Tech Hub Approval Is A Bad Deal for Neighborhood
Reeling from Overdevelopment

Last week the City Council, following the lead of local City Councilmember Carlina Rivera, approved Mayor de Blasio’s large commercial upzoning for a piece of city-owned land on 14th Street for construction of a 23-story “Tech Hub.”  Even though Councilmember Rivera promised that she would not support such a deal without comprehensive zoning or landmark protections for the surrounding Greenwich Village and East Village neighborhoods, that’s exactly what happened. Now, unfortunately, the vote and the resulting development will increase the pressure on the surrounding neighborhood for more out-of-scale and out-of-character development, such as the 300+ ft. tall condos and office towers and 300+ room hotels, proliferating now in the area between Union Square and Astor Place.

There’s been a lot of misinformation promulgated about the Council vote and what it means. The articles linked below list some of the common questions that have been raised, and provide some cold hard facts, including:

Didn't the deal include the zoning protections people were asking for? Not even remotely. The ‘protections’ included in the Tech Hub deal are a fraction of a fraction of what the community was fighting for, and what Councilmember Rivera committed, in writing, to condition her support upon – and that’s being generous. We called for comprehensive zoning protections for the University Place, Broadway, and Third and Fourth Avenue corridors with reasonable height limits for new development where none currently exist, prohibitions on large commercial developments like hotels and office buildings in predominantly residential areas, and the addition or reinforcement of incentives for including or preserving affordable housing as part of any new development.  We got none of these.