Friday, February 29, 2008

Will Columbia Take Manhattanville?

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Posted on February 29, 2008

Will Columbia Take Manhattanville?

Balancing an Ivy League university’s expansion plan with a Harlem neighborhood’s needs is a tricky business, especially when eminent domain is in the mix. By Miriam Axel-Lute

The historic Sheffield Farms stable building (foreground) on Broadway, will be razed for Columbia's expansion.

In April 1968, angry students, faculty, and community members occupied several Columbia University buildings in response to the university’s plans to build a gymnasium on land taken from nearby Morningside Park, which served the largely black Harlem neighborhood. Seven hundred people were arrested, and the gym was never built.

That protest was on many people’s minds when, on Nov. 7, 2007, six Columbia students and a professor launched a two-week hunger strike that targeted the latest Columbia building project in Harlem: a new 17-acre campus planned for Manhattanville, a working-class neighborhood full of warehouses and auto-repair businesses a few blocks northwest of Columbia’s main campus.
The hunger strike sent one student to the hospital and ended with no promises from the university to change its plans. But it is likely not the end of the unrest. Tensions are running high about the proposal, which involves a dense, mixed-use urban campus with ground-floor retail and a huge below-grade complex. Opponents of the plan nearly halted a Nov. 26, 2007 City Planning Commission meeting, and Columbia employees who are already working in buildings in the new area report being harassed on the street. Are these harbingers of serious neighborhood strife, or simply growing pains?

Jordi Reyes-Montblanc, former president of Community Board 9, an advisory governmental body whose area includes Columbia’s existing and proposed campuses, seemingly threw down the gauntlet when he said, “I warned Columbia when I became president [of the community board], to be respectful of the community [in this expansion] or you will remember 1968 as the good old days.”

The fight over Manhattanville is a quintessential, if extreme, example of how difficult it is for communities to be heard when powerful institutional neighbors propose development or redevelopment. It also highlights the challenge local governments face in trying to determine what will be best for a neighborhood—and a city—in the face of such conflict. It is especially charged because the plan as Columbia envisions it will require the state to invoke eminent domain on the university’s behalf, adding fuel to debates raging locally and nationally over when, and if, eminent domain should be invoked for redevelopment purposes.

One way in which the Columbia expansion plan saga is unusual, however, is that it is not merely the story of one proposal and a community’s reaction. Columbia’s proposal happened to coincide with a grassroots land-use planning process led by the community board, giving critics of the expansion plan a chance to give a detailed answer to the perennial challenge: “Well, what do you want to happen?”

A New Urban Campus

Ivy League Columbia is an urban university located in New York City. More specifically, it is a Manhattan university. So it comes as no surprise that, like much of the island, it’s crowded.

According to an in-house 2004 study, Columbia has only 38 to 75 percent of the space devoted to education and research as seven of its top competitors, some of whom are nonetheless engaged in marked expansion projects of their own. The school has been spilling out of its main Morningside Heights campus for many years, acquiring properties and taking apartments out of rent regulation in surrounding neighborhoods in ad-hoc and often controversial fashion as need arose.

To keep up with competitors such as Harvard and Yale, in 2003 Columbia introduced an idea for a new urban campus that would accommodate all its growth for the next 30 years. The 17-acre campus would house state-of-the-art research labs; space for business, arts, and international policy schools; public open space; and street-level retail (in buildings owned by the university).

It would squirrel unsightly parking, mechanical functions, and academic support space in a vast below-grade space, keeping building heights down. The university estimates that the project will add 6,000 university jobs to the area over the next 25 years (1,200 in the first phase of construction).

Columbia’s Web site trumpets that the development will “transform what is now a largely isolated, underutilized streetscape of garage openings, empty ground floors, roll-down metal gates and chain-link fences � into a cohesive, reanimated center for educational, commercial and community life.”

On the Other Hand

But many residents, local business owners, and planners involved in the community’s own planning process don’t see it in such a rosy light. According to consultants from Pratt’s Center for Community Development, they see a functional working-class industrial neighborhood threatened with “wholesale removal” by an institution with a long history of encroaching on its neighbors. Despite its projected mixed uses and pocket parks, and promises that it will have no gates to keep the community out, the new campus will be a single-owner, mono-culture patrolled by a private security force and benefiting primarily outsiders, say local groups.

