AND THE BATTLE RAGES ON!

On March 15th, a 20-story crane collapsed on an East Side street, killing at least four, injuring many more, prompting the evacuation of scores of residents from their homes, and forcing the closure of several city streets for days. In recent weeks, there was a fatal accident at the site of the Trump SoHo ‘Condo-Hotel,’ followed by an incident where shattered glass panes rained down hundreds of feet to the street below. The same weekend at West and Bethune Street, another construction accident spread debris into nearby residential buildings and also forced the closure of several major surrounding streets. Each of these incidents cost the city financially, but more importantly published reports say that the number of deaths at construction sites have undergone a precipitous increase in the last year.

To many of us, this likely does not come as a great surprise, as shocking and unfortunate as it is. Without knowing the outcome of investigations in all of these cases, they may nevertheless seem indicative of a system which in too many respects is much too lenient on developers. Too often, it seems, the big guys get a pass, while the average citizen bears the burden.

For example, scores of illegal billboards are plastered across downtown and west side buildings, making millions for advertisers and building owners while destroying the character of our neighborhoods. Reporting such infractions used to literally get no response from the city, which claimed a lack of staff prevented them from actually going after such violators. Now, the city will in some cases respond, but too often they interpret the law contrary to logic and in favor of the billboard operators, allowing the advertisements to remain. A case in point is the much-reviled highway-sized billboards at the Hotel Gansevoort in the Meatpacking District. In spite of clear prohibitions against the type of billboard the hotel erected, the city stood logic on its end and re-interpreted zoning restrictions to say the sign was actually legal.

Of course billboards are not the only case where the city reinterprets the rules to favor real estate interests. In perhaps the most notorious case, the 45-story Trump SoHo ‘Condo-Hotel’ was approved at Spring and Varick Streets in spite of clear zoning prohibitions against residential and residential hotel development at this location (and in any manufacturing zone, for that matter). Here the developers openly bragged that condo owners would be able to live in their units part time, seasonally, or year round, and continually advertised their development as containing “residences.” Nevertheless, the city granted Trump and partners permits over vociferous opposition from community and business groups–not just from this neighborhood, but from across the city. In doing so, for the first time ever the City opened up not just Hudson Square but a broad range of neighborhoods with similar zoning to ‘condo-hotels,’ and the possibility of luxury high-rise residential development which never existed before.

This approval is now being challenged at the Board of Standards and Appeals by the SoHo Alliance, with strong support from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. But the city is defending Trump and partners in court with taxpayer dollars, while community groups and average citizens have to raise tens of thousands of dollars to even get their day in court. If the city’s decision stands, condo-hotels will suddently be allowed in much of Hudson Square, SoHo, NoHo, Tribeca, the Meatpacking District, West Chelsea, the Flatiron, western Hell’s Kitchen, and huge swaths of Brooklyn and Queens.

But more and bigger developments loom on the horizon. In the West Village, there is a precedent-setting proposal by St. Vincent’s Hospital and development partners Rudin Management to tear down nine buildings in a landmark district and replace them with 1.3 million square feet of new luxury condos and a new hospital building. The 330 ft. tall hospital building and a proposed new 265 ft. tall luxury condo tower - each about 1/2 million square feet - would be the two largest buildings ever approved in any New York City landmark district, and the hospital building would be the tallest ever built in Greenwich Village. Of the nine buildings to be demolished, eight would be replaced by luxury condos, while most of eight buildings worth of hospital would be squeezed onto one site and stacked to this extreme height. Perhaps even more disturbingly, St. Vincent’s has gotten special permission over the years to build larger than normally allowable buildings to accomodate their hospital growth; they wish to not only give that extra bulk to Rudin for luxury condo development, but to actually increase it by 22%.

As the Trump development did with zoning protections, the Rudin/St. Vincent’s proposal has the potential to entirely change the definition of landmark protections citywide. It is hard not to believe that landmark protections would be rendered meaningless if this development were allowed as is (it should be noted that St. Vincent’s has the ability to seek a hardship exemption from landmarks regulations if they can prove that their plan is necessary for the hospital to continue to perform its functions; thus far, they have not chosen to do so). Hearings on this proposal are just beginning, however, so the outcome remains to be seen. There is good reason to hope that the Landmarks Preservation Commission will not approve this project, knowing how clearly it would gut the landmarks law which protects so many of our neighborhoods, including SoHo, NoHo, Tribeca, and Greenwich Village. But this will likely a require a strong outpouring of sentiment from the public against the proposal.

Similarly, the fate of Pier 40 is still up in the air as we go to press, even as Related Companies continues to press hard for their “Vegas-on-the-Hudson” development plan. That politically well-connected developer is seeking to build a mega-entertainment complex in the Hudson River Park, even though their proposal would require major zoning changes and a change in state law in order to make it possible. But the Hudson River Park Trust, controlled largely by the Mayor and the Governor, continues to hint at support for this plan, even as they delay their final vote on this wildly unpopular proposal.

One of the most alarming aspects of the possibility of the Related development on Pier 40 is the direction in which it is likely to take the Hudson Square and Far West Village South neighborhoods, which lie directly across from it. These areas still have manufacturing zoning, but have come under increasing development pressure, made that much greater by the City’s recent decision to allow condo-hotel development in the area. A mega-entertainment complex on neighboring Pier 40 is likely to point developers and the city in the direction of encouraging large-scale development throughout this area - the last thing we need.

In fact, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and other community groups have long been calling for a rezoning of Hudson Square in order to prevent more Trump-scaled development, which would require approval of the City Council and the City Planning Commission. After initially receiving indications of openness to such changes when the whole Trump controversy began, we have since seen no movement whatsoever towards a rezoning of this area, even as more and more large, out-of-scale projects move ahead here.

Clearly the pendulum has swung very far in the direction of wide-open support for real estate interests in our city. If there is any silver lining to the recent tragic rash of terrible and fatal construction accidents, hopefully it will be a light being shone upon the increasingly laissez-faire attitudes and policies we see, and perhaps putting the interests of neighborhoods first.

Andrew Berman is the Executive Director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, as well a board member of several local and statewide affordable housing groups and several west side neighborhood preservation groups.