January 2, 2022
Chin’s Vendetta = What Can We Do?
Chin’s Vendetta
It’s well established that Margaret Chin has held a political grudge against SoHo going back decades, ever since SoHo voters overwhelmingly rejected her at the polls numerous times, as far back as 1991 when the co-founder of the SoHo Alliance defeated her for City Council.
Well, Chin has sown her revenge in her final days in office.
She not only voted for – but spoke out in favor of – de Blasio’s upzoning for SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown which has passed the Council with little modification. The New York Times correctly described de Blasio’s scheme: “For the real-estate class, the spigot of largess produced one of the biggest gifts of all, the passage of a plan to radically rezone SoHo”
Some highlights:
– Big-box retail stores as well as NYU dorms and frat houses will now be permitted.
– Landmark standards were eviscerated to permit greater height, bulk and density.
– Thousands of luxury, market-rate units to be built without a scintilla of a guarantee that a single unit of affordable housing will ever happen, plus more atrocities.
To further twist the screws, Chin supported the flip-tax of $100 per square-foot for a homeowner to convert to straight “Residential” use from “Joint-Live/Work-Quarters-for-
JLWQA use is the most common use in SoHo/NoHo, at least 1,636 units according to City Planning. Zoning requires that a JLWQA unit be occupied by an artist certified by the Department of Cultural Affairs, which is notoriously dysfunctional in determining who is an artist and who is not.
Moreover, for decades the city turned its head and allowed countless non-certified residents to reside here with impunity while collecting tens of millions in property taxes from the increased property valuation.
Now Chin’s flip-tax will extort thousands of residents, many elderly, who want to do right and legalize their residential status. She did not impose a similar flip-tax on commercial properties that want to convert to retail — only on residents.
For example, it would cost a non-certified-artist owner of a 2,500 square-foot residence $250,000 to legalize their home, not to mention professional fees and expenses to bring manufacturing buildings up to residential code requirements.
It gets worse.
In November, unannounced, Chin introduced outrageous and unprecedented legislation that now ranks non-artist JLWQA residency as a “major violation,” the same violation as, say, a work site would receive if a worker was killed or injured on the job.
The first violation starts at $15,000 minimum and subsequent violations $25,000 minimum, with monthly penalties of $1,000 until the flip-tax is paid or the residents are forced from their homes.
The legislation did not have a single co-sponsor, very unusual. As an affront to democracy, there was not a single word of debate on the bill or public testimony allowed.
But the councilmembers rubber-stamped it anyway, as Carlina Rivera egged on her colleagues and as Speaker Corey Johnson eulogized rhapsodically over Margaret Chin.
Borough President Gale Brewer, who lied to our faces repeatedly in 2019 that the Envision SoHo/NoHo process was just a study and no rezoning was planned, has not uttered a word of apology or remorse for the shameful Frankenstein monster she helped create. Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!
What Can We Do?
A group has formed to mount a legal challenge to the rezoning, especially Chin’s extortionate penalties: The Coalition for Fairness in SoHo and NoHo. The SoHo Alliance is working with the Coalition for Fairness in this endeavor.
The Coalition will host a community webinar on Thursday, January 6 at 7:00 pm. Find out what you can do to protect our homes. Register for the Zoom webinar at https://us02web.zoom.us/
The Coalition has created a GoFundMe page to raise funds to retain attorney Jack Lester, who will evaluate the situation and propose a course of action. The SoHo Alliance has used Lester in the past and is pleased with his performance.
We encourage you to join and contribute. (There is no need to tip – GoFundMe already charges for the service.) There is also an option to contribute by check. Contact sohonohocoalition@
December 12, 2021
Rezoning Passes Council Committee
On Thursday the City Council Land Use Committee approved the upzoning of SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown with some modifications. The full Council is expected to pass it within the next week or so.
The only really good news is the elimination of proposed NYU dormitory use and a slight reduction from de Blasio’s proposed heights in NoHo.
However, the proposal will still allow the construction of office buildings, oversized restaurants, big-box stores, more luxury housing, a punitive flip-tax to convert from artists to residential, and draconian fines for residents not possessing artists certification — all this without any guarantee that a single unit of affordable housing will ever be built and without the customary “community giveback” for SoHo/NoHo that usually accompanies these rezonings.
This is a far cry from the 2019 Envision SoHo/NoHo process where hundreds of various stakeholders turned out at numerous public meetings to express their diverse opinions to our local elected officials.
Never in those thousands of hours of dialogue were office towers, flip-taxes or fines ever discussed. Not a single person, not even those involved in real estate, called for more luxury housing. Yet this is what our city politicians have given us.
As TheRealDeal.com reports,”
Not one city official could give a scintilla of a guarantee that a single unit of affordable housing will ever be built. Nor could they deny that — utilizing zoning loopholes — 100% luxury, market-rate housing can be built. Mayor de Blasio’s estimate of hundreds of units of affordable housing is pure blather.
Chin, Rivera Cave
So it is unfortunate that our local councilmembers, Margaret Chin and Carlina Rivera, cravenly caved into a failed administration.
The City Council’s own website says the Council has the final say on land-use and zoning issues, as well as jurisdiction over the City Planning Commission.
City Council members famously defer to the wishes of their colleagues where a local rezoning is being proposed. Chin and Rivera could have shown courage and integrity and do what their constituents overwhelmingly wanted: reject this developer’s dream, send it back to City Planning, and rework it into a true “neighborhood” plan. But they didn’t.
Chin, Rivera and Speaker Corey Johnson (whose council district abuts SoHo and who was notably AWOL from community requests to meet) will now go down in history as the councilmembers who led the busting of the city’s historic districts.
Notably, both Rivera and Chin thanked the City’s and their own staff for their efforts but failed to mention any of us — the citizenry — who live here and who attended in good faith all those Envision SoHo/NoHo meetings, only to be sold down the river.
Rather, Rivera went on at length actually criticizing the “special interests” who opposed the plan.
Some of these “special interests” are:
The Sierra Club, Community Board 2, Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, Broadway Residents Coalition, Chinatown Working Group, City Club of New York, Congress for a New UrbanismNYC, Cooper Square Committee, East Village Community Coaltion, former Councilmembers Kathryn Freed & Alan Gerson, Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts, Greenwich Village Community Task Force, Humanscale NYC, TriBeCa Trust, Landmarks West!, Lower East Side Preservation Initiative, Met Council on Housing, National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, NYC Loft Tenants, NoHo Neighborhood Association, SoHo Alliance, South Village Neighbors, Tenants PAC, Victorian Society of New York, Village Preservation
Well, if the politicians won’t show thanks for public participation, we will!!
Thanks to all the dedicated “special interest” advocates and thanks to all of you who volunteered so much of your time and were so generous in this struggle. We shall keep you informed of new developments.
Please share this information with friends and neighbors.
December 5, 2021
Council Vote Coming; Chin’s Punitive Fines
The Zoning Subcommittee of the City Council is scheduled to vote on de Blasio’s SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown Upzoning scheme this Tuesday, December 7.
The Committee may offer some minor modifications, but we believe it will only be window dressing to give the public the impression that they are not in the thrall of the Real Estate Board of NY(REBNY), which strongly supports this plan.
The proposal then goes back to City Planning for approval before going to the Full Council for the final, decisive vote either 12/15 or 12/16.
Now is when you are needed most.
Write the Councilmembers and tell them to vote NO on this plan. Please do it now.
Also ask them to vote against Councilmember Margaret Chin’s proposed legislation that will penalize SoHo/NoHo residential units that are not occupied by a certified artist with outrageous fines of $40,000 and $12,000 annually.
Your email needn’t be long: a few words requesting NO to SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown Upzoning & Margaret Chin’s Punitive Legislation (Intro 2443-2021).
Cut and paste the list located at the bottom of this page, or click here
Please forward this information to friends and neighbors.
Chin’s Punitive Legislation Proceeding
On Wednesday, Councilmember Margaret Chin sent a staffer to the Land Use Committee of CB2 to explain the reasoning and the details of her bill that would violate any SoHo/NoHo residential unit not occupied by a certified artist with outrageous fines of $40,000 and $12,000 annually.
The presentation was a debacle and an abject embarrassment.
Neither Margaret Chin, or the Buildings Department, which does the enforcement, or the Department of Cultural Affairs, which does the certification, bothered to attend the presentation. What does that tell you?
The councilmember’s representative could not answer basic question:
- If a tenant does not have artists certification, does the coop/condo/landlord get the fine or does the tenant?
- Are long-time residents who were grandfathered by the City in 1987 – and thus don’t have artists certification – subject to these fines? And where will they find these documents to prove it 34 years later?
- Won’t this legislation lead to snitching and discord, if one neighbor decides to inform on another neighbor who lacks certification?
- Isn’t it arbitrary and capricious for the government to certify who is an artist and who is not?
- Isn’t it very difficult, even for working artists, to get certified?
- Why aren’t the many retail stores that operate here without proper retail-use permits not charged a dime, but residents are penalized ad infinitum?
Send emails to:
November 27, 2021
Breaking News:$40,000 Plus Fines for Non-Artists in SoHo/NoHo
Councilmember Margaret Chin has unexpectedly introduced new legislation that will impose draconian penalties on SoHo/NoHo residential units that cannot provide artists certification from the Department of Cultural Affairs. Read the bill here.
Thousands of SoHo/NoHo residential units will be targeted with fines starting at $15,000 for the first offense, $25,000 for the each subsequent offense, and a separate monthly penalty of $1,000 per month – $12,000 annually – until the violation is corrected.
If no member of the household is a certified artist, the tenants would be forced to move out or else get punished with tens of thousands of dollars in fines.
Incredibly, retail stores and other commercial units in violation of our zoning laws will not receive a dime in penalties.
Broken Promises
Councilmember Chin and Borough President Gale Brewer promised us at the start of the SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown rezoning process that the aim of their “Envision SoHo/NoHo” study was a “pathway to legalization.” Instead, it has become the road to perdition.
It hurls astronomical fines at non-artist residents who have co-existed with artist residents for decades, while providing a free pass to commercial offenders who have willfully violated our zoning laws, turning much of SoHo/NoHo – let’s be frank – into a shopping mall, ruining our quality of life and the neighborhood character.
Moreover, this penalty is separate and distinct from the $100/square-foot flip-tax that de Blasio’s Department of City Planning is proposing to charge legal, certified artists just to apply to convert their certificate of occupancy from artist-loft to straight residential use: a $250,000 fee for a 2,500 square-foot loft, for example.
The artist residents get screwed, the non-artist residents get screwed, but the destructive real-estate speculators get a free pass to convert to lucrative retail, not to mention the tens of millions of dollars in free air-rights they will receive if the neighborhood is upzoned to allow greater height and density.
Is it any wonder people are so distrustful of politicians?
The legislation will be discussed at the next meeting of the Land Use Committee of Community Board 2, Thursday, December 2, at 5:00 pm.
It hurls astronomical fines at non-artist residents who have co-existed with artist residents for decades, while providing a free pass to commercial offenders who have willfully violated our zoning laws, turning much of SoHo/NoHo – let’s be frank – into a shopping mall, ruining our quality of life and the neighborhood character.
Moreover, this penalty is separate and distinct from the $100/square-foot flip-tax that de Blasio’s Department of City Planning is proposing to charge legal, certified artists just to apply to convert their certificate of occupancy from artist-loft to straight residential use: a $250,000 fee for a 2,500 square-foot loft, for example.
The artist residents get screwed, the non-artist residents get screwed, but the destructive real-estate speculators get a free pass to convert to lucrative retail, not to mention the tens of millions of dollars in free air-rights they will receive if the neighborhood is upzoned to allow greater height and density.
Is it any wonder people are so distrustful of politicians?
The legislation will be discussed at the next meeting of the Land Use Committee of Community Board 2, Thursday, December 2, at 5:00 pm.
Councilmember Chin or a member of her staff are expected to attend to explain the reasons behind this proposed legislation. The bill has no co-sponsors as far as we know. We have no other details to provide you
The meeting will be virtual. You can speak out and ask questions during the public session. We strongly urge you to do so.
Register at: https://
The meeting will be virtual. You can speak out and ask questions during the public session. We strongly urge you to do so.
Register at: https://
Cockamamie Court-Call Cold-Cocks Common Sense
A judge whose bad rulings are renowned for being reversed on appeal stayed true to form last week, issuing an irrational and skewed decision on our lawsuit against the Department of City Planning.
Background:
In 2019, New York voters approved by a 73% margin a City Charter amendment that mandates the Department of City Planning:
1. Issue a detailed description thirty days in advance of any planned rezoning
2. Create Rules guiding such rezonings
When City Planning issued a terse three-sentence announcement of the pending rezoning in April, SoHo/NoHo activists sued in State Supreme Court. We asserted that the voters’ intention was to have City Planning provide a detailed summary of these complex zoning proposals, not a three-sentence blurb.
In September, Justice Arthur Engoron, who at the beginning of the hearing opined that “insufficient notice is the same as no notice” reversed himself mid-stream and at the end ruled in favor of the city, claiming basically that a “notice is a notice.” OK, it’s a stretch…but plausible.
Immediately, our attorney filed a motion citing the City’s blatant failure to issue any rules whatsoever, not a single word.
Here is where the judge goes bonkers.
Engoron agreed with us 100% that the City did not publish the required rules and he actually stated that this failure angered him as a citizen, not just as a judge.
However, he went on to say that he didn’t believe that we presented an “authority” that – anytime a municipality fails to follow the rules – everything that happens after that failure gets to be undone. In this case, de Blasio’s rezoning scheme.
In other words, despite the fact that the City failed to follow the law, he nevertheless will permit the City’s illegal behavior. We wonder what the inmates in Rikers Island think about that logic.
The judge claimed we presented no “authority” that our case was valid? How about the authority of the 73% of citizens who voted to establish these rules!
So, thanks to Engoron, the City can disregard the law and the voters without consequence. Is it any wonder people are so critical of the courts and the judicial system?
We want to thank all of you who have contributed your funds, time and effort challenging the City’s illegal behavior. Never be it said that SoHo/NoHo stands idly by.