Opponents of the plan are driven by a big-picture fear of 1960s-style urban renewal, in which whole neighborhoods were lost to large-scale building projects, but they also have extensive and detailed specific criticisms of Columbia’s proposal, ranging from safety to gentrification:
The site is located on a fault line and in an evacuation zone for hurricane surges and it will include labs that work with biohazards. Could a single massive connected bathtub space under the campus be constructed with adequate safeguards?

The expansion will exacerbate an affordable-housing crunch and create displacement. Along with the direct displacement of a few hundred residents, including tenants of two city-owned buildings who have been working toward taking over as co-operative owners for the past four or five years, the expected indirect displacement is a source of much dispute and anger. Columbia acknowledges that some of this will occur, and in response has committed to building 1,000 units of university housing and funding a $20 million housing trust fund (with $10 million not to be committed until the second phase). However, this may not be enough. Community planners familiar with the project predict displacement on the order of three times Columbia’s estimates.

For example, 3333 Broadway, a massive five-tower complex across from the development site, has already opted out of the city’s Mitchell-Lama moderate-income housing program. As a result, hundreds of previously affordable units are no longer protected by rent regulations.

Jobs, demolition of historic properties (both those with landmark designations, such as the Sheffield Farms Stables, and those of significance to the neighborhood such as the current location of the famed Cotton Club), and additions to the environmental burdens of the neighborhood are also at issue. According to the Coalition to Preserve Community, a group of business owners and residents, about 1.5 percent of Columbia’s 14,000 employees live north of 125th Street in Community Board 9. If this percentage stays consistent, about 90 of the 6,000 promised university jobs would go to neighborhood residents. Given the community’s misgivings about the Columbia plan, it’s not surprising that many expansion opponents have connected with residents of two other New York neighborhoods where huge development projects—Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and Willetts Point in Queens—have sparked backlash against the use of eminent domain.

Two Plans

Community boards in New York City can and do create their own land-use and zoning plans, called 197a plans, and CB 9 was already working on one when Columbia announced its intentions. The City Planning Commission, knowing the two plans were being developed at the same time, decided in an unprecedented move to consider them simultaneously, each in the light of the other.

This put the community planners in the unusual position of needing to develop their own alternative vision for the area Columbia was targeting, one much more specific than a 197a plan would usually entail. The community’s vision was a “mixed-use, mixed-ownership, predominantly academic uses” area that retained a manufacturing presence and still allowed Columbia to build its new campus on the land it already owns. Underground uses would follow Rockefeller Center’s model of interconnected basements. Their plan envisioned “a 24/7 live and work community, a sense of place, retention of the existing low- and moderate-income rental housing stock, and the continuation of current uses,” for one commercial corridor and a hub of arts and culture for another.

After reviewing Columbia’s plans, the community board made significant adjustments to the 197a plan to accommodate Columbia’s expansion: increasing the density allowed for community facilities, relaxing regulations for ground-floor use, and lining up their proposed district boundaries with Columbia’s.

However, there remained an overriding, apparently irreconcilable difference. The community board’s 197a plan is committed to a mixed-ownership area and an explicit prohibition on the invoking of eminent domain, while Columbia’s is committed to full site control, including asking the state to use eminent domain to transfer ownership of both holdout commercial properties and publicly owned under-street areas to the university.

An Advantage and a Disadvantage

The commission’s decision to consider the plans together had plusses and minuses. The community had to wait a year and a half after the plan was completed for it to be considered, which, according to Mercedes Narciso, a senior planner from Pratt, was unfair. She believes it could have been approved, and then Columbia’s plan evaluated in light of those guidelines. On the other hand, historically 197a plans have been ignored in the face of large attractive proposals like Columbia’s, notes Ron Shiffman, another Pratt consultant. This time, the community’s vision was on the table at the same time as Columbia’s version.

