Save Our Parks and Open Space -- Rally and Petition

Thank you to everyone who joined GVSHP and  our allies this Saturday for our Parks Victory Party and kick off to Save our Parks Week! We had great support from elected officials and were honored to be joined by actress and activist Cynthia Nixon. The event had strong support from open space and community groups from across the City, and sent a strong message about the importance of the recent court ruling in favor in our lawsuit against the NYU expansion plan, the protection it gave to our public open green space. The event also received favorable coverage in the Daily News, Fox News, and even the U.K.'s Daily Mail, among other places.

But now we have to keep the momentum going. GVSHP and allied community groups have placed an on-line petition which will be sent to City officials urging them to support and uphold Judge Mills' decision, which not only protects these parks in the Village from encroachment by NYU, but helps protect public green space citywide.

HOW TO HELP:

• Click here to sign the petition!

Support Grows for Hudson River Park Air Rights Limits

Last month GVSHP and more than a dozen West Side community groups signed on to a three-point plan for limiting the use of air rights from the Hudson River Park, to provide safeguards against abuse of this provision enabled by recent State legislation. Since that time several additional groups have signed on, including Greenwich Village Block Associations (a coalition of nearly every block association in Greenwich Village), the Council of Chelsea Block Associations (covering nearly every block association in Chelsea), and the Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Association, a community-wide organization, among many others.  Read the new expanded letter here.  

Last month, in response to questioning from GVSHP, the Hudson River Park Trust admitted that the air rights legislation recently enacted by the State legislature did in fact create hundreds of thousands and possibly millions more square feet of transferable air rights than previously disclosed. If transferred inland for development, these air rights could result in a very substantial increase in the size and scale of allowable development in our neighborhood along the waterfront. That is why GVSHP and our allies are pushing for limits and safeguards on the use of such air rights.

The elected officials to whom our letter is directed are yet to respond. These City and State legislators are the only ones who can put in place the safeguards and limits we are calling for the protect our neighborhood.

HOW TO HELP:

• Write to City and State officials and urge them to support this three-point plan for protecting our neighborhood from overdevelopment; click here to send letters> >

The Latest from GVSHP's Blog, Off the Grid

GVSHP's blog Off the Grid is visited by nearly 100,000 people each year, and receives over 135,000 pageviews. Have you been keeping up?

           

Catch up with some of our latest posts, including:

• Ten or More Questions with Bob Holman, Village Poet Extraordinaire
• Irish Churches of the Village
• Community Cornerstone: Little Red School House-Elisabeth Irwin High School
• Fashionable Architecture
• Kitty Genovese and the Village
• The Small-Business-Saving Squad of the East Village
• Dave Hill, Your Friendly Neighborhood Comic
• Map It! Finding the Lost Stuyvesant Alley
• The Mexican First Lady and a Jewish Anarcho-Feminist Walk Into An East Village Tenement…
• A Luckless Landmark
• (Street) Signs of the Times

You help make it happen!