city public office and Dr. Bruce Voeller, the co-founder and director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. This organization was the first to advocate gay and lesbian rights and was able to remove “homosexuality” off the list of mental disorders among other accomplishments.

The house is also located within GVSHP’s South Village Historic District, which the organization is trying to preserve as a whole.

The Canadian developer Nordica is planning to build a seven-story building that will have two floors of retail, three single-floor apartments and a duplex penthouse at 182 Spring Street, according to DNA Info.

Because of these recent discoveries, GVSHP has been able to get letters of support from political representatives like State Senator Tom Duane and City Councilmember Danny Dromm. The organization also urges residents and people in support of the fight to write letters to the Landmarks Preservation Committee (LPC). Due to the continued support, the City has not yet issued demolition permits for the space and GVSHP is trying to keep it that way.

Residents, politicians, activists envision impact of NYU’s long-term expansion plan

New York University scored a key victory last week as the City Council approved a slightly scaled back version of the school’s controversial 2031 expansion plan. While the project was pared down, it will still add close to 6 million square feet of academic space throughout the city. Nearly half of the expansion, equal to about the size of the Empire State Building, would be concentrated on two Washington Square-area superblocks located near the school’s main campus in Greenwich Village.

The NYU plan calls for four new buildings on the two large blocks bordered by LaGuardia Place and Mercer, West Houston and West 3rd streets. The buildings will be used for both academic and residential purposes.
The plan has generated an enormous amount of discussion and controversy both for and against since it was unveiled by NYU officials in 2010. Moreover, the Council’s approval comes at a time when residents uptown are waging a battle of their own against Columbia University’s mammoth, long-range plan in West Harlem that includes a 17-acre, $6.3 billion campus expansion.

Opponents of the NYU plan, including village residents, activists, NYU faculty members and others, have already vowed to continue the fight, including an expected legal challenge, to get the plan sent back to the drawing board and significantly revised. The plan has the support of the mayor and is unlikely to be vetoed.
But what if the current incarnation of the plan is upheld and remains largely unchanged? What will Greenwich Village look like in 2031? Will it be congested, overcrowded and largely unlivable, as many naysayers suggest, or will the plan usher in a new chapter of peaceful coexistence between NYU and its Village neighbors?

“When I ask myself what the Village will look like in 20 years, the first thing I see is large, concrete, functional-looking buildings casting long shadows over the neighborhood; absorbing all the light. The only outdoor space for people to congregate will be Washington Square Park, and you know how crowded that gets now!” said Janet Hayes, who lives in a high-rise co-op at 505 LaGuardia Place near Houston.

A longtime resident of the Village and a local Republican leader, Hayes predicted that NYU’s plan, if allowed to come to fruition, would greatly affect life in the Village and not in a good way.

“Take grocery shopping, using the dry cleaner or going out to dinner, for example—full-service restaurants will be replaced with beer halls, pizza places and other fast-food sources,” Hayes predicted.

She added that more stores would cater to NYU and transit would be a “nightmare”; subways and buses would be overcrowded all day long, and “forget catching a cab.”

In support of NYU’s plan, Borough President Scott Stringer, who most recently helped to broker concessions from the school, cited substantial economic benefits for New York City, which include the creation of 9,500 permanent jobs and as many as 18,200 construction jobs over the next 20 years.

Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, has been one of the plan’s most outspoken critics and has worked to help mobilize village residents, activists and like-minded politicians in opposition to a project he has called a “grandiose scheme of a private university’s super-rich board and its president.”

Immediately following last week’s Council vote, Berman said in a press release, “The NYU expansion plan will turn a residential neighborhood into a company town and subject it to 20 straight years of construction.”
Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit planning organization that serves the tri-state area, however, said NYU’s expansion is important to the city for many reasons.

“NYU’s continued success is vital to the economy of New York. The university is among the city’s largest private employers,” Yaro noted. “NYU can continue to attract top students and scholars only if it is able to modernize and expand…By emphasizing density, the NYU plan will avoid harming any of the Village’s historic fabric.”