But in the end, the City Planning Commission chose Columbia’s vision. On Nov. 26, 2007, the commission passed both the community’s 197a plan and Columbia’s rezoning proposal, but it removed from the 197a plan the portion dealing with the acreage Columbia wants. On Columbia’s plan, the commission scaled back the size and number of several of the research buildings. There was one vote against Columbia’s proposal, and one abstention; the modified 197a plan passed unanimously.

“To have the 197a plan approved is a great victory,” says Narciso. But the “twisted results” of approving them both will be that “all the amenities are going to be for a community that no longer lives there. It’ll be for the Columbia community.”

In comments to the planning commission’s report, CB 9 representatives note that while the community’s larger plan was approved, the section concerning Manhattanville was turned down on the basis of not providing as much space as the university said it needed; when the commission chose to reduce the amount of academic and research space based on their own “aesthetic values,” Columbia accepted the change without a peep. This, in their opinion, shows that Columbia never negotiated in good faith with the community board and that the planning commission relied too heavily on Columbia’s assessment of the 197a plan.

Eminent Domain

More than anything else, it is Columbia’s insistence that it control the whole site, and the threat of eminent domain that hangs over the remaining properties that Columbia does not own, that is galvanizing and uniting opposition to Columbia’s plans. While few flatly oppose the idea of Columbia expanding, the general consensus (among residents, planners, business owners, and the community board) questions whether allowing the university to expand exactly when, how, and wherever it wants to constitutes enough of a public benefit to justify invoking eminent domain.

The flavor of public good that Lee Bollinger, the university’s president, has in mind as justifying eminent domain is quite general and benefits humankind as a whole. For example, their new neurosciences lab might find the cure for Alzheimer’s disease. A laudable goal surely. But does that mean that business owners who want to keep their buildings and pass their businesses on to their children are being extortionists standing in the way of the greater good, as the university has claimed?

Doublespeak?

Academic institutions are strongly rooted to place, and Columbia is no exception. Its New York location and historic campuses are a major attraction in recruiting students and faculty. In fact, the president’s letterhead reads “Columbia University. In the City of New York.” The idea that the university might leave the city is nearly absurd. Yet in the expansion’s environmental impact statement introduction, after a description of how the university is the 11th largest non-governmental employer in the city, is this interesting assertion: “Columbia has stated a strong commitment to remain in New York City.” In an era when employers routinely threaten to relocate in order to obtain public resources, it’s easy to see a mention of “commitment to remain” as a way to make the city feel it “owes” Columbia something for this commitment.

So while Columbia focuses on the big-picture effects its expansion could have on the city or the world at large, the effects of its plans on the neighborhood level are already being felt. The university currently owns as much as 90 percent of the expansion footprint, where it has been stockpiling property, and, some allege, intentionally emptying buildings. Empty buildings create area blight, which is a necessary step toward the state taking the property through eminent domain.

Ann Whitman, owner of an art transportation business located in a historic property in the footprint, told The Next American City that the university’s negotiating tactics began with a “Deal with us now, or deal with the state later,” approach. She later received a letter on Columbia letterhead telling her that her property was “eligible for eminent domain.” The scare tactics were effective. The community’s 197a plan points out that area manufacturing employment had been steadily increasing from 1991 to 2000, adding 403 jobs, but dropped steeply once Columbia started buying up property, shedding 372 jobs from 2000 to 2002.

Irwin Cantor, the planning commissioner who abstained from the vote on Columbia’s proposal, noted that it was particularly galling that Columbia’s plan explicitly says that eminent domain won’t be sought for properties in the second phase of development (15 years away) until needed.

This leaves owners responsible for the buildings, but effectively unable to improve or sell them (except to Columbia) as a result of the threat of eminent domain hanging over them. There’s a vanishingly small chance that these owners would be able to get financing to improve their property; and in the unlikely event that there was a buyer, that buyer would also not be able to get financing. Only three property owners in the footprint of Columbia’s expansion have not sold to the university to date. No one knows how many of those who have sold felt pressured to sell by the threat of eminent domain.

This is, in fact, one of the insidious aspects of eminent domain. Just raising the possibility of its use has immediate effects, almost always to the benefit of the entity wishing to acquire property. And those benefits are not evenly distributed. Eminent domain is most often used in the name of economic development or large-scale redevelopment, which primarily benefits already powerful entities. Smaller, more incremental community-based efforts are less likely to need to assemble such huge tracts of land.