November 6, 2021
De Blasio’s Upzoning Enters Final Stage
Email Margaret Chin & Carlina Rivera, Urge Them to Reject de Blasio’s Land Giveaway
Attend Tuesday’s Council Hearing via Zoom, Speak in Opposition
PLEASE SHARE THIS INFORMATION WITH FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS.
This Tuesday, the curtain will rise for the first scene of the final act of de Blasio’s epic SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown upzoning proposal.
The City Council’s Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises will conduct a remote public hearing on the plan via Zoom, Tuesday morning, November 9, starting around 11:30.
To participate and testify against the upzoning, you must register. Do it now here. You will receive an email prior to the start of the hearing with information on how to join via Zoom or Phone Call-in.
If you are unable to attend virtually, submit written comments to the subcommittee by clicking here. For your own sake, please do so now.
(It is difficult to say precisely when our item will be heard. We estimate it should begin around 11:30. The hearing begins at 10:00 but there are three items on the calendar prior to our topic, which is expected to go for hours. So if you cannot be there at the start, you can still join later or play it in the background until you are called to speak.)
**** Email Margaret Chin & Carlina Rivera, Urge Them to Reject de Blasio’s Scheme ****
The most important thing you can do is to ask the two local councilmembers who represent SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown – Margaret Chin and Carlina Rivera – to reject this lame-duck mayor’s scheme. Invariably, the other council members follow the vote of the local representatives.
Margaret Chin: chin@council.nyc.gov
Carlina Rivera: District2@council.nyc.gov
Cc SoHo Alliance: info@sohoalliance.org
At the very bottom of this email, there is an additional list of citywide councilmembers. Please cut and paste it, then Cc your comments to those other members as well.
Here are some bullet points to use:
- It imposes a punitive flip tax on residents to convert from current “artist living-quarters” zoning to straight residential use, but imposes no tax on commercial owners converting from manufacturing to retail use
- Where this tax money goes has never been defined
- It legalizes destination big-box retail, putting displacement pressure on small, creative businesses and local retail stores
- It allows the influx of huge restaurants, bars and nightclubs, including entertainment space outdoors and on roofs
- It encourages new construction of office towers 2-1/2 times the size of the average SoHo/NoHo building
- It is the first upzoning of an historic district since the Landmarks Preservation Commission was created in 1965
- It will encourage demolition of historic buildings
- Loopholes fail to guarantee that a single unit of affordable housing will ever be built, while encouraging luxury residential construction
- Resulting gentrification will put tremendous displacement pressure on low-income, rent-stabilized, Asian-American tenants in Chinatown, as well as loft tenants in SoHo/NoHo
- It is a lame-duck giveaway to de Blasio’s real-estate donors, like Edison Parking, which owns the two largest development sites in the proposal
- It will legalize the expansion of NYU into SoHo, something NYU agreed never to do
- The community has prepared a plan that will allow for affordable housing but not by permitting high-rise towers
IF YOU CAN DO ONLY ONE THING, email Chin and Rivera. It is crucial if you want to defeat this plan.
Both councilmembers have publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the proposal. News articles in recent days have revealed the myriad flaws in de Blasio’s scheme. We have momentum. Please, email them now, so you don’t regret it later.
Timeline: In December, the subcommittee’s resolution proceeds to the full Council for the decisive vote. If the Council were to reject his plan, the mayor can veto it and it would return to the Council which can override the mayoral veto by a 2/3 vote.
PLEASE SHARE THIS INFORMATION WITH FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS. Spread the word.
Here is the list of the councilmembers’ emails. Please cut, paste, and Cc them into an email to reach all the councilmembers in one shot.
November 4, 2021
Attend Tonight’s CommBd Meeting: Stop BID’s Expansion Plan
When: Thursday, November 4, 6:30 pm (Note change of time.)
Where: via Zoom. Click here to register.
Last week we warned of a plan by the SoHo Broadway BID — a Business Improvement District created by Broadway real-estate speculators — to abandon its original 2011 pledge to simply sweep Broadway sidewalks and is now attempting to expand its power and influence throughout SoHo and surrounding neighborhoods. More here.
The BID will be presenting its proposal to the community board tonight and we can speak up in opposition to this outrageous proposal.
The BID discourteously avoided coming to the community board to announce its plan to close off Prince Street for four Saturdays this October. Popular opposition to that scheme has now forced the BID to address the SoHo community directly and not make deals behind our backs with de Blasio’s Department of Transportation to turn SoHo into Disneyland.
In part, the BID seeks to:
– shunt all Broadway truck parking, loading and unloading onto our narrow, more residential side streets
– turn Broadway, Broome, Prince and Howard Streets basically into suburban walking malls for the shoppers and tourists the BID wants to attract
– divert the resulting traffic jams onto adjacent neighborhoods like Chinatown, the Village, Little Italy, NoLiTa, and the Lower East Side
Please attend and speak out.
If you absolutely cannot make it, please send an email in opposition to us at info@sohoalliance.org and we shall forward it to the community board.
THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT MEETING. IT COULD DECIDE THE FUTURE OF OUR NEIGHBORHOOD FOR DECADES TO COME. PLEASE GET INVOLVED.
October 30, 2021
Broadway BID Seeks to Expand Its Realm
“The People Living in SoHo Have to Suck it Up”
Attend Community Board Meeting to Stop This Land Grab
Email Your Opposition
The BID’s Plan:
– Divert Trucks From Broadway To Crosby, Mercer & Other Side Streets
– Turn Prince, Howard Streets into a Shoppers’ Mall
– Restrict Broome & Broadway; Push the Traffic to Chinatown, the Lower East Side, the Village
PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS
**********
“The People Living in SoHo Have to Suck It Up”
Thus spoke real-estate speculator Jeff Gural in a recent New York Times article which claimed, incredibly, that business in SoHo is “dead”, “sidewalks are bare” and “the neighborhood’s 8,000 residents cannot make up for the loss in tourists.”
In the article, Broadway landlords whine that rents have now decreased to more reasonable levels and they can no longer squeeze out the exorbitant rents they were getting before the retail bubble burst.
Clearly some press agent was able to get this self-serving drivel published in the Times. Does SoHo/NoHo look dead and bare to you?
Background
Jeff Gural is chairman of GFP Real Estate, a family-owned real-estate conglomerate whose website boasts ownership of 55 high-end buildings with a 99% occupancy rate, some in SoHo/NoHo.
Besides being a real-estate baron, Gural is the Godfather of the Business Improvement District, or BID.
He was a founder and board member of the first BID in the city, on 14th Street in 1984.
Gural supplied the seed money to kick start the SoHo Broadway BID back in 2010.
Gural’s nephew and CEO at GFP, Brian Steinwurtzel, was the front man pushing the BID’s creation. Steinwurtzel got his reward. He now rules as BID president. Other Broadway landlords who kicked in the seed money also serve on the BID board. The BID rents its office space from Gural and Gural lists the BID as one of its charitable givings. Thick as thieves.
Meanwhile, Gural supports de Blasio’s upzoning scheme for SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown and mocks residents who don’t, telling them to “suck it up“
Gural owns several buildings in SoHo/NoHo and would reap countless millions in free air-rights if de Blasio’s upzoning giveaway passes. Unsurprisingly, his Broadway BID also supports the upzoning. The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Give ’em an Inch & They’ll Take a Yard
Publicly, the SoHo Broadway BID’s initial mission was to sweep the sidewalks of busy Broadway.
But in 2009 some diligent SoHo neighbors filed a Freedom of Information request that yielded incriminating emails between the BID’s Steering Committee and Gural’s real-estate asset manager, Donna Vogel.
One communiqué read, “At present, the boundaries would be Broadway between Houston and Canal. It has been suggested to expand the area to cover Sixth Avenue and Lafayette Street.”
Another 2009 email from Gural’s office to the BID organizers read, “I think the whole SoHo area should be evaluated for its feasibility to be included in the area of a BID.”
The Chickens Have Come Home to Roost
After solidifying its hold on Broadway, the BID has now announced a sweeping 20-year plan to dramatically expand its power and influence, creating its own “SoHo Superblock” from Houston to Canal and from Bowery to Varick Street, claiming jurisdiction over the traffic flow, sidewalks, bike lanes, parking, events, streetscape and public realm, its influence extending from “Christie Street to Hudson Street”.
The BID now claims for itself both sides of Mercer and Crosby Streets, stating its goal is to “manage the five intersecting cross streets of Prince, Spring, Broome, Grand and Howard”.
None of these areas are legally within the BID’s mandate. The BID was incorporated to only cover buildings fronting Broadway. The BID’s aggressive expansionism is evident.
BID’s Goal?
– To make Broadway more attractive to shoppers, in order to generate higher rents for the BID’s commercial backers, most of whom are real-estate speculators along Broadway.
BID’s Plan:
– Move truck parking from Broadway to Crosby, Mercer and surrounding streets
The BID seeks to shunt all the large trucks loading and unloading freight bound for the huge retail stores on wide Broadway onto our quaint narrow sidestreets. Great for strolling shoppers on Broadway; horrendous for everyone else.
– Close Off Prince and Howard Streets – Turn Them into the Times Square Tourist Mall
In 2008, the Department of Transportation announced it was going to close Prince Street to traffic so that tourists and shoppers could meander through our neighborhood.
Only when over 150 SoHo residents and business owners attended a community board meeting and vociferously objected did the City relent and move its plan to Times Square.
Yes, that is the genesis of that awful midtown tourist attraction with Minnie Mouse and Spiderman hustling the tourists — and exactly what would happen today were it on Prince Street.
Not learning from the mistakes of the past, the BID now wants to bring the Times Square tourist mall back down to SoHo.
To that end, the BID convinced the Department of Transportation to close Prince Street to traffic between Broadway and Mercer for four Saturdays in October.
As a result, westbound Prince traffic has been diverted south at Broadway, forcing drivers to use Broome Street to continue west.
Broome Street is notoriously gridlocked. The BID has now made it worse.
Residents on Broome Street and from as far as Prince at Elizabeth Street have contacted the SoHo Alliance complaining about the gridlock on their blocks and demanding that Prince Street remain open permanently.
– Restrict Traffic on Broome, Broadway
The BID seeks to “pedestrianize” both Broadway and Broome Street with just a single lane of traffic, lawn chairs and umbrellas. How twee. But where would all the current traffic go?
The BID says to Houston Street and Canal, the Bowery and Varick. Has Gural been on any of these streets? They are already gridlocked much of the time.
SoHo and its neighbors in Chinatown, the Lower East Side and the Village have always shared our traffic congestion equally, for better or worse, and have worked together.
Arrogantly, the BID ignores these constituencies. It is selfish and irresponsible for the Broadway BID and its real-estate backers to try to foist their traffic problem onto their neighbors.
What Can YOU Do?
The Community Board will be conducting a meeting at which the BID will present this plan to the public.
Join the meeting via Zoom. Speak out or email against this ridiculous proposal before it is too late. Tell the community board that you want no part of the BID’s Trojan Horse expansion plan.
When: Thursday, November 4, 6:30
Please register using the link below:
https://zoom.us/webinar/
https://zoom.us/webinar/
If you are absolutely unable to attend, please email us stating your objection to the BID’s proposal.
Email is info@sohoalliance.org. We shall then forward them to the board.
There are two items on the agenda. SoHo is the second. Although the meeting starts at 6:30, SoHo won’t likely be on until 7:00 or 7:30,
THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT MEETING. IT COULD DECIDE THE FUTURE OF OUR NEIGHBORHOOD FOR DECADES TO COME. PLEASE GET INVOLVED.
October 20, 2021
City Planning Approves Upzoning / Legal Update
Unsurprisingly, the deBlasio-controlled City Planning Commission voted unanimously today to approve the SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown upzoning plan.
Despite objections from Councilmembers Margaret Chin and Carlina Rivera, as well as criticism from Borough President Gale Brewer and a 35-1 rejection by Community Board 2, City Planning approved the plan basically unchanged.
One minor tweak saw a slight reduction in the maximum height permitted on a couple of lots on the periphery of the rezoning area. However, the huge increases in height and bulk in the core and in the historic districts remain.
Big-box retail stores of unlimited size will be permitted. Currently, 10,000 square-feet is the maximum allowed without a special permit and community review.
The upzoning plan now rubber-stamps unlimited retail square-footage, which is what REBNY – Real Estate Board of New York – and only REBNY requested.
The only other tweak was that retail space greater than 25,000 square-feet will require a letter from the chair of the commission. But we all know this will just be a pro-forma procedure and these letters will be granted gratuitously.
Nor was there an iota of recognition of the impact this upzoning with its high-rise office towers and luxury buildings will have on Chinatown, part of which is included in this upzoning. In fact, the agency completely ignored the displacement pressures the Chinatown community will face nor did it even once mention the word “Chinatown”.
City Planning is digging in its heels.
The plan now goes to the City Council where its zoning committee will hold a public hearing before it goes to the full council for a final decisive vote in November or December.
What will the council do?
Well, Chin and Rivera issued a joint statement in early August declaring, “We must do better. We call on D.C.P. to return to the table now — not in three or four months — with real plans for how the Soho/Noho plan can guarantee the most affordable housing possible for our communities.”
When a City Planning honcho was asked at a recent public hearing if there is any guarantee that a single unit of affordable housing will be built, he declined to answer. He knows the truth.
Three months have elapsed and City Planning has ignored the councilmembers’ requests. The myriad loopholes that will permit thousands of luxury apartments without a single unit of affordable housing being built remain for developers to exploit.
What will our elected officials do?
Stay tuned.
********************
LEGAL UPDATE:
Our attorney and the City lawyers submitted written briefs to the judge on October 12. We argue that the City violated a key City Charter requirement by failing to publish rules on how rezoning procedures (ULURPs) should be conducted.
We expected oral arguments to take place that day. However, the judge reserved judgement on whether to have oral arguments at a later date. He may simply issue his decision based on the written documents.
As soon as he makes a decision, we shall let you know.