Asked about possible loss of open space and congestion resulting from NYU’s plan, Council Member Margaret Chin seemed confident the issue has been addressed. “Under this plan, the open space on the superblocks will be improved and it will be fully accessible by the public for the first time,” Chin said in an emailed statement.
“The padlocks and fences around the Sasaki Garden will finally come down, and this park—which few New Yorkers know about—will finally be open to the public. We will also gain a pedestrian walkway, or ‘greenstreet,’ behind the new Zipper Building, which will connect the Village with Soho,” she said.

The Council member added that the walkway would be lined with cafés and restaurants and would have an indoor atrium open to the public year-round.

A spokesperson for Chin also noted that the university would be “bound” by a 500-page restrictive declaration document that specifies what the school can and can’t do with regard to construction, building and other logistics related to the plan.

For example, the school has committed to limit construction to the hours between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. and to limit weekend construction. In addition, the school has promised to assist with construction mitigation issues related to air quality and noise by equipping affected apartments with soundproofing materials.

“This plan is a way to start over. It is a pathway forward,” Chin said. “This plan integrates the Greenwich Village community and NYU in ways that have never been done before.”

Terri Cude, co-chair of Community Action Alliance against NYU 2031 and a member of Community Board 2 (CB2), isn’t so sure of the plan’s integration into the neighborhood.

“If NYU builds everything that is in the current plan, we will have a very dark neighborhood,” Cude said.
Asked about the various committees that were formed by NYU to address community concerns and incorporate residents’ needs into the plan, Cude said, “They attended all the meetings and listened to everything we had to say. The only thing they didn’t do is modify the plan at all based on the input.”

But the concessions brokered by Stringer in early April did in fact include a significant overall density reduction, preservation of public space as parkland, elimination of a temporary gymnasium on the site of two community playgrounds, elimination of proposed dormitories on the Bleecker Building and an affirmation of NYU’s commitment to provide space for a K-8 school.

Brad Hoylman, former chair of CB2 and candidate for state Senate in District 27, testified before the City Planning Commission back in the spring that the NYU plan would “forever alter the character of the neighborhood, bring in thousands of new people into the area [estimates suggest up to 12,000 people daily] and cause decades of construction disruption for local residents.”

Village residents and community garden members Marcia Lawther and Bob Hirschfeld moved to the neighborhood in the mid-1970s. “It’s invasive. It’s crowded enough as it is,” said Lawther when asked about the expansion.

“In the ’70s, things were much quieter, there was not much going on,” recalled Hirschfeld. “NYU was a separate world. It wasn’t elbowing its way into the community.”

However, signs of hope for the future of the project were evident on Tuesday as legislators lauded a new agreement between NYU and the residents of 505 LaGuardia Place in an effort to maintain long-term affordability at the Mitchell-Lama development.

“I am pleased a deal has been reached and much-needed affordable housing has been preserved in Greenwich Village,” said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn in a prepared statement.

“This agreement guarantees that 505 LaGuardia can maintain affordability and that the working-class families that currently reside there will be able to continue to live in a neighborhood they have long called home.”

Photo by wallyg, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

“Chin and Quinn did us in!” jeered over 50 opponents to New York University’s expansion plan from a balcony overlooking City Council’s chamber. “Shame on you!”

Greenwich Village residents, community activists and N.Y.U. professors filled the chamber to capacity yesterday to witness the full City Council’s final vote to approve hotly debated zoning and map changes that will allow the university to construct four new high-rise buildings over the course of 17 years, 2014 to 2031.

The opponents became increasingly vocal as the time to vote neared, and broke into chants just before it. Speaker Christie Quinn asked for silence and warned the opponents that they would be kicked out, but the chants continued, and security escorted the entire balcony out of the building.

The proposal passed by a 44-to-1 vote.

Prior to the meeting, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) commissioned a 32-page report that outlined the negative impacts of the expansion plan, and opponents wrote a letter to City Council that expressed the community’s dissatisfaction with the proposal.

“The NYU expansion plan will turn a residential neighborhood into a company town and subject it to twenty straight years of construction,” said GVSHP Executive Director Andrew Berman in a statement.  “The Council ignored the grave environmental impacts of this plan and the much better options that had been put forward for NYU to locate new facilities in the Financial District; this is a sad day for democracy in New York City.”

John Sexton, N.Y.U.’s president, however, said that the approval marked “a great day for N.Y.U. and for New York City,” and said that the expansion will provide the city with much-needed construction jobs and university positions.

His statement argued that the plan “strikes an important balance: permitting N.Y.U. to maintain academic excellence by meeting our educational- and research-space needs on our existing footprint over the next two decades, while at the same time addressing the concerns of our neighbors on such issues as improving access to open space.”

The opponents are now considering legal action. “We will be working closely with our partners in the NYU faculty and with our lawyers at Gibson Dunn to pursue every avenue available to us to remedy this tragic wrong which has been imposed upon the people of the City of New York,” said Berman.

Landmarking in downtown neighborhoods has surprising opposition from local churches

The city’s preservationists marched downtown last Tuesday to make their voices heard at a Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) hearing on the proposal to create an East Village and Lower East Side Historic District. Landowners, locals and political representatives flooded the ninth floor of City Hall almost to its limits to discuss and argue the LPC’s efforts to preserve the “rich cultural history” of these downtown Manhattan neighborhoods.

The initial plan includes 330 buildings, though 17 more might be added in a revised edition. If designated as an historic district, these buildings, mostly row houses and tenements, would become landmarked and would avoid destruction and alteration, purportedly preserving the area’s cultural significance. This designation, however, would also mean that renovation costs to these particular properties would increase as well.

Among the buildings are the historic Congregation Meseritz Synagogue on East 6th Street, the Max D. Raskin Center on East 6th Street, the Duo Multicultural Center on East 4th Street and the longest continuously running alehouse in New York City, McSorley’s, on East 7th Street.

The majority of those attending the hearing were in support of the plan.

The neighborhood “helps tell the story of immigrant life in 19th- and 20th-century Manhattan,” members of the LPC reported to slight applause from the large group of activists wearing bright “Preserve the East Village Landmark Now” stickers.

“These types of buildings, in the past, have sometimes been less appreciated than high-style architecture,” said one fervent supporter of the move. “However, they are equally as deserving of designation—especially in blocks like East 6th and East 7th Street, which remain meticulous and largely unaltered. We are also pleased to the see the wide variety of…cultural-related architecture.”

Among the supporters were the offices of State Sens. Tom Duane and Dan Squadron, Councilwoman Rosie Mendez and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and local committees like the Cooper Square Committee, the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative, the Historic Districts Council, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and the East Village Community Coalition.

The plan is a “complement to the January designation of the East 10th Street historic district, the first East Village historic district established since the 1969 designation of the St. Mark’s historic district” said the first speaker, a representative for Rosie Mendez. “All three districts have fundamental preservation in common and will work in alliance to preserve the proud legacy of generations of immigrant families.”

Landmarking efforts began earlier this year when, on Jan. 12, the LPC approved a block-long designation on the south side of East 10th Street.

As expected, local clergy were the opposition’s loudest voices, saying their groups would be put under extreme financial strains if their buildings were landmarked.

“There are many examples of financial duress caused by landmark designation, including the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Transfiguration of Our Lord in Brooklyn,” a parish council member of the Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection on East 2nd Street claimed.

“This designated landmark suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars in financial loss during a protracted appeal process to replace their copper roof as a result of time wasted and a sudden increase in commodity costs…Landmark designation against the congregation’s will may represent the death knell of a historic congregation that has served the vulnerable.”

The religiously affiliated speakers cited the LPC as being unreasonable for treating nonprofit parishes the same as profitable establishments, and claimed that the designation transfers authority of cathedrals to civil authority, meaning civil government would dictate religious freedom, violating the First Amendment.

One member of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral went as far as calling the designation “a sin which you’ll be held accountable for.”
Many religious organizations requested that if the proposal is indeed passed, their respective cathedral be excluded from the designation.
The LPC declined to comment on the hearing and the effects it may have had on their deliberations, saying that they don’t usually comment during the process.

According to the LPC’s press office, an additional public hearing will be held on the designation, although the date of the hearing hasn’t been finalized.

By Nick Gallinelli