One quiet reminder of this is the fact that media accounts and activists have been regularly referring to Columbia “using” or “agreeing not to use” eminent domain. In fact, Columbia has no ability to use the power and can only ask the state to act on its behalf. For example, Newsday wrote on Dec. 6, 2007, “Although the university has acquired most of the properties in the project’s footprint, it hasn’t ruled out using eminent domain to acquire the rest.” And on Dec. 13, The Daily News quoted the testimony of Robert Kasdin, Columbia’s senior executive vice president, at a city council hearing: “Under no condition will Columbia University use eminent domain against any residential properties.” The Daily News did not clarify the fact that Columbia cannot “use” eminent domain.

In the Wake Of Kelo

In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled in Kelo v. New London that the economic development generated by a new Pfizer plant and luxury homes would be sufficient reason for New London, Conn. to invoke eminent domain to take nonblighted residences. This touched off a firestorm of anti-eminent-domain activism and legislation nationally. What had once been mostly the concern of hardcore property-rights advocates received an infusion of support from both the left and right wing, and dozens of states passed restrictions on the use of eminent domain, especially on the transfer of condemned property to private owners. The campaigns supporting these measures often featured stories of small-business owners like Whitman, who lost their premises to redevelopment projects.

But this movement also generated concern among local development officials and community-development groups that extreme remedies for extreme cases were going to block the use of eminent domain in other situations. Public-private partnerships to renovate apartment buildings once owned by slumlords, for example, would be prohibited under laws meant to prohibit transfer of condemned property to a for-profit company if a private nonprofit ended up owning the building. Limits on invoking eminent domain for redevelopment could stymie grass-roots community-redevelopment plans if one absentee owner of a vacant property refused to sell.

Pratt’s Shiffman, who supports the community’s stance that eminent domain should not be allowed for Columbia’s project, worries that emotional reactions like these to actual abuses of eminent domain will make it difficult to use it as a tool in the future to implement true grassroots-supported plans or to mitigate the harm of absentee or negle ctful ownership. “I’m a supporter of eminent domain,” he explains, “but it should go through a public process, and start with a city plan. It shouldn’t start from a private developer. That weakens it when you need to use it for a true public purpose�. I’m afraid over time we’re legitimately going to need it and we’re not going to have it.”

New York State has so far not passed such restrictions. But in New York City, Columbia’s expansion, along with the Atlantic Yards and Willetts Point developments, are fanning the flames of anti-eminent-domain sentiment and perhaps helping to create a constituency for such legislation. “We are totally, totally, totally against eminent domain,” says Reyes-Montblanc, former chair of Community Board 9. “Most states have awakened to [eminent-domain abuse] and taken corrective action.” Reyes-Montblanc echoes many in CB 9 when he says he supports restricting eminent domain to more traditional public-use cases, such as roads, public schools, and hospitals.

Karen Phillips, a founder of the Abyssinian Baptist Development Corporation (a Harlem community development corporation) and the lone dissenting vote against Columbia’s proposal on the city planning commission, also finds this worrisome. “A lot of people want to say ‘I’m really against eminent domain.’ That’s not a realistic approach for anyone who wants to participate in comprehensive planning,” she says. Even preventing condemned property from going to a private entity is problematic, she notes: Community developers are private entities. Phillips says that instead, local officials should hold to a standard of “public benefit” where a project for which eminent domain is invoked must itself serve the whole community, not just come with concessions from the developer to fund attractive extras.

Shiffman agrees, saying that relying on negotiating a community-benefits agreement before decisions about land use and zoning are finished amounts to “purchasing” planning decisions. He says he was angry to see Columbia’s attention shift almost entirely to the local development corporation that was negotiating the community-benefits agreement for this expansion while the community board was still trying to discuss resolving differences in their zoning proposals.

Defining when a project is generally beneficial to a neighborhood and its existing residents and businesses is no easy task, not to mention balancing a neighborhood’s needs with those of anchor institutions and cities and regions at large. There will likely always be disputes, but one important step to achieving a more progressive, fairer result than in Manhattanville will be to shift the balance of power in the negotiations, says Phillips. Rather than fighting to be heard, “the community should be in a stronger role to negotiate for what they want from the private sector � and the public sector,” she says.