October 2, 2021
Poster Campaign; SoHo Walking Tour; Upzoning Update
Save Chinatown+SoHo+NoHo.
SoHo Audio Tour & Meet-Up Sunday.
Upzoning Update.
Save Chinatown + SoHo + NoHo, a community coalition of local residents and organizations, has organized a poster campaign and website to resist de Blasio’s upzoning plan for SoHo, NoHo, Little Italy and Chinatown.
The group has built a superb website to explain in detail the many serious pitfalls in the upzoning proposal. The website is a useful tool to help us all organize and take action effectively to fight this upzoning. Please visit and sign on now: https://www.savesohonoho.
As part of the organizing and educating effort, the coalition has coordinated a poster campaign to alert the general public about the upzoning proposal and the damage it will cause.
Posters, one 12″x18″ and a larger one at 36″x54″, are available.
Would you like a poster to place in your building window, vestibule, fire escape, store, business, or other prominent location? If so, please email us at info@sohoalliance.org to arrange pick-up.
Courtesy – TheVillageSun.com by Jefferson Siegel
We must let our fellow New Yorkers know the disruption and destruction the mayor and his developer cronies are planning for our iconic neighborhoods. Posters prominent throughout our communities will do that. Get yours now!
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SoHo Audio Tour & Meet Up – Sunday, October 3, 2pm, Houston and Broadway
We have lauded the work done by the SoHo Memory Project to celebrate, document and archive SoHo’s rich history. Now the Project has set up a self-guided audio tour: SoHo: A Retrospective – Discover the secrets of SoHo, hidden in plain sight.
This free GPS-triggered audio walking tour that traces the origins of artists’ SoHo is narrated by Yukie Ohta, the founder of SoHo Memory Project, and is enriched by interviews with artists, authors, and SoHo residents. All you need are headphones and the Gesso app, available on iOS and Android.
On Sunday, Yukie will be conducting her personal tour, starting at 2:00 pm at the northeast corner of Houston and Broadway. The weather should be nice; so bring yourself and a friend or two along for this unique tour.
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Upzoning Update
Mayor de Blasio’s upzoning proposal for SoHo, NoHo and Chinatown is wending its way through the Department of City Planning, which has sixty days to modify its original outrageous proposal.
The agency held a hearing in late September at which it announced that it was slightly reducing the FAR – the measure of building height and bulk – for a couple of zoning lots at the periphery of the proposed rezoning area.
Unfortunately, City Planning left intact the horrendous increases in height and bulk for most of the study area, including the Broadway and Lafayette corridors, as well as the historic districts. Nor did the agency reduce an inch its unlimited square-footage bonuses for big-box retails stores.
Notably, the agency has apparently ignored Councilmembers Margaret Chin and Carlina Rivera, who called upon City Planning in August to “return to the table” with “real plans” to “guarantee the most affordable housing possible”.
The agency’s silence to the councilmembers’ requests is not surprising. There are multiple gaping loopholes that developers can employ to avoid building a single affordable unit, while guaranteeing thousands luxury units will be built, not to mention incentivizing massive office tower and big-box store construction.
City Planning is expected to issue its final iteration of the rezoning within a couple of weeks. The proposal then goes to the City Council which has 60 days to deny, approve, or modify de Blasio’s scheme.
We await whether our council representatives will refuse to approve this giveaway of millions of square-feet in air rights to de Blasio’s real-estate contributors or do the right thing and vote down this rushed, ill-conceived and bungled proposal by this lame, lame-duck mayor.
Meanwhile, on October 12 our attorney will argue in State Supreme Court our claim that City Planning violated key requirements of the City Charter, for example, failing to publish rules on how a rezoning proposal should proceed.
If we are successful, the current rezoning process would likely be halted by the court until City Planning publishes the required rules. Then the rezoning would have to start afresh. This would bring us well into 2022.
Again, we thank all of you who contributed so generously to our Legal Fund. Without your help, the City would think it can illegally ride roughshod over us.
September 1, 2021
Attend City Planning Rezoning Public Hearing Thursday
The City Planning Commission will hold its first and only public hearing on the Department’s plan to upzone SoHo, NoHo and Chinatown, this Thursday, September 2, 10:00 am at 120 Broadway.
Please share this information with friends and neighbors.
The commission is limiting the number of people allowed inside their basement hearing room. Overflow will have to wait at 48 Wall Street, two blocks away, and when it is time to speak, walk to 120 Broadway.
There will be virtual access to the hearing via Zoom or phone. However, City Planning will not release the call-in number until one hour before the meeting starts.
Clearly, the commission wants to stifle public participation.
Despite City Planning’s obstacles, we urge you to testify against this upzoning.
WHEN: Thursday, September 2, 10:00 am
WHERE: 120 Broadway, basement level
VIRTUAL: Register, starting 9:00 am here
WRITTEN TESTIMONY: If you cannot attend, submit written testimony here. Some Talking Points to use.
– Press Conference
An hour prior to the hearing, Christopher Marte, our putative new councilmember, will hold a press conference to denounce a comment made Monday by City Planning’s Executive Director that opponents of the rezoning are racist.
Read more about the slanderous remarks in The Village Sun. Try to attend: 120 Broadway, 9:00 am
– Brewer Holding Back Her Recommendation
Although Borough President Gale Brewer had thirty days to give her recommendations on the upzoning, they still not have been announced. It is expected she will do that Thursday at the hearing.
August 22, 2021
BoroPrez Brewer’s Dog & Pony Show: Monday, 8/23, 6pm
Let’s be clear.
Mayor de Blasio’s current proposal to upzone SoHo, NoHo and Chinatown is a direct result of Borough President Gale Brewer’s 2019 Envision SoHo/NoHo study that she initiated and paid for.
Hundreds of us attended the six public hearings that Brewer co-sponsored with Councilmember Margaret Chin and the Department of City Planning.
Additionally, she created an Advisory Group of fifteen stakeholders from the residential, commercial, real estate, educational, cultural, and housing sectors that convened close to twenty times in her office.
Brewer repeatedly assured us that her efforts were simply a study and not preparation for a rezoning. Seasoned activists knew otherwise. When we said so publicly, we were threatened with removal from the Advisory Group.
Well, we were right. Brewer’s actions have now permitted de Blasio to open up a Pandora’s Box of hurt for our community, including:
– high-rise office towers
– big-box mall stores
– NYU dorms
– luxury, free-market, residential development that will create displacement pressures on countless rent-regulated residents
– zoning loopholes that will allow developers to avoid creating a single unit of affordable housing here
– the first upzoning of an historic district since the Landmarks Preservation Commission was established in 1965
– an extortionate flip tax to convert from “artists” to residential use, but none for conversions from manufacturing to retail use
– and more
Last month, community board members — all of them Brewer’s appointees — voted overwhelmingly 36-1 against the rezoning plan. The rezoning proposal then went to her office and Brewer has thirty days to give her recommendations. Her deadline is Wednesday, August 25.
Tomorrow, Monday, August 23, 6:00 pm, a mere two days before the deadline, her office will conduct a virtual public hearing on the rezoning with a panel discussion followed by public testimony.
Brewer’s panel is a real-estate speculators’ delight:
– Edith Hsu-Chen, Director, Manhattan Planning / Department of City Planning
Hsu-Chen is de Blasio’s point-person to push through this upzoning
– Jessica Katz, Executive Director, Citizens Housing and Planning Council (CHPC)
Katz’s CHPC ostensibly calls for affordable housing but its board of directors consists of the city’s leading developers, speculators, bankers, lobbyists, real-estate executives and zoning lawyers.
One, Edison Properties, owns the two largest vacant lots in the SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown upzoning area. Edison will reap a fortune in free air-rights if this rezoning passes. We know who butters Ms. Katz’s bread.
Jerrod Delaine, Director of Development, Carthage Real Estate Advisors / Pratt Institute, Professor of Real Estate Studies
Delaine’s bio at Pratt begins with “He is an experienced real-estate developer”. Furthermore, Delaine, an architect by training, moderated an American Institute of Architects panel several months ago and supported the upzoning of historic districts throughout the city.
Steve Herrick, Executive Director, Cooper Square Committee
Herrick heads an East Village housing group and lives in Jersey City, but wants our community upzoned to build high-rise office buildings along Broadway and Lafayette Street. Go figure.
Mark Dicus, Executive Director, SoHo Broadway Initiative, aka, the SoHo Broadway Business Improvement District
The BID is calling for unlimited retail space along Broadway and abutting Mercer and Crosby Street properties, as well as an increase in the height and bulk of these buildings.
Brewer – who prides herself on her inclusivity – did not include a single:
– SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown resident
– SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown residents advocacy group
– Loft Tenants representative
– Small business owner
– Arts/cultural spokesperson
– Historical preservationist
– Community board member
These are the very people that will be most harmed if Brewer’s chosen panelists get their way.
Sadly, it looks like the borough president has already made up her mind ahead of her deadline and is cynically convening a public hearing with a biased panel to mirror and justify her recommendations due to come out 48 hours later.
If you want to register for Brewer’s Dog & Pony Show, you can do so here: https://zoom.us/webinar/
Or you can submit written testimony to: info@manhattanbp.nyc.gov
Comments to ALL city council members can be sent with one click via Village Preservation’s website letter:
August 8, 2021
We’re Taking the Mayor to Court Again
The SoHo Alliance and Broadway Residents Coalition filed a motion in State Supreme Court on Friday to reargue our case against the SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown rezoning proposal. We contend the judge overlooked, misinterpreted and failed to rule upon our charges that the de Blasio administration violated various requirements of the City Charter.
Throughout the three-month court hearing, the judge seemed sympathetic to our contention that the city’s terse three-sentence description of the 16,000 page document did not meet Charter requirements that timely notice and sufficient description of the proposal be provided to the community board and the public.
However, during the final oral arguments on July 7, the city lawyer threw in new and unsubstantiated claims, leading the judge to misinterpret the city’s “evidence”, ruling unfavorably against us.
After that ill-advised court decision, our attorney, Jason Zakai of Hiller PC, researched the city’s bogus assertions, documented their errors, and has now petitioned to reargue the case.
de Blasio Ignores the Rules
Additionally – and importantly — we argue that the judge completely overlooked another Charter mandate requiring City Planning to establish minimum rules and standards regarding the form and content of the notice.
As of today, no such rules have been established by the city, although the Charter mandates they be created by August 31, 2020. Without these rules, the city arbitrarily and conveniently does what it wants and, when challenged, claims it is doing the right thing.
Not only are we filing these papers in our fight against de Blasio’s upzoning, we are doing it for the benefit of community and good-government groups throughout the city who want to challenge an arbitrary and capricious city administration.
You can read our Motion to Reargue here.
Notice of Appeal Filed
Lastly, our attorney also filed a Notice to Appeal the judge’s July ruling. We have six months to file the appeal and in the meantime we shall see how our current motion to reargue progresses.
What Can You Do?
Please help defray our legal expenses.
Mail your check to:
SoHo Alliance
PO Box 429
New York, NY 10012
or use our GoFundMe page to contribute.
PLEASE SHARE THIS INFORMATION WITH YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS.
August 1, 2021
Action Alert
Now that Community Board 2 has decisively rejected Mayor de Blasio’s upzoning scheme in its entirely by a vote of 36 to 1, the ball is in Borough President Gale Brewer’s court.
She has thirty days to issue a recommendation. But we need to flood her office beforehand with letters and emails exhorting her to do the right thing.
That is where we need you.
Below is the text of a draft letter you, your co-op/condo board, your business, or your organization can use to address the borough president. Or, better, try your own words. Please forward this email to friends and neighbors
Email to
- Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer gbrewer@manhattanbp.
nyc.gov - Lizette Chaparro, Head of Land Use at her office LChaparro@manhattanbp.
nyc.gov - Conor Allerton, Urban Planner at her office CAllerton@manhattanbp.
nyc.gov
Letters should be received by Brewer’s office NO LATER than Friday, August 6. Please do it today.
SAMPLE LETTER:
Hon. Gale A. Brewer
Manhattan Borough President
1 Centre Street, 19th Floor
New York, NY 10007
Re: Opposition to SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown Rezoning
Dear Borough President Brewer:
I [We, the Board of______ ] fully support the members of Community Board 2 – members you appointed — who voted 36-1 in overwhelming opposition to the mayor’s upzoning proposal.
I [We, the Board of______ ] urge you to deny the City’s rushed and reckless plan to rezone SoHo, NoHo, and Chinatown.
To highlight just a few concerns:
- The proposal yields the potential for over 9,000.000 – nine million — square feet of new structure, equal to three Empire State buildings.
- While these air-rights are being given free to speculators, we are not even promised a new school, more sanitation or police services, a community center, not an inch of recreational or green space — nothing.
- Because of loopholes, the plan fails to guarantee even one unit of critically-needed affordable housing will be built. Its stated goal to create economic and racial diversity will not be achieved.
- Instead, the gentrification plan will likely reduce the net number of affordable units by spurring the demolition of at least 185 low-rise buildings with up to 635 rent-regulated buildings – many of them in Chinatown – which the Department of City Planning has excluded from the process.
- The proposed mechanism for converting current joint live-work quarters for artists (JLWQA) to residential use is onerous, complex, and poorly conceived.
- The $100 per square-foot conversion fee from JLWQA to reidential use is unprecedented and unjust.
- The thousands of luxury dwellings and Class A office buildings that will be built will increase real-estate valuations, which will result in increased residential real-estate taxes for us.
- By lifting all restrictions on oversized retail stores, as well as huge eating and drinking establishments, the plan will witness a tsunami of big-box stores, oversized restaurants, and enormous bars and clubs. This will destroy the character of the neighborhood and the quality of life for residents. Moreover, it will help push out small businesses and specialty shops.
- The plan proposes massive increases in the allowable height and density of buildings, the floor-to-area ratio (FAR). Buildings with the same FAR as 57th Street will create a wall of massive towers stretching from Mercer Street to Broadway and on through to Crosby Street. A similar wall of towers is planned along Lafayette Street in NoHo.
- This plan calls for the first upzoning of an historic district in the sixty-six years of the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s existence. City Planning asked many agencies to participate in the process. Shockingly, the Landmarks Preservation Commission was not one of them.
SoHo and NoHo must evolve in a creative and sustainable way. We need affordable housing and a path for legalizing JLWQA. With vision and thoughtfulness, both can be achieved without a massive developer-driven upzoning that promises neither.
I [We] ask you say “NO” to the Mayor’s misguided plan.
Sincerely,
Your name
PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS
July 27, 2021
Community Board Rejects de Blasio’s Upzoning Plan
With an overwhelming 36-1 vote, Community Board 2 soundly rejected the Department of City Planning’s proposed upzoning for SoHo/NoHo.
The board’s vote is an affirmation of the widespread popular opposition to de Blasio’s real-estate scheme. The resolution spelled out in detail what residents, small businesses, preservationists,
You can read further details on the board’s vote in these news sources:
The Village Sun: CB2 Rejects ‘Mayor’s SoHo Rezoning Plan’ with Scathing Resolution
We appreciate the time, research, effort and dedication that the community board spent on this issue.
The upzoning plan now goes to Borough President Gale Brewer, who has thirty days to issue her recommendations. She spoke at the meeting, saying she has not yet made up her mind.
Considering the borough president appoints all the community board members, it will be interesting to see how she will respond to the clear-cut recommendations of her own appointees.
July 24, 2021
Final Community Board Hearing on Upzoning, Monday, 6:30pm
At its monthly meeting this Monday, July 26, Community Board 2 will vote its recommendation on Mayor de Blasio’s upzoning proposal for SoHo/NoHo.
This is the public’s last chance to speak and opine on the plan.
The public session starts at 6:30. Request a Speaker Card before 7:00 pm. After the public and electeds speak, the board will vote.
Although the community board has been receptive to our concerns, we need people out to show the City representatives the huge amount of opposition this developers’ wish-list has inspired.
Please register for this event to ensure you get a seat:
https://cb2fullboard.
https://cb2fullboard.
The meeting can also be viewed via livestream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Talking Points:
• oppose this, the first upzoning of an historic district since the Landmarks Preservation Commission was created in 1965. If the politicians vote for this scheme, expect high-rise buildings in all the city’s historic districts.
• challenge the proposed increase in height and bulk throughout the SoHo/NoHo Historic Districts, particularly the 250% increase along the Broadway and Lafayette Street corridors.
• expose de Blasio’s baseless claim that a lottery for affordable housing will racially diversify the neighborhood, since, by its very nature, a lottery is a random draw, favoring no one or no group.
• recount how incentivizing luxury housing will further gentrify the neighborhood and inflict displacement pressure on rent-stablized renters — not only in SoHo/NoHo, but also in the bordering neighborhoods of Chinatown and Little Italy.
• maintain the10,000 square-feet limit for retail stores. Say NO to big-box, destination-retail, chain emporiums. Say YES to small, boutique and neighborhood stores.
• insist on the removal of the iniquitous $100/square-foot flip tax to convert from artist live-work space to straight residential.
• demand this last-minute push by de Blasio to salvage his failed administration be rejected in its entirely and City Planning start all over with a sensible community-based plan, not a developer’s pipe dream.
What’s Next?
After it leaves the community board, in August the proposal will go to Borough President Gale Brewer, whose office has thirty days to issues its recommendations.
In September it goes to the Department of City Planning, which also has thirty days to maintain or modify its proposal before it goes to the city council in October for an eventual vote.
PLEASE SHARE THIS INFORMATION WITH FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS
July 11, 2021
Senior City Planner Slanders Housing Advocates
Conflict of Interest Accusations
Judge Rules Against Our Lawsuit
Senior City Planner Slanders Housing Advocates
At the final community board meeting on de Blasio’s SoHo/NoHo rezoning proposal last Thursday, Department of City Planning Senior Planner, Sylvia Li — without any provocation — hurled perhaps the most contemptuous comments ever uttered by a government official at a community board meeting.
Her slanderous comment came in response to councilmember-elect Christopher Marte’s plea that City Planning realize the honest fear and real threat of displacement that Chinatown, Lower East Side and SoHo/NoHo renters face if the de Blasio SoHo/NoHo rezoning goes forward.
Li insulted thousands of local activists and residents when she asserted that the Community Alternative Rezoning Plan offered by Village Preservation and supported by thirteen diverse tenant and community groups “is not a plan that is motivated by a genuine concern for displacement or a genuine desire to introduce more housing affordability” and “encouraged people to engage in magical thinking that is not rooted in reality”.
Continuing her attack, Li self-righteously declared that we advocates, unlike her, “are not truly concerned about tenants rights,” implying that groups like the Lower Manhattan Loft Tenants and New York City Loft Tenants are not “tenant advocates,” “do not care about housing,” and had no “real concerns” about displacement. This is the same person who referred to SoHo/NoHo residents at a prior meeting as “relics”. Watch her appalling performance here.
The diverse swath of groups that Li defamed and who support the Community Alternative Rezoning Plan include the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, Bowery Block Association, Broadway Residents Coalition, East Village Community Coalition, Lower East Side Preservation Initiative, Lower Manhattan Loft Tenants, New York City Loft Tenants, NoHo Neighborhood Association, SoHo Alliance, SoHo Design District, South Village Neighbors, Tribeca Trust, and Village Preservation.
Ms. Li’s biased comments have poisoned this entire rezoning process and she should immediately be removed as team leader before she does more harm.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Sylvia Li’s Grave Conflict of Interest: Follow the Money
How does Senior City Planner Sylvia Li spend her spare time? Follow the money.
Li co-chairs P/PREP (Public-Private Real Estate Professionals). According to its website, P/PREP is a group of 700 professionals who work on public-private real estate and economic development projects, employed by a range of government agencies and leading real-estate development, consulting, law, finance, and design firms.
On May 20, 2021, Li took part in a “breakfast meeting” coordinated by WX, Inc.
Among the participants:
• Olivia Moss, a principal at HR&A Associates, which describes itself as “an industry leader in providing comprehensive real-estate strategies to unlock value and create vibrant places”. The last thing SoHo/NoHo needs is more “vibrancy”.
Interestingly, Ms. Li utilized a report by HR&A as her blueprint during the 2019 Envision SoHo/NoHo meetings that many of us attended. The report focused on “Implications of Restrictions on Retail”.
Yet Li failed to mention that the report by her friends at HR&A was paid for by eleven SoHo/NoHo property owners who want to remove these retail restrictions.
Now Li and City Planning are calling for retail of unlimited size and a 250% increase in the bulk and height of buildings in some parts of SoHo/NoHo. A free giveaway of millions of dollars in air-rights to commercial real-estate speculators, while City Planning proposes charging residents $100/square foot to convert their lofts to residential use.
• Casey Martinez of United American Land. United American Land is one of the largest real-estate developers in the city, owning over five dozen large properties, including over a dozen in SoHo.
• Mark Dicus, executive director of the SoHo Broadway BID
• Elise Wagner, senior partner in the Land Use Department at Kramer Levin, the international go-to law firm for big-time real estate developers.
With bedfellows like these, is it any wonder that Sylvia Li sullied the community’s attempts to preserve and protect our neighborhood? She should be immediately removed.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Judge Rules Against Our Lawsuit
Unfortunately, despite our best efforts and despite his earlier statement that “insufficient notice is the same as no notice,” Justice Arthur Engoron on Wednesday reversed himself and declared in a short, terse ruling that “a notification doesn’t have to be perfect”.
We still have several options available and will be discussing our next move with our attorney this week.
June 27, 2021
City Lawyers Sweating / Public Meeting Clear: City Planning, Start Over!!
• City Desperate: Calls in 3 Supply-Side Lawyers as “Friends”
• Public Meeting Clear: City Planning, Start Over!!
• Marte Romps in SoHo
City Getting Desperate: Calls in 3 Supply-Side Lawyers as “Friends”
Three heavyweight law professors filed an amici curiae (“friends of the court”) brief last week on behalf of Mayor de Blasio and the Department of City Planning in our ongoing lawsuit to get the City to obey the law and give us the required 30-days notification in “sufficient detail” of its 16,000 page SoHo/NoHo rezoning document. Instead, the City had merely sent a terse three-sentence notice.
Amicus briefs are intended to influence the court’s decision. They are usually filed in appellate cases and much less often in our typical Article 78 proceeding; that is, a legal appeal challenging the decision or action of a City agency. The City is clearly worried.
But it gets more intriguing.
The common thread these three “supply and demand” law professors share is their connection to NYU and Vicki Been. Been is de Blasio’s Deputy Mayor for Housing, a NYU Law professor, and a former director for Real Estate at NYU.
As deputy mayor, Been is the actual person behind the scenes who has been pushing for the upzoning of SoHo/NoHo with luxury housing, big-box retail stores, and high-rise office towers.
Meanwhile, she lives in a landmarked brownstone owned by NYU in a tree-lined block in the Far West Village, where she has no plans to upzone her own white, wealthy, ritzy neighborhood. But she wants to upzone and ruin SoHo/NoHo. Hypocrite much, Ms. Been?
One law professor is Roderick Hills, a close friend and ally of Been, with whom he co-authored a book on land use. He is employed at NYU Law and commonly refers to us historic preservationists and community activists with the disparaging term “NIMBY”.
Another is Law Dean of Touro College, Patricia Salkin, who specializes in land use and zoning.
The third “friend” is David Schleicher, current Yale and former NYU law professor, who has been described as “ingenious” by the right-wing National Review.
Vicki Been and de Blasio see that we have a strong case and are injecting these heavy hitters in a last-ditch effort to persuade the judge to deny our request for an immediate injunction to stop the rezoning clock and to start over. This relief would give us the required 30-days notice before the rezoning process begins, so that we can properly review and analyze the City’s proposals.
Additionally, the City last week filed a 44-page brief in opposition to our prior legal submissions — this after they had already filed a lengthy brief on our preliminary injunction request earlier this month.
We are not giving an inch and have instructed our attorney to file reply motions, due on Friday. The judge will likely make a decision mid-July
You can read all the court documents on the County Clerk’s website.
These briefs and motions, hundreds of pages, consume hours of very expensive lawyer time. We cannot do it without your assistance.
PLEASE contribute to our legal fund.
Send checks to SoHo Alliance, PO Box 429, New York, NY or contribute via GoFundMe here. The neighborhood you save will be your own.
Public Meeting Clear: City Planning, Start Over!!
More than 300 people filled St. Anthony’s basement auditorium last Wednesday to hear the City Planning Department present its rezoning proposal to the community board’s SoHo/NoHo Working Group.
Some 95% of the audience opposed the plan.
The remaining 5% — composed mostly of a group of young outer-borough inhabitants who are fronting for a wealthy real-estate family that wants this upzoning passed — even they had issues with some aspects of the proposal, like the air-rights giveaway to large commercial property-owners.
To say residents’ opposition was fierce is an understatement.
Many attendees could not hear the presentation due to poor acoustics and soon the meeting “devolved into chaos” as reported in the NY Post here. The presentation was met with boos and catcalls, reflecting the anger we feel about this gift to developers for luxury development and high-rise office towers, with no guarantee a single unit of affordable housing will ever be built due to all the loopholes de Blasio has inserted. In fact, luxury development will actually produce displacement pressures on existing renters.
NY1 TV News produced a good report that you can view here. Check it out.
The press conference before the hearing was well attended by almost 100 residents carrying dozens of “City Planning Lies” signs. You can view those photos here.
This rezoning proposal is a farce. The message is clear: start over and get it right!!
Marte Romps in SoHo
Last week’s election results showed Christopher Marte with 40.14% of the total vote, ensuring he will be our next council member.
Marte won every election district in the West Side’s 66th Assembly District and did very well in most precincts in the East Side’s 65th Assembly District.
However, in SoHo and NoHo, Chris really romped.
He had his best poll results here than in any other neighborhood, averaging 65% of the total vote and earning an incredible 73% in central SoHo’s 18th Election District.
We wish him the best.
June 23, 2021
In-person Public Hearing Tonight / Marte Victory
This is a reminder of tonight’s public in-person meeting sponsored by Community Board 2, where the Department of City Planning will be presenting us with Mayor de Blasio’s scheme to upzone SoHo/NoHo, destroying the character of our neighborhood.
The meeting will begin with a presentation by City Planning representatives, followed by questions from Community Board 2, and then direct testimony and questions from the public. Elected officials or their representatives will be there to hear your voice.
Be there, let them know this rezoning is a terrible, destructive idea and must be rejected. Bring signs. Be vocal.
Talking Points:
• this proposal is irredeemable. It must be rejected entirely and re-started with community input.
• it introduces radical zoning changes, like high-rise office towers, big-box retail stores, the very first upzoning of an Historic District, NYU dormitories, and the likely eviction of hundreds of rent-stabilized renters and loft tenants, to list just a few atrocities.
• it is a giveaway of several million square-feet of developable air-rights to de Blasio’s campaign donors, yet the community gets nothing, nothing in return.
• it will charge us residents a $100/square-foot tax to convert from artist residence to straight residential. Commercial spaces can be converted from the current manufacturing use to retail use, yet commercial owners will not have to pay a dime for that handout. This is another example of de Blasio’s screwing the little guy, while giving the real estate industry a free gift.
• it will allow eating and drinking establishments of unlimited size. Current zoning laws prohibit these large restaurant venues, typical of Times Square. The proposal will also permit banquet halls, nightclubs and discos.
• the rezoning proposal is 16,000 pages. It will take time to read, digest, and analyze all this technical information. City Planning had two years to prepare this. Why the rush at the end of lame-duck de Blasio’s plan? City Planning is breaking the law when it refused to give the Community Board a detailed summary of the rezoning proposal thirty days before the process began. Call them out on that.
We are having a press conference at 6:00 pm outside the hearing. Speakers from tenants groups, arts groups, community organizations, and our newly-elected councilmember, Christopher Marte will speak. Please attend.
Details:
What: Community Board 2 SoHo/NoHo Working Group Meeting & Public Hearing On SoHo NoHo Rezoning
Where: Lower Hall of St. Anthony’s Church
155 Sullivan Street at Houston
When: Today, Wednesday, June 23 @ 6:30 pm
Fully Accessible / Masks Required (and supplied)
Fully Accessible / Masks Required (and supplied)
Register here for tonight’s CB2 in-person meeting: https://www.
If you can’t attend, you can watch the live stream on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/
If you can’t attend, you can watch the live stream on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/
There will be two other virtual public hearing zoom meetings on Thursday, June 24 and Thursday July 8.
Please register for those meetings here: https://zoom.us/webinar/
More information on the SoHo NoHo Rezoning is available here: https://cbmanhattan.
******************************
In case you have not heard, the elections results are in and Christopher Marte swept it, capturing 41% of the votes in a crowded nine-way race. Marte has been our biggest supporter opposing this upzoning.
Interestingly, all the establishment politicians went with two of his opponents, who were soundly defeated by our grassroots efforts. Why are our elected officials so out of touch with their constituents?
June 20, 2021
First Rezoning Public Hearing / Evictions of Loft Tenants Expected to Skyrocket / NYU Dorms Permitted
• Important Public Meeting
• Evictions of Loft Tenants Expected
• NYU Dorms Permitted
Important Public Meeting: Be There!
The City Planning Department will finally present its plans to upzone SoHo/NoHo at an in-person public meeting of the community board this Wednesday, June 23, 6:30 pm at St. Anthony’s Church basement, Sullivan and Houston Streets.
We are having a press conference at 6:00 pm on the sidewalk outside. This meeting will surely have press coverage. Please try to attend. Bodies count!
The following day, there will also be a virtual public hearing for those unable to attend the live presentation. Details below.
It took a lawsuit from the SoHo Alliance and Broadway Residents Coalition to get City Planning to relent to this public hearing. The agency initially insisted on a virtual Zoom meeting, a format that would dull our voices, mask our presence and enable the City to steamroll over our objections.
Thanks to our lawsuit, we now have a chance to let the City know face-to-face what we think of de Blasio’s scheme. Ask questions, voice your opinion, testify. Don’t miss this one.
Register for the in-person event here.
View the meeting via livestream here.
For those unable to attend Wednesday, there is a second public hearing, virtual, via Zoom, Thursday, June 24, 6:30 pm. Register here.
Rezoning Will See Evictions of Loft Tenants Skyrocket
The City’s upzoning plan contains thousands of pages — and the more we delve, the worse it gets.
We alerted you in a May 23rd email that the rezoning proposal calls for a flip tax of $100 per square foot for a co-op or condo owner to change the certificate of occupancy from Artists Live/Work space to regular Residential use. For example, the owner of a 2,500 square-foot unit would have to cough up $250,000 to convert.
The same fee applies to landlords who want to convert rental units.
However, an unscrupulous landlord could pay the fee to convert to Residential use, as expensive as it is, then claim the space is needed for the landlord’s family. Such an avowal is one of the few ways the law permits a landlord to displace a renter.
This scenario happened once before, when a Broadway landlord attempted to evict an artist’s family, saying he needed the artist’s loft for his nephew. The judge denied the request, declaring the court could not evict the artist, who was legal under our current zoning, to allow the non-artist nephew to move in and displace the family.
If this rezoning is approved and this protection for loft tenants removed, you can be certain that some landlords will pay the fee, and, claiming personal need, evict the long-term renter but never move in, instead rent the space for a fortune while the pioneering loft tenant is out on the street.
Bill de Blasio’s fatuous scheme to introduce “affordable housing” will actually spawn wholesale evictions of rent-stabilized tenants. Does the city really need more homeless people, Mr. Mayor?
NYU Dorms Permitted
It only gets worse.
Further delving into the volumes of rezoning documents reveals that “community facilities” would now be permitted. NYU dorms are “community facilities”.
NYU has sought to expand into SoHo for years, but the zoning kept it out. With SoHo opened for student dormitories, expect the school — and all those fun-loving students and frat boys — to swarm into our community.
These two new revelations are on top of plans the City has already made clear:
– chain stores of unlimited size
– office towers more than 2-1/2 times larger than permitted now
– no guarantee a single unit of “affordable” housing will ever be built
– likely demolition of existing rent-regulated buildings on the fringes of the rezoning area, Chinatown and Little Italy.
Click here to tell City electeds to oppose the plan.
Our next court date is July 7, when the judge is expected to decide whether de Blasio violated the City Charter in his handling of this rezoning public review procedure.
The judge has so far listened favorably to us. An affirmative decision that day will be a victory for us and a big blow to the mayor’s plan, perhaps a fatal one.
Click this Go Fund Me link to donate to our legal fund https://gofund.me/
June 19, 2021
Join SoHo Alliance on Facebook & GoFundMe
We are pleased to announce that SoHo Alliance has launched on two social media channels, Facebook and GoFundMe.
Our Facebook page is located here: https://www.facebook.com/
Please follow our page and share with other residents, people who work in the area, or those who simply love the SoHo/NoHo neighborhoods. All respectful comments and posts are welcome.
GoFundMe represents a further extension of our fundraising efforts. Found here:
We are in a short-term funding crunch for legal expenses as we take on de Blasio’s misguided SoHo/NoHo Upzoning plans. There has never been an upzoning in a single historic district in the 56 years of the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s existence and the current plan would bring 275-feet office towers and big-box retailers to our neighborhood.
Please contribute – anything helps – and share as much as you can.
June 11, 2021
Voter Beware!
Pro-Trump, wealthy Republican real-estate developers are using a front organization to mail political flyers to Democratic voters downtown in an attempt to defeat city council candidate Christopher Marte.
Christopher Marte is “too dangerous” according to a pro-business super-PAC funded by these billionaires who claim to be concerned about crime and police budget cuts.
Don’t be fooled. These attack ads are not about protecting your safety; they’re concerned about protecting their profits.
They are taking a year-old Marte comment out of context, claiming he wants to defund the police. Instead, Marte merely wants to shift more police response to EMS or social services.
Follow the Money!
The front group behind these attack ads, Common Sense, is funded by some of the richest real-estate developers in the country and some of Trump’s biggest donors. See the list here.
Ron Lauder, a longtime Republican Party donor, contributed $500,000 to the PAC to defeat Marte.
Since 2016, Lauder, net worth $5 billion, has donated more than $1.6 million to pro-Trump organizations. In return, Trump has called Lauder his “good friend.” In 2020, Lauder donated $1.7 million to a group that opposed criminal justice reform in New York. Yet he tries to fearmonger you into believing that Chris Marte is soft on crime.
Stephen Ross is the chairman of Related Properties, the company responsible for Hudson Yards. He has an estimated worth of $7.2 billion and threw a $500,000 fundraiser for Trump. He also owns the Miami Dolphins, the NFL team he purchased for more than a billion dollars. Yet Ross fears Christopher Marte so much that he contributed $1,000,000 to the PAC to defeat him.
Ross is also chairperson emeritus of the Real Estate Board of New York, REBNY, the city’s leading real estate trade association. REBNY got its way when de Blasio’s SoHo/NoHo upzoning proposal announced it would permit big-box retails stores of unlimited square footage, something REBNY wanted. You can see why Ross does not want you to vote for Marte, who has come out against de Blasio’s upzoning scheme.
Crown Retail Services coughed up $50,000 to defeat Marte. It is a branch of Crown Acquisitions, whose founder, Stanley Chera, contributed $125,000 to Trump Victory and $219,300 to other Republican causes.
Isaac Ash contributed $100,000 to slander Marte. He also contributed $106,000 to Trump Victory, several $10,000 donations to state Republican party committees, and $35,500 to the Republican National Committee.
Brunswick Logistics contributed $100,000 to the anti-Marte PAC. A firm partner, Zvi Ben Haim, has also given $18,300 to Trump PACs and $38,00 to the Republican National Committee.
Braha Brothers, LLC, gave $50,000 to defeat Marte and in 2016 donated $10,000 to Make American Great Again.
Jack Cayre, a Republican donor whose family also owns multiple properties in SoHo and who would make a killing if the SoHo/NoHo upzoning is enacted, contributed $100,000 to attack Marte.
Atlas Equities, which own many properties in SoHo, Chinatown and thoughout the city, contributed $70,000 to defeat Marte.
Why do these pro-Trump Republicans not want Democrats to vote for Christopher Marte? What do they fear?
The SoHo Alliance is non-partisan and does not endorse. We count and welcome Republicans as our members. But this deceitful campaign is unconscionable.
You decide who is the best candidate.
Please forward this to friends and neighbors throughout Downtown, not just SoHo/NoHo.
Rank Choice Voting
The new rank-choice voting system allows voters to choose five candidates in order of preference. But just because you can, does not mean you should. Frankly, in some races there are simply not five good candidates.
There is a voting tactic called “bullet voting” where, in races with multiple candidates, it is better to vote for only one, or at most two, of the candidates, with the logic being that your lesser choices may come back to oppose your first-choice candidate in the event of a run-off. Please consider that strategy. Don’t vote for people you don’t want just to fill the ballot.
Who to vote for in other elections?
Residents have been asking us whom to vote for in other elections. In some contest there are so many candidates that it is hard to say. We would prefer to simply tell you the candidates who have come out in favor of upzoning SoHo/NoHo and you decide accordingly.
First Council District: running against Christopher Marte is Gigi Li, Margaret Chin’s chief of staff. Li has come out in favor of upzoning SoHo/NoHo.
Mayor: Eric Adams and Andrew Yang have come out publicly in favor of upzoning our community, without ever giving us the courtesy of contacting us first to hear our side. Bad sign.
Comptroller: Brad Lander also came out publicly without the courtesy of contacting us.
Borough President: Brad Hoylman opposes the upzoning. Mark Levine has come out in favor. Others were noncommittal. You decide.
District Attorney: Although the district attorney does not directly involve SoHo, Tali Farhadian Weinstein has received most of her donations from Wall Street. Since DAs often prosecute financial crimes, one wonders whether she would be lenient on her Wall Street donors. Our friends at Downtown Independent Democrats have endorsed Eliza Orlins.
For more endorsement information from Downtown Independent Democrats, of which I am vice-president, visit their website.
June 7, 2021
Judge Strikes City’s Motion in SoHo/NoHo Rezoning Lawsuit –
Skeptical of City’s Claims – City Planning Yields
Judge Denies City’s Motion to Dismiss
Court Finds We Raised Significant Issues About City’s Handling of Rezoning Process & Questions Administration’s Strategy
City Admits It Wants to Upzone SoHo/NoHo While de Blasio Still In Office
City Planning Department Finally Concedes: CB2 Can Hold In-Person Public Meetings
We Need You!
A State Supreme Court justice on Thursday gave SoHo/NoHo a significant victory and handed the city a big setback when he denied the city’s motion to dismiss our lawsuit. The judge also found that we have raised important issues regarding the city’s handling of the public review portion of the rezoning procedure.
One of the claims of the lawsuit, filed by the SoHo Alliance and the Broadway Residents Coalition, centers on the requirement — a requirement approved
Instead, City Planning in April just emailed the community board a terse announcement that a plan to rezone our neighborhood would commence in thirty days. That’s all! No details.
Our attorney argued, since insufficient notice was given, that the city must abide by the law and submit a genuine detailed summary of its rezoning proposal — and then restart the public review process.
The rezoning proposal contains thousands of pages to read and digest. Details must be provided to get us prepared and organized in advance. Of course, that is the last thing the de Blasio administration wants.
The city’s lawyer claimed that the manner in which the agency prepared its notice was its own “discretionary” choice. We asserted that sufficient notification is a “ministerial requirement,” not at the agency’s discretion.
Justice Arthur Engoron agreed with us, finding that the duty to provide sufficient notice is indeed a requirement and not discretionary. Twice he reiterated that insufficient notice is the same as no notice. Such a statement from the bench does not forebode well for the city’s case.
The city contended that our lawsuit was merely intended to delay the rezoning process. The judge did not seem to agree. Acknowledging that the lawsuit did not bear on the merits of the rezoning plan itself, he found that the city’s failure to comply with the procedural notice requirement constituted a separate and distinct harm to us than any other harm that might happen as a result of the rezoning itself.
Ironically, the city lawyer actually admitted what we knew all along: that the administration wants to get this upzoning finished while de Blasio is still in office. This scheme is clearly an attempt to burnish this lame-duck’s legacy.
Justice Engoron also opined that it would be silly, wasteful, and counterproductive for the city to proceed with the public review process at the same time as this case is being litigated — and then to be told later by the court to stop and start all over again. This seems like a clear advisement to the city to reconsider its position whether to proceed with the rezoning process. The judge offered no similar advice to our attorney, which is promising.
The judge concluded the hearing by asking both attorneys to submit any additional pleadings, setting the next court date for July 7. At that time he will likely decide whether to grant our motion for a preliminary injunction to halt the current rezoning review and to start the process all over in the correct legal manner.
We received further success during the court hearing when the city retreated from its prior position and conceded that the community board is free to hold in-person public meetings on the rezoning proposal, a victory for which we had long fought.
Prior to this reversal, City Planning maintained it would only engage in virtual Zoom meetings, knowing full well that the virtual format stifles public participation and allows the agency to muffle our voices and our collective presence – a clear violation of our First Amendment right of free speech, free expression, and free association.
Shortly after the hearing ended, City Planning contacted the community board to discuss plans for a public hearing, an admission and vindication of our position.
This court case is costing us a fortune. Successful attorneys do not come cheap.
We are on a roll in the courts. Contribute to our effort – and get us to the winning line.
Read the latest detailed legal papers and motions that our attorney submitted to the court:
Please do your part to save your community. We cannot do it alone. We need you! DONATE
Mail a check payable to SoHo Alliance to PO Box 429, New York, NY 10012 or use our Paypal link.
