This morning the Manhattan Borough Board, following the lead of Borough President Gale Brewer, Councilmember Carlina Rivera, and Community Board #3, approved a below-market single source lease for developer RAL for the Tech Hub at 124 East 14th Street, in spite of the lack of provision of neighborhood protections by the City. The much-touted public benefits which come with the Tech Hub, such as training for underserved New Yorkers and start-up space for small businesses,
could have been built on this incredibly valuable publicly-owned site without the large commercial upzoning requested by the developer -- a major campaign donor to the Mayor. Instead, the Mayor, the City Council and the Borough President all
approved the requested rezoning of the site, which allowed the developer to add more highly-profitable market-rate commercial space on the site than the current zoning allows.
GVSHP was there to call out the inequity and inappropriateness of this deal, which is a lavish giveaway of public resources to a benefactor of the Mayor’s that will increase pressure for inappropriate development in the surrounding Greenwich Village and Eats Village neighborhood. Read our testimony here and here. 
