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Upcoming Critical Public Hearings on South Village and Hudson River Park Air Rights
 We urge you to attend two critical public hearings next Wednesday, February 12th starting at 6:30 pm at Little Red Schoolhouse, 272 Sixth Avenue (at Bleecker Street) before Community Board #2’s Land Use Committee. The first hearing is on a proposal by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation for a contextual rezoning of the South Village, to help preserve that neighborhood’s character and prevent inappropriate development. The second will be a presentation by the Hudson River Park Trust about their plans for selling air rights from the park for development inland in our neighborhood. Both issues are enormously important to our neighborhoods future, and your attendance is vital.
South Village Contextual Rezoning. GVSHP will be making a presentation regarding our proposal to rezone the South Village – read an overview here. The South Village’s current zoning encourages out-of-scale development and grants bonuses for the development of dormitories and other university facilities. While we have been successful in extending landmark protections to much of the South Village, a significant chunk of the neighborhood remains without landmark protections, and would greatly benefit from improved, “contextual” zoning. Even for those parts of the South Village now with landmark protections, appropriate zoning is still necessary to help protect the character of the neighborhood and to address issues such as use, height, and rear yard additions which landmarking sometimes does not. Through this public hearing we hope to get the Community Board to support this proposal to help it to move ahead and become reality. Please come to the public hearing to find out more and support this effort to preserve and protect the South Village.
 Hudson River Park Air Rights Sales. At the same meeting, the Hudson River Park Trust will be making a presentation regarding their plans to sell air rights from the park to allow increased development in our neighborhood to generate revenue for the park, as allowed by recently-passed State legislation. There remain an enormous number of questions about the legislation and the Trust's plans, and the Trust and elected officials have not yet been forthcoming in response to questions from GVSHP and other community groups. GVSHP is opposed to overdevelopment along our waterfront – with or without air rights transfers – and has put forward several alternative scenarios under which air rights could be sold and revenue generated for the park without increasing the size of allowable development along the waterfront. Please come to the public hearing to find out more about the Trust’s plans and to join GVSHP in pushing on these issues.
Thanks, and we hope to see you next Wednesday.
Latest Landmark Applications Available: View them here
Next: 02/11/14
Previous: 01/23/14
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