June 1, 2021
Upzoning Update / Lawsuit Papers Filed
– Community Board Public Meeting Wednesday, June 2
– Lawsuit Papers Filed in State Supreme Court
As we reported last time, on May 23rd, the de Blasio administration’s official Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) began on May 17, a roughly seven-month public process in which the community board, the borough president, the Department of City Planning, the City Council and mayor will review and vote on the SoHo/NoHo upzoning proposal.
The community board has sixty days to hold a public hearing and make a recommendation.
Accordingly, our Community Board 2 has created a SoHo/NoHo Working Group that will hold several information meetings in June to work on the community’s response to the city’s plan. Do try to attend these meetings
The first will be held tomorrow, Wednesday, June 2 at 6:30.
The topic will be the very real threat of displacement of existing rent-regulated units, in both SoHo/NoHo and surrounding neighborhoods like Chinatown.
Here is the agenda:
- Village Preservation: Discussion of Why the City’s Rezoning Plan Will Reduce Net Affordable Housing (pp. 16-22) and Impact on 635 Rent Regulated Units in 105 Buildings in Rezoning Area
- Impact on Chinatown: Zishun Ning, Chinatown Working Group
- Impact on JLWQA Tenants: Charlie Anderson with Assemblymember Deborah Glick; Sean Sweeney, SoHo Alliance; Robert Seidman, JLWQA Tenant.
After these brief presentations, you will be able to speak, ask questions and opine.
Please register at the following link:
https://zoom.us/webinar/
https://zoom.us/webinar/
Key Upcoming Dates:
- Wednesday, June 2nd: Displacement of Existing Rent Regulated Units
- Tuesday, June 15th: Impact on Historic Districts: presentation by the Municipal Arts Society
- Wednesday, June 23rd: Public Hearing with Presentation from the Department of City Planning
- Thursday, June 24th: Second Public Hearing, as Needed
Mark your calendar. All meetings start at 6:30 PM. You may submit comments or questions to sohonoho@cb2manhattan.org.
To register for meetings, select the meeting date and registration link.
Legal Papers Filed in State Supreme Court
We are following a two-prong approach to address de Blasio’s upzoning scheme.
The first is engagement at public meetings as well as lobbying our electeds to oppose this dangerous proposal.
The second is a legal action filed on May 28 in State Supreme Court by the SoHo Alliance and the Broadway Residents Coalition challenging the city’s illegal handling of the ULURP public review process.
Our lawsuit cites the city’s breaching of City Charter requirements for proper notification of the start of the ULURP process, as well as its failure to provide a “detailed” description of the rezoning proposal.
The only notice that the community board received was a terse three sentence email that a rezoning proposal was coming up, when, in fact, the actual proposal has almost 20,000 pages of documents for the volunteers on the community board to read, digest and respond to within sixty days. Clearly, the city is throwing an impossible hurdle in order to stifle any meaningful response and opposition.
Our lawsuit also challenges City Planning’s outrageous decision not to hold any in-person meetings “in a place of public assembly” as the law demands, but to continue its insistence on Zoom meetings, with all the attendant and well-documented flaws these virtual meetings present. Restaurants, clubs and live events are opening up all over the city, but City Planning is still evoking the specter of covid to stifle our presence and our voices. Shame on them.
For your perusal, here is the link to our legal filings.
Soho Alliance, Inc. et al v. City of New York et al
Scroll down to newest documents #35 – #38 filed 05/28/2021
DONATE:
This lawsuit is very costly and it benefits you.
If you read the court papers above, you will see that our Memorandum to the judge is 54 pages long, full of legal arguments, references, and precedents. This expert detailing represents countless hours of lawyers’ time.
We need your help to pay for this legal action to defend your neighborhood. Please click here to donate
May 23, 2021
Rezoning Details Announced – Uglier Than We Ever Imagined
CITY STARTS REZONING PUBLIC REVIEW PROCESS
– Residents Hit with Extortionate Conversion Tax – Business Gets a Free Pass
– Unlimited Size for BigBox Mall Outlets/Bars/Clubs
– 27 Floor Office Towers
– Nothing for Residents or Small Businesses: Billions for Speculators
– What’s Next? Our day in court.
– SoHo/NoHo Residents Hit with Extortionate Conversion Tax – Business Gets a Fresh Pass
In a shakedown that would horrify even a racketeer, the deBlasio administration last Monday certified the start of the SoHo/NoHo rezoning public-review process by announcing that it will impose a $100 per square-foot “fee” on residents who want to convert their unit’s certificate of occupancy (C of O) from “Artists Quarters” to standard “Residential” use.
For example, artists, loft pioneers, and non-artist residents who own, say, a 2,500 square-foot unit and whose C of O is currently “artist quarters” (the majority of SoHo/NoHo dwellings) would have to pay the city $250,000 beforehand to file an application to convert to standard residential use.
Likewise, a landlord who owns a building with ten 2,500 square-feet rental units would have to fork over $2,500,000.
What if you don’t have the money to pay up? What if your estate doesn’t have the dough? What if you feel extorted having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to live legally in your own home? Too bad, according to de Blasio.
To add insult to injury, the city will allow commercial property owners to convert from SoHo’s current manufacturing use to retail use for free – not charging a dime, while giving them untold millions in added property value. Businesses get rich; we residents get taxed.
Moreover,a few years ago in West SoHo, the area west of Sixth Avenue also zoned for manufacturing use, a zoning change there permitted new residential construction and conversions – but only required a $5 per square-foot fee. That fee goes for “open space creation” to accommodate all the expected new residents.
That rezoning was pushed by Trinity Realty – tied to Trinity Church, which got its vast land holdings valued at $6 billion for free and pays no taxes. So, why does wealthy Trinity get away with a $5 fee and we peons have to pay $100?
What will the city do with this extortion money? Will the money go towards open space for us, or new schools, or even basic sanitation and police services which are sorely lacking? No!
Your money will go into a so-called “art fund.” And where will these “art funds” go? To preserve the arts, artist housing, or artist work space in SoHo/NoHo? No way.
The money will be available to any and all “arts” groups located south of 14th Street down to the Battery.
Do you feel like giving a quarter of a million to the likes of the already well-endowed Whitney Museum in the Meatpacking District or some Peoples Art Collective on Avenue D? How about another Charging Bull sculpture for Wall Street? Do you want to pay for that? Mayor de Blasio wants you to – if you want your loft to be legalized. He gets a legacy and you get taxed.
– Unlimited Size for Mall Outlets / Big Box Stores / Bars/Clubs
This rezoning initiative began innocently enough a few years ago when residents complained to our local officials that some troublesome stores on Broadway violated the prohibition here on stores greater than 10,000 square feet. Multiple pubic meetings were held in 2019 to get input. Most everyone agreed that the zoning could be updated to permit non-artist residency and to allow retail, much of which is still not permitted here.
The only group that wanted unlimited retail space was REBNY, the Real Estate Board of New York. Not even Broadway stakeholders called for unlimited retail. Only REBNY. This mayor is selling our neighborhood to REBNY.
The rezoning also calls for another major change. The size limit for eating and drinking establishments here is 5,000 square feet. Balthazar is 4,990 square feet. Doesn’t that seem nice enough? Here’s the wrinkle.
Currently night clubs are not allowed here without a special permit. Recently a judge struck down the hoary restriction that prohibited dancing in bars and restaurants. If this zoning amendment passes, don’t be surprised if a 25,000 square-foot club serving liquor, a DJ and dancing opens near you. In other words, we will be the new epicenter of the nightlife industry.
The city must maintain the current size of bars and restaurants at 5,000 square feet!
– 27 Floor Office Towers
We have already discussed how, for the first time in 66 years of city landmarking, this proposal would upzone historic low-rise landmark districts. Nor is there any guarantee that affordable housing will be built, but assures luxury housing will – putting displacement pressures on adjacent working-class and ethnic neighborhoods.
Furthermore, de Blasio’s upzoning proposal incentivizes the creation of office space over residential. For example, if a developer wishes to convert current office space to residential use, an equal amount of office space must be constructed or converted.
The administration wants to create a central business district stretching from Midtown to Wall Street – with SoHo/NoHo as its navel.
– Nothing for Residents or Small Businesses
That is what the new zoning is about. What started as a good-faith effort to legalize retail and residential living has now transmogrified into a billion dollar giveaway to REBNY, real estate speculators, and the nightlife industry. We get absolutely nothing in return – except a tax bill of hundreds of millions in order to live legally in our own homes.
What’s Next? Our day in Court.
In June the community board will have the Department of City Planning present its rezoning proposal to us at a public meeting. Time and place to be determined.
Accordingly, on June 3 a judge will address the lawsuit filed by the SoHo Alliance and the Broadway Residents Coalition to overturn City Planning’s illegal decision that public rezoning meetings must still be done virtually over Zoom and not in person.
This is clearly an attempt by the city to stifle our voices and opposition. If we can go to ball games and restaurants and the movies, we surely can meet in a “place of public assembly” – as the law requires.
We all know that Zoom meetings are inadequate: technical errors abound; people are silenced; we cannot sit with our allies; we cannot applaud a remark; we cannot carry signs, nor wear buttons or T-shirts. At one Zoom meeting, city officials blocked one user who held up an innocuous sign. This behavior is clearly a violation of our First Amendment rights and is part of the lawsuit.
We are also telling the court that the city failed to provide copies of the rezoning paperwork and environmental impact statements to the community board thirty days prior to certification, as the law requires. The voters overwhelmingly voted for this amendment to the City Charter in 2019.
When City Planning finally made its documents public last week, the Environmental Impact Statement alone was 13,000 pages. There are thousands of pages of other difficult technical documents. Yet the community board only has sixty days to read, digest and issue a recommendation on this proposal that has taken City Planning almost a year to prepare.
Clearly the city is trying to torpedo our opposition by withholding precious information.
We shall keep you informed of all developments.
May 15, 2021
Exposé Reveals deBlasio’s Rezoning Scam
Report Shows de Blasio’s SoHo Rezoning Plan Unlikely To Produce Any Affordable Housing
Tenant Advocates & Chinatown Activists Slam de Blasio’s Plan As Sham, Giveaway To Developers
A new study released by Village Preservation on Friday shows that de Blasio’s SoHo/NoHo Upzoning plan is likely to produce little, if any, of his promised “affordable” housing. Rather, his scheme is structured to make it more profitable for speculators to build millions of square feet of new construction without any affordable housing included.
An analysis of the 84 sites where the city projects affordable housing will be built found that, on 91% of the sites, developers could actually construct 100% market-rate luxury buildings with no affordable housing.
In the remaining 9% of the sites, the study found that developers could construct 100% market-rate buildings — with no affordable housing — as long as the buildings are just slightly smaller than buildings the developers would be allowed to construct under de Blasio’s affordable housing program.
Loopholes for Developers to Exploit
The main loopholes for developers to exploit in the de Blasio plan are:
❍ Any development with less than 25,000 square feet of residential space is exempted from the affordable housing requirement.
❍ This includes not only new residential buildings of 25,000 square feet or less, but even much larger mixed-use buildings with residences combined with retail or commercial/office — just as long as the residential component does not exceed 25,000 square feet.
❍ There is no affordable housing requirement for commercial space.
❍ If a development site consists of multiple zoning lots — as do the sites upon which the majority of affordable units are projected to be built — the plan allows a glaring loophole: namely, construction of separate residential buildings up to 25,000 square feet on each lot, but without a single unit of affordable housing included.
For example, the huge Edison Parking lot at Centre and Hester Streets is comprised of five separate zoning lots. The city predicts 124,146 square feet of residential development there. However, de Blasio’s plan would actually allow up to 125,000 square feet of luxury condo in five separate buildings of less than 25,000 square feet each — with NO affordable housing.
The chart above shows the high-rise towers that can be built in the plan’s Housing Opportunity Zones with NO affordable housing.
There Goes Our Low-Rise Neighborhood
The study also found that while the city predicts 3.8 million square feet of new development resulting from the plan (the equivalent of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building combined), the plan would actually allow well over 10 million square feet of new development — more than three-and-a-half Empire State Buildings, most of which the plan fails to account for.
Village Preservation also found that about 788 of the 899 buildings in the rezoning area would have unused residential development rights under de Blasio’s rezoning proposal. Currently none do.
If just 5% of those buildings built highly profitable residential vertical enlargements (rooftop penthouse additions) of 25,000 square feet (the limit for exemptions from affordable housing requirements), it would result in an additional 1 million square feet of luxury housing added to the neighborhood without a single unit of affordable housing required.
Nowhere is this free giveaway ever mentioned in de Blasio’s scheme.
A prior study issued by Village Preservation in March found that the mayor’s plan would likely result in the demolition of hundreds of units of rent-regulated housing, including the Chinatown section within the rezoning area, and would push out hundreds of remaining low- to moderate-income tenants who live in these buildings.
It also found that the new housing created by the plan, even if it did include 20-30% affordable housing, would be more expensive and house residents who are wealthier and less diverse than the current neighborhood overall.
Village Preservation and more than a dozen other SoHo, NoHo, Chinatown, and tenant groups have put forward a Community Alternative Rezoning Plan for the area that would protect existing affordable housing and its residents, and would allow for the creation of deeper and more broadly affordable housing than the mayor’s plan.
Andrew Berman, Executive Director of Village Preservation, said: “A simple factual analysis of the mayor’s plan shows it’s structured to not only allow — but encourage — developers to build huge structures without a single square foot of affordable housing. And not just one or two times — every time. This plan was designed as a giveaway to the developers who have lobbied and donated generously for it for years.”
Michael McKee, Treasurer of the Tenants Political Action Committee (TenantsPAC), said: “The sheer dishonesty of the de Blasio administration in disguising the real thrust of the mayor’s SoHo/NoHo upzoning is beyond shocking. Clearly this plan, if it is approved, will not lead to an increase in truly affordable housing but will result in a glut of market-rate residential and commercial towers, as well as displacement of rent-stabilized tenants.”
Zishun Ning of the Chinatown Working Group said: “This report confirms that Mayor de Blasio’s ‘racial integration’ plan is in fact one of exclusion and displacement: exclusively luxury condos for the rich, and displacement of tenants, workers, and small businesses in the surrounding area as a result of rent and real-estate tax increase, due to the influx of these luxury high-rises. We say NO to de Blasio’s displacement agenda and his fake ‘social justice’ plan, and demand he pass the Chinatown Working Group Rezoning Plan and the Community Alternative Plan for SoHo and NoHo to protect all of us from displacement.
Tell City Officials and Candidates You Oppose the Mayor’s Sham Plan and They Should Too. Click HERE
To donate to Village Preservation, click HERE
May 9, 2021
Rally with SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown/
Cynically pursuing class warfare and despicably playing the race card in his vainglorious attempt to sell his SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown upzoning proposal, de Blasio is framing his giveaway to real-estate speculators as “housing and social justice.
However, a broad coalition of authentic housing justice advocates (not the mayor’s shills), Chinatown activists, people of color, plus SoHo/NoHo, Lower East Side and Little Italy residents will rally Monday to testify against de Blasio’s deceit.
This coaltion, united in opposition to the SoHo/NoHo/Chinatown upzoning, know the facts about the harmful consequences of the mayor’s scheme:
– displacement of rent-stabilized tenants in communities of color like Chinatown and the Lower East Side
– destruction of historic buildings in Little Italy
– elimination of small businesses in these two vulnerable neighborhoods
Join the SoHo Alliance, the Chinatown Working Group (CWG), TenantsPAC, Village Preservation (GVSHP), Broadway Residents Committee, Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative, the East Village Community Coalition, plus other activists from SoHo/NoHo for a rally and press conference tomorrow to protest the mayor’s handout to his campaign contributors.
When: Monday, May 10, Noon
Where: in an area of Chinatown/SoHo which the city proposes to upzone:
183 Centre Street, just north of Canal, in front of a bank owned by a Chinatown landlord who owns several buildings within the proposed zoning area, and across the street from a 20,000 sq.ft. parking lot on Hester Street, ripe for a luxury mega-tower, operated by contributors to de Blasio’s campaign
Why: de Blasio’s rezoning scheme will benefit not only real-estate speculators eyeing SoHo/NoHo, but also would introduce luxury residential towers to Chinatown, big-box destination retail outlets, and without any guarantee a single unit of “affordable” housing would be built.
May 5, 2021
SoHo Jabs – deBlasio Ducks
When a City Hall spokesman learned last Friday that the SoHo Alliance and the Broadway Residents Coalition had filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the de Blasio administration from illegally certifying the start of the SoHo/NoHo upzoning scheme, he responded that his boss was in for “a good hard fight.”
That might be the most accurate statement to come out of this administration in eight years.
The Department of City Planning had planned to “certify” the start of the zoning public review process at its scheduled meeting last Monday. This review procedure takes about seven months. The agency was chomping at the bit to certify it, since only a few months remain in de Blasio’s administration.
To everyone’s surprise, City Planning suddenly – without any explanation — declined to certify the rezoning.
At the same time, our attorney was in State Supreme Court seeking a temporary restraining order for any certification until City Planning followed the legal requirement to provide timely and sufficient notification to the community board and the public of the impending certification.
When the judge learned that City Planning had decided not to certify, he naturally denied our request to stop the certification.
City Planning meets next on May 17. Whether it certifies at that time remains to be seen. We shall keep you informed.
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This lawsuit is very costly. We need your help to pay for this legal action to defend our neighborhood. Please click here to donate.
May 2, 2021
SoHo/NoHo Activists File Lawsuit
to End de Blasio Administration’s
Illegal Orders & Actions
The SoHo Alliance, along with the Broadway Residents Coalition and other SoHo/NoHo civic activists, filed a lawsuit in State Supreme Court on Friday seeking a temporary restraining order and injunctive relief from:
– the de Blasio administration’s illegal violation of basic requirements of the law, the City Charter and the City Rules
– the administration’s abuse of power during the covid pandemic
– the administration’s stripping of our free speech and due process rights protected under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Read the actual filing here.
The court case centers on the mayor’s Department of City Planning’s (DCP) controversial SoHo/NoHo upzoning proposal, a scheme purportedly to build a few units of “affordable housing” but actually is a 3.8 million square-foot giveaway to developers to build luxury housing, high-rise office buildings and massive retail outlets here — at the same time applying displacement pressure on vulnerable minorities in adjacent Chinatown and Little Italy rent-stabilized buildings.
de Blasio Blatantly Violates City Charter
In 2019 voters overwhelmingly approved – 72% – a City Charter revision that requires DCP to:
– send a “detailed project summary” of any impending rezoning actions to the community board at least 30 days before certification of these actions
– post the same detailed project summary on its website within 5 days of transmitting the 30-day notice to the community board
– establish rules with minimum standards for the content and form of these pre-certification notices
DCP has failed to do any of these three legal requirements mandated by the voters in the City Charter – in addition to violating the Charter’s in-person hearing requirement.
de Blasio’s Double Talk
Mayor de Blasio is using the pandemic as an excuse to hold virtual-only Zoom public hearings despite the law’s requirement that these public hearings be held in-person, and despite his own announcement on national news that the city will fully reopen by July 1.
Clearly the de Blasio administration is taking advantage of the pandemic to limit the anticipated public opposition and objections to his controversial proposal. If people can gather in classrooms or Yankee Stadium, and if City workers can return to their offices, why can’t the City find a location to hold essential public hearings?
Tomorrow, Monday, May 3, DCP is expected to “certify” its SoHo/NoHo upzoning “Uniform Land-Use Review Procedure” (ULURP). At that time, the “clock” begins to run for public hearings to be held within certain limited periods of time.
The ULURP public review process is designed to invite public participation in significant land-use decisions and to ensure that the public and the community board have the opportunity to analyze and consider the extent to which such decisions would affect our neighborhoods and communities.
By law, such public hearings must be held at a “convenient place of public assembly.” No other administrative land-use procedure has this requirement.
Neither the City Charter nor the City Rules provide for this public review process to be conducted remotely. Obviously Zoom hearings are not held in a place of public assembly. The de Blasio administration is depriving us of our right to participate and be heard at properly held public meetings.
Zoom Meetings Stink – Especially City Planning’s
Despite insisting on virtual Zoom hearings, the City has failed to provide reliable, stable internet accommodation and software updates to all members of the public to enable participation in its virtual public hearings.
Technological difficulties abound.
Connectivity issues or software glitches prevent us from hearing presentations or testimony, and prevent us from providing our own testimony.
City Planners have muted some speakers.
Other speakers get dropped or are not able to speak at all due to DCP’s software glitches, as happened to this writer.
Some folks simply do not have access to reliable and stable internet service.
We cannot see which elected officials are participating, nor their facial expressions, reactions and body language.
We cannot see who or how many are present.
We cannot sit in solidarity with our supporters.
We are prohibited visual free-speech: no signs, no posters, no banners, not even T-shirts or buttons.
Our Aims
Our lawsuit seeks to compel the de Blasio administration to comply with the 30-day pre-certification notice and the 5-day publication requirements of the City Charter, as well as to comply with the in-person hearing requirement of the City Charter and City Rules.
Finally, our lawsuit argues that virtual meetings violate our First Amendment rights because virtual meetings burden substantially more speech than necessary and virtual meetings do not permit alternative channels for expression.
The de Blasio administration also has violated our Fourteenth Amendment due-process rights, which, at a minimum, require notice and an opportunity to be heard. The City has failed to provide the required notice of an impending hearing in a timely manner and has prevented our right to be heard in person.
We have asked the court for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction enjoining the City from proceeding with the upzoning application because:
– our case has merit with a substantial likelihood of success; and
– the City’s actions present the threat of irreparable harm to us.
A judge will hear our petition on Monday. We shall keep you apprised of the latest legal developments.
We have retained the prestigious law firm of Hiller, PC. Our legal expenses are substantial. Please contribute to our Legal Fund here. It benefits you.
April 25, 2021
Municipal Arts Society Blasts de Balsio’s Upzoning Plan / First Precinct Community Meeting: Thursday 11:30am – 1:30pm, Fr. Fagan Park
Municipal Arts Society Blasts de Blasio’s Upzoning Plan
The venerable Municipal Arts Society has issued a stark rebuttal to de Blasio’s upzoning proposal for SoHo/NoHo, declaring that “the City should not move forward with the proposal” and insisting “additional alternatives should be considered,” while expressing “great concern.”
The report is a must-read, complete with colored visualizations of the irreversible damage the mayor’s proposal would bring to SoHo/NoHo – as well as to vulnerable adjacent communities like Chinatown and Little Italy. Click here: SoHo/NoHo:Who Knows
The Municipal Arts Society voiced apprehension that the proposal:
- lacks a clear development strategy
- lacks transparency
- lacks sufficient and clear information for the community and decision-makers to effectively weigh in on this upzoning project
- lacks visualizations sufficient to understand whether the plan strengthens the neighborhood character — or irrevocably undermines it
- lacks learning from the City’s past upzoning mistakes
- lacks reliability in forecasting future development on dozens of sites in the SoHo/NoHo Historic Districts, where individual sites hold such historic significance
- lacks any understandable path between the proposed rezoning plan and the Landmarks Preservation Commission review process
- lacks disclosing how new building constructions and alterations will impact the future character of the historic districts, while broadly mischaracterizing historic Landmarks protections as “constraints” to development
The Department of City Planning states that the rezoning will generate 27 “projected” development sites consisting of 42 separate tax lots, and 57 “potential” development sites consisting of 66 separate tax lots. Taken together, these lots are expected to generate 3,200 new residential units and 3.8 million gross square feet of development, roughly equivalent to the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings combined.
Neighbors, think about it.
Mayor de Blasio is giving away — free to developers — 3.8 million square feet of development rights in one of the highest priced locations in the world. Buildable square-feet here goes for around 500/sq.ft.
You do the math: 3,800,000 sq.ft. X $500/sq.ft. = $1,900,000,000.
The mayor is gifting almost 2 billion dollars to real estate developers and getting nothing in return, not a dime for us — but sometimes a campaign contribution for himself.
What do we get? High-rise buildings into our low-rise community; displacement of current affordable-rent tenants, especially in vulnerable adjacent neighborhoods like Chinatown and Little Italy; irreparable harm to our world-famous historic districts; loss of neighborhood character; more congestion; more burdens on our infrastructure; and so on.
The report spells out how “rezonings apply new regulations to an entire area, creating development pressure on all lots, not just those disclosed under the {Environmental Review}. Thus, it is impossible to know the full impact of this proposal.”
It goes on to say, “Based on our past work, we know unidentified sites are likely to be developed in the near future following significant land-use actions” and continues, “Surely the City is not so siloed that it cannot share with the public how this process would work”
The report concludes, ‘Only when the City has brought the community in as a partner and respected their input, should they move forward in responding to the opportunities and challenges presented by this area.”
Below are four of the visualizations that the non-profit Municipal Arts Society produced. Yet, the City Planning Commission, with its huge staff and millions in budget money, failed to provide the public a single rendering of how our built environment might look under its upzoning proposal. What does that tell you about the transparency and integrity of the agency?
SoHo, looking from the southeast
Birds-eye view of SoHo/NoHo, looking north
Intersection of Baxter and Canal Streets
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First Precinct Community Meeting: Thursday 11:30am – 1:30pm
Do you have you a question or concern you would like to address with your local Community Police Officers?
Join your First Precinct Community Police Officers for an informal meeting with precinct commander Captain Smith from 11:30 am – 1:30 pm at Father Fagan Park, Prince Street and 6th Avenue. The meeting provides an opportunity to ask questions about policing and security issues in our community.
The public is invited. Reservations are not necessary. The First Precinct runs from Houston Street to the Battery, from Broadway west to the Hudson River.
April 3, 2021
SIGN Petition: Our Next Mayor Must Support Preservation For a Stronger NYC
Sign the petition HERE. Please share with your friends and neighbors.
As you know, de Blasio has proposed upzoning SoHo/NoHo – drastical
Since the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1965, not a single one of the 130 historic districts has been upzoned. Until now.
According to the Municipal Art Society, the most recent September 2020 MapPluto data shows there are approximately 2.5 million square feet of development rights currently available within the proposed rezoning area. The rezoning would more than triple this amount to nine million square feet, of which six million square feet would be located within the historic districts.
Unfortunately, this developers’ dream is not confined to de Blasio.
At least two mayoral candidates, Scott Stringer and Eric Adams, as well as comptroller candidate Brad Lander, have parroted de Blasio’s call for upzoning our communities — without even the courtesy of first contacting anyone in our community or community board to hear what we thought.
Fortunately, a citywide effort has arisen to educate the mayoral candidates that there is a constituency out there for preservation which has been ignored.
The candidates need to realize that historic preservation is best for New York. Landmarking benefits property values, provides a firm tax base, it’s green, and it preserves our history and our cultural identities.
Big real estate is pouring millions into the mayoral race, and they’re gunning to remove longstanding landmark and zoning protections. Let the candidates know you want a diverse, sustainable, equitable and beautiful city — and that historic preservation is a key part of that.
Sign the petition to the candidates HERE. It is being sponsored by Village Preservation and a coalition of city preservation and neighborhood organizations.
PLEASE FORWARD THIS PETITION TO FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS
March 28, 2021
Report on Proposed Mens Homeless Shelter
Last Thursday, representatives from the City’s Department of Homeless Services and Westhab, a non-profit that plans to operate a men’s shelter at 10 Wooster Street, aka, 349 Canal Street, spoke to the community board and took Q&A from board members and the public.
They began the presentation noting that the project was “as-of-right,” meaning the proposal needs no zoning Variance or Special Permit, or any community board approval, to proceed. They said the presentation was a “courtesy” to the community, but that they were open to future meetings to receive residents’ input and address concerns.
The three-story garage building has been recently purchased by Liberty One Group, an LLC whose business model consists of purchasing old factories, hotels or warehouses and then partnering with a non-profit homeless service to convert the facilities and rent them to the city as shelters.
Liberty One has been operating shelters for at least two decades and its portfolio spans 54 properties and 3,719 units, according to The Real Deal, which reviewed DHS records. Liberty One was not present at the meeting, but in response to demands from the public, the city representative said she would try to have the developer attend a future meeting.