Going Forward

The city council was expected by many to address Columbia’s plan and the amended 197a plan in mid-January, but in a surprise move that prompted accusations of trying to avoid further public debate, the plans were brought to a vote in mid-December. Both plans were approved, though some council members noted that they appeared to conflict.

In the wake of these decisions, the remaining property owners could decide to negotiate sales with Columbia after all, giving a somewhat anticlimactic go-ahead to the expansion. Or they could, as some have threatened, go to court to try to keep their buildings. In either case, community activists, planners, and the community board will continue to try to affect, adjust, or redirect what they consider the worst aspects of the plan.

And in either case, West Harlem will change dramatically over the coming decades, possibly in ways predicted by community activists, possibly in ways predicted by Columbia, likely some of both. What exactly it will look like remains to be seen, but those concerned with the relationship between cities and their institutions of higher education, and with the search for a fair and progressive approach to eminent domain, will be keeping a close eye on its progress.

http://www.shelterforce.org/?/article/213/will_columbia_take_manhattanville/

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Columbia and the Affordable Housing Crisis


Columbia and the Affordable Housing Crisis
By Tom Kappner
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 28, 2008

Over and over again we hear the argument that “gentrification,” or the general upgrading in the availability of housing to higher and higher socio-economic groups is the inevitable “result of market forces.”
Columbia denies responsibility for the ethnic cleansing and economic homogenization of Morningside Heights that took place from the ’60s through the ’80s and similarly Columbia claims that the irrevocable eradication of the diverse socio-economic fabric north of 125th Street will occur without the proposed Manhattanville expansion.
It is argued that Columbia is merely a contributing factor and, in any case, the $20 million revolving loan fund the University has pledged for affordable housing absolves it of any responsibility it may have.
Though this sum is probably sufficient for less than 100 housing units at costs beyond the reach of most community residents in order to mitigate the displacement of thousands, the problem with the “invisible hand of the market” arguments is that they hide the very real actors and the concrete decisions they make that produce these “inevitable” results.

Columbia’s policies have not been a contributing factor—they have been the major cause for the critical shortage of low and moderate income housing in the area between 110th and 125th Streets, a pattern that the current plans will replicate northward beyond the immediate expansion zone.
The University acquired over 168 residential buildings, more than half of the residential real estate in the area between 110th and 125th Streets. Of the over 6000 housing units in those buildings, less than 600 long term residents remain in the rent-regulated apartments that Columbia has been deregulating.
Currently, the mere announcement of Columbia’s proposed campus in Manhattanville led the owner of 3333 Broadway, immediately North of the expansion zone, to opt out of the Mitchell-Lama subsidized housing program causing hundreds of low and moderate rental units to be vacated.
This is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Even Columbia’s Environmental Impact Statement admits that the pristine campus it plans will displace 5000 low income residents within a ten block radius. In fact, it will be thousands more, primarily working-class Latino and African American residents from 135th Street northward, who will have to make way for the more upscale condos, co-ops, and luxury rentals that will make the area “respectable” for Columbia.

Moreover, University administrators have consistently acted to prevent the success of any alternative course of action, most recently by refusing to work within the framework of the community’s 197-a Plan. This rejection of a development that would integrate Columbia and the community’s needs favors the creation of yet another exclusive campus enclave.
The University plans to push out the existing community and making the surrounding area more “amenable” to the type of people University administrators perceive to be more socially acceptable, ominously portending a direct repetition of the disastrous patterns of the past.

The brutal campaign of evictions which rid the neighborhood of thousands of “undesirables” (in the infamous words of the University’s provost at the time) and turned it into an affluent company town was the fuel that exploded with the spark created by Gym Crow in ’68. In the aftermath, anxious to clean up Columbia’s image with some good PR, the newly inaugurated President Michael Sovern agreed to an Advisory Committee on University Housing Policies made up of representatives of major community groups and elected officials of the time.
I chaired this board, which met with University VPs and the Director of Real Estate from 1980 to 19855 at Riverside Church. The idea was to find ