COMMUNITY BOARD 2 JOINS
VILLAGE PRESERVATION
IN PUSHING BACK ON CITY’S
HOTEL SPECIAL PERMIT PLAN,
& DEMANDING REAL
NEIGHBORHOOD PROTECTIONS
Next Hearing TONIGHT at 6:30!

Some of the recent and looming “Silicon Alley” additions to our neighborhood (l. to r.) 809 Broadway, 3 St. Marks Place, 799 Broadway (11th Street).

Last week scores of Villagers crowded a Community Board 2 hearing joining Village Preservation in criticizing the hotel special permit plan put forward by the City and supported by Councilmember Carlina Rivera as “not half a loaf, but no loaf at all,” and calling for real protections like landmarking for the neighborhood south of Union Square. Village Preservation also blasted the many factual and analytic errors in the City’s environmental review, which missed a 17-story apartment building as it argued for encouraging large-scale office building development in the neighborhood, and ignored landmarks and other historically significant properties which the City should be protecting. Read coverage here and see pictures here, and read Village Preservation’s 35-page letter to city officials documenting all the oversights and mistakes in their analysis.

At last week’s Community Board #2 meeting, attendees demonstrated their opposition to the City’s unwillingness to offer real protections for Greenwich Village and the East Village.

We’re pleased to report that the Community Board 2 Land Use Committee, which has a long and consistent record of calling for real landmark and zoning protections for this area, voted unanimously to call upon the City to return with a real plan for protecting this neighborhood, which is under tremendous development pressure accelerated by the approval of the 14th Street Tech Hub upzoning last year by the Mayor and City Council led by local Councilmember Carlina Rivera. While the special permit plan purports to help protect this neighborhood, the City’s own analysis makes clear that at BEST it would transform hotel development in the area into office building development, and still result in the demolition of low-rise, historic, residential buildings. Clearly the only beneficiaries of this plan are the Mayor’s campaign donors and supporters who lobbied for this plan, including hotel owners (seeking to avoid competition from new hotels) and other real estate interests who want to see Greenwich Village and the East Village transformed into an extension of ‘Midtown South’ and ‘Silicon Alley.’

At last week’s Community Board #2 meeting, attendees demonstrated with a show of hands their opposition to the City’s unwillingness to offer real protections for Greenwich Village and the East Village.

Tonight the plan goes to Community Board #3, representing the East Village (east of 4th Avenue/Bowery).  If you live in the East Village or are interested in this issue, we strongly urge you to attend:
 

Land Use Committee Meeting of Community Board #3
TONIGHT, Wednesday, November 20th at 6:30 pm
(this item will not begin until after 6:30)
Sirovich Senior Center & Volunteers of America
331 East 12th Street (1st/2nd Avenues)

No matter where you live, we also strongly urge you to send letters to City officials calling out this bogus plan and demanding REAL protections for Greenwich Village and the East Village south of Union Square:

Write the Mayor, Councilmember Rivera, Borough President Brewer, and other City Officials TODAY

Find out more at vparchive.gvshp.org/savemyneighborhood.