The project will not be completed for at least eighteen months, “at best,” the presenter said. The building will require a gut renovation.
The operation will house 200 homeless men, living in individual dorm units of eight to ten beds per unit. Social service programs will be provided, plus recreation space and day room with TV. The residents can leave the facility in the morning for work, school or whatever, but they can also remain inside the premises during the day should they choose.
These men will not come in directly off the street, as is the case with some homeless shelters. Instead, they will be vetted at a transitional homeless center and must qualify to be admitted to this facility. The goal is to move them into permanent housing.
Residents had many questions. The non-profit reps said that some of the men have been incarcerated and 40-50% have substance abuse histories. However, there will be no drug testing. There will be no sex offenders.
Security will consist of a staff of forty licensed individuals, with about six to ten working per shift, mostly during the day and evening.
When a resident asked where the shelter residents would be able to smoke, the presenter said “outside”. This elicited immediate disapproval.
One resident suggested the roof be used as a smoking / recreational area. The non-profit said this was not in its current design plan, but it would consider this suggestion.
It should be noted that SoHo zoning requires that every converted building with more than ten resident units must have a rooftop recreational area.
Many folk suggested the main entrance be moved from Wooster Street, a quiet residential street, to the busier and more commercial Canal Street side of this L-shaped building. Although that was not the original design, the non-profit representative said they would consider it.
The presentation ended with the proponents agreeing to follow-up meetings. We shall keep you abreast. If you have opinions on this, one way or the other, please let us know.
March 21, 2021
Men’s Homeless Shelter Proposed
Community Board 2 will host a presentation by the NYC Department of Social Services and Westhab, a non-profit housing organization, regarding its plan to operate a men’s shelter in the garage at 10 Wooster Street, aka 349 Canal Street.
The presentation will be this Thursday, March 25 at 6:30 pm.
Since transient hotels are permitted in SoHo, it is likely that no Special Permit or Zoning Variance is required for this conversion.
Please register at the following link:
https://zoom.us/webinar/
https://zoom.us/webinar/
Please share this information with your friends and neighbors.
March 13, 2021
Virtual Town Hall & Teach-In on de Blasio’s SoHo/NoHo Upzoning Plan – and the Study Exposing Its True Impacts
Join us and our allies at Village Preservation this Monday, March 15 at 6pm for a virtual Town Hall and Teach-In on Mayor de Blasio’s massive SoHo/NoHo upzoning proposal and learn about Village Preservation’s recent study showing the true impacts of the mayor’s scheme.
Register for the Town Hall and Teach-in Here
The city’s proposed SoHo/NoHo upzoning, set to begin the public review process this fall, would allow new high-rise development on a massive scale here and in parts of Chinatown. The proposal also seeks to allow big-box chain stores to overrun our neighborhood.
However, de Blasio’s and his supporters have shrewdly
Analysis shows de Blasio’s contrivance would, in fact, make the neighborhoods richer, whiter and even more expensive than they are now, producing only 1/5 of the projected affordable housing and likely demolishing much more affordable housing than it produces.
It would disproportionately impact and destroy the homes of lower-income and Asian-American residents in the surrounding neighborhood and have spillover effects on the rest of Chinatown and the Lower East Side.
Our Community Alternative Zoning Plan would do everything the city claims de Blasio’s plan would do (but actually won’t) — but without the ill effects. However, the mayor and city officials refuse to consider it.
The city’s SoHo/NoHo plan, and Village Preservation’s study, have broad implications beyond our neighborhoods. The city has indicated that if successful here, it intends to implement similar upzonings in other landmarked neighborhoods throughout New York. There has never been an upzoning in a single historic district in the 56 years of the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s existence. The mayor and his developer cronies seek to destroy that legacy.
The city’s SoHo/NoHo plan, and Village Preservation’s study, have broad implications beyond our neighborhoods. The city has indicated that if successful here, it intends to implement similar upzonings in other landmarked neighborhoods throughout New York. There has never been an upzoning in a single historic district in the 56 years of the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s existence. The mayor and his developer cronies seek to destroy that legacy.
Learn from Village Preservation Executive Director Andrew Berman about the city’s plan – and what you can do to stop it. We’ll also be joined by elected officials speaking on the plan and Village Preservation’s study which directly undermines de Blasio’s claims.
Co-hosted by the SoHo Alliance, Broadway Residents Coalition, NoHo Neighborhood Alliance, LES CommUnity Concerns, East Village Community Coalition, Lower East Side Preservation Initiative, Chinatown Mural Project and the Downtown Independent Democrats.
March 7, 2021
New Study Exposes the Flaws in City’s Upzoning Plan
A newly-released study by our friends at Village Preservation shows that Mayor de Blasio’s proposed SoHo/NoHo Upzoning Plan will make our neighborhoods richer, whiter, and even more expensive than they are currently — in stark contrast to what the mayor is telling us.
This is something most of us realized instinctively despite the city’s hype that the upzoning plan will be a boon to affordable housing and bring in more racial and economic diversity.
Furthermore, the upzoning proposal will create significantly less affordable housing than projected, potentially destroying more affordable housing than it creates.
Please forward this email to friends and neighbors.
The new study found that the city’s projections regarding the impact of the rezoning are highly flawed and the plan will likely produce only about one-fifth of the projected affordable housing, while creating strong incentives for the demolition of a much larger number of existing affordable housing units — rent regulated and Loft Law – than it creates.
Furthermore, the city’s plan will disproportionately result in the demolition of buildings with Asian-American residents and businesses, as well as other low-income tenants.
The report, which can be read here, is exhaustive. Please link to it.
Below are some details and data:
Census data shows that while a significant percentage of residents of the proposed upzoning area (which includes part of Chinatown) are of higher income levels, a considerable percentage of residents of these neighborhoods are of low- to moderate-income levels.
The housing that the city’s rezoning would create — even with affordable housing included — would overall
– be many times more expensive than average housing prices currently in the neighborhood
– will house a much higher percentage of white residents than the current neighborhood houses
– will be unaffordable to most neighborhood residents.
The plan is likely to produce only about 1/5 of the projected affordable housing, or 68-103 units, because in 80% of cases where affordable housing construction is projected to be built, the plan gives greater zoning incentives for the construction of commercial office towers, which would contain no affordable housing.
The areas where the city’s plan proposes the largest upzoning, and therefore the largest incentive for demolition of buildings, also contains a disproportionately high concentration of Asian-American residents, lower income residents, and affordable rent-regulated or loft-law housing.
In these areas, the city’s proposed upzoning would allow new residential development at the maximum legally allowable density in New York State, and 20% higher than zoning allows for residential development on “Billionaire’s Row” on 59th Street uptown.
The study also looks at the Community Alternative Rezoning Plan, developed by a group of civic and community organization, including the SoHo Alliance.
This Community Plan would not destroy any affordable housing or displace any existing residents. Instead, it would create as much, if not more, affordable housing than the city’s plan, especially if combined with direct subsidies for the construction of new affordable housing in the neighborhood.
This plan would not endanger any existing affordable housing or result in any increased pressure to displace existing lower or moderate income residents.
Though it would not allow an upzoning, the Community Alternative Plan would allow as-of-right residential development with mandatory inclusion of affordable housing in new residential developments. It also calls for a higher percentage of affordable units and at deeper levels of affordability than the city’s plan.
The study points out that the Community Plan, by not endangering any existing affordable housing, would likely produce a larger net increase in affordable housing. The city’s plan is shown to potentially lead to a net decrease in affordable housing.
Combined with direct subsidies for the construction of 50%, 75%, or 100% affordable housing on parking lots and similar sites in the neighborhood, the Community Plan would lead to the creation of even more affordable housing than the city’s plan inaccurately projects would result.
The Village Preservation study also points out that the city’s plan takes no account of its impact upon neighboring areas of Chinatown and the Lower East Side. The potential for secondary displacement in these areas is even greater and will likely lead to the city’s plan creating an even greater shift in the demographics of the area to richer and whiter residents living in more expensive housing.
The Village Preservation report can be read here. Please link to it.
PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS
February 28, 2021
City Council Shunts Residents to the Rear
As we reported last week, the City Council has introduced legislation to amend the City Charter to create an expensive “comprehensive” long-term
It is a project that needs to be open, fair and transparent. That, unfortunately, has not been the case.
The Council did not widely publicize its own proposal. We only found out about it by chance. Even our local community board was not informed. Why the secrecy?
This past Tuesday, a Council hearing on the proposal continued this pattern of elusive behavior, with many residents precluded from speaking, and, if allowed, were relegated to the end of the speakers line.
For starters, the Council set the deadline to register to speak at 10:00 am the day before the hearing, a full 24 hours cut-off. Before covid, there was no such cut-off. You show up; you testify. Why is the Council using the pandemic to limit public input on this important topic?
When the public did get to testify, those in favor of the Council’s proposal — mostly those with a vested financial interest in it — were at the head of the speakers line. How convenient.
Those in opposition had to wait hours until the end of the meeting to testify — after most of the councilmembers had left for the day. This cynical tactic denied dozens of citizens the right to directly address their elected representatives.
The meeting lasted six-and-a-half hours. It is a sad commentary that the public could wait all day to be a part of democracy, but their elected officials chose not.
However, Mayor de Blasio’s City Planning Commissioner, Marissa Lago, did get to speak and she strongly opposed the proposal. One factor was its extreme cost.
The commissioner testified that creating multiple expensive “
Borough President Gale Brewer also had some doubts about the plan. Nor did a single community board support the legislation. In fact, several have come out against it, including our own local board.
Why are lame-duck councilmembers implementing a ten-year plan for their successors to deal with? Why the rush to drastically change the City Charter during a pandemic?
It is unclear where this proposal is headed. Considering both the public’s and the de Blasio administration’s strong opposition — and veto power — it may be time for the Council to drop this ill-conceived scheme.
February 21, 2021
NYC Doesn’t Need Another Robert Moses
With little fanfare and no notice to the public, community boards or other elected officials, Council Speaker Corey Johnson, as well as NoHo/East Village councilmember, Carlina Rivera, have introduced legislation that eviscerates whatever power the public and community boards have in determining the future of our neighborhoods.
While this proposal touts the creation of a ten-year comprehensive planning strategy with input from local communities, a careful reading reveals otherwise. If enacted, the legislation continues the city’s top-down, developer-friendly rezonings. And worse.
It prioritizes areas for population growth. This is a gift to developers to focus on neighborhoods like SoHo/NoHo to upzone with high-rise office buildings, high-rise luxury housing, and big-box stores.
How the proposal would work:
– Top-Down Administrative Structure
The mayor would appoint a “Director” of citywide long-term planning. (Think Robert Moses.)
The mayor, borough president and city council would appoint a Long-Term Steering Committee. That committee would then appoint a Borough Steering Committee for each borough. But these committees can only offer non-binding advice to the Director.
– Top-Down Process Eliminates Community Participation
After one public hearing, the Director would create three “Master Plans” for each community board, imposing housing targets to increase density and height.
There are no hearing requirements with the community boards, borough president or the Long-Term Steering Committee, all of whom must choose one of the three Master Plans or else the Director will choose one for them. Of course, there is no guarantee that the Director’s selection will benefit our neighborhood.
The various community Master Plan scenarios are then bundled as a citywide plan for approval by the City Council. Local “council member deference” is eliminated. That means the elimination of our local elected officials’ time-honored prerogative to approve or disapprove an upzoning in the council district.
– Once the Master Plan is in place:
During the ULURP process, the Department of City Planning certifies a development plan if it “aligns” with the Master Plan.
A developer’s plan that “aligns” with the Master Plan is assured approval.
For projects in “alignment” with the Master Plan, no environmental review is required.
– What can you do:
Sign this petition to Mayor de Blasio, Speaker Johnson and all the city council members, calling them to drop this ill-advised legislation.
December 15, 2019
SoHo/NoHo Zoning: Public Meeting
The Department of City Planning, Borough President Gale Brewer and Councilmember Margaret Chin will hold a public meeting in SoHo on January 8 to present the study they commissioned earlier this year and to discuss its findings. View the report here.
This meeting will give us the opportunity to hear what these officials think of the report and what they propose to do regarding the study and our zoning.
The recommendations in the report are rather vague and the generalized language gives these officials lots of wiggle room.
For example, although the report recommends retaining the existing 10,000 square-foot limit on retail, it also suggests dividing parts of SoHo/NoHo into “sub-areas” based on street width or other factors.
The following streets are defined as “wide” under zoning: Broadway, Lafayette, Centre, Houston, Canal, Great Jones, the Bowery, Astor Place, and Fourth Avenue.
Might these streets be exempt from the proposed 10,000 square-foot limit? The report is vague on that.
Such exceptions would further transform those areas into Herald Square, while funneling the additional spillover and problems into our side streets.
Moreover, we shall never agree to any proposal that would subdivide our community – pitting one block against the other, dividing and conquering. Who would dare Balkanize our neighborhood?
Another vague recommendation calls for “the possibility of increased density” on parking lots and one-story buildings. The last thing we want on those sites is super-sized buildings packed with studio apartments, which usually cater to a transient population.
We need answers.
Be there to listen to the sponsors and have them hear your views and questions on these important recommendations.
Where: Scholastic Building, 130 Mercer Street
When: Wednesday, January 8
Doors open at 6:00.
Opening remarks from the sponsors: 6:30-7:00
Feedback from us: 7:00-8:00
Save the date. See flyer below for more details.
Holiday Party Invitation
Your friends and neighbors in the Downtown Independent Democrats invite you to our annual Holiday Party this Wednesday.
The event is free and non-partisan; all are welcome.
This is your opportunity to mingle with and meet our current elected officials, candidates for public office, community activists, and just plain neighbors in a very festive atmosphere. Drinks and snacks will be provided.
When: Wednesday, December 18, 6:30 – 8:30
Where: Von Bar, 3 Bleecker Street (downstairs), just west of the Bowery
TimeOut has described Von’s as “no kitsch, no trash, no pretense”.
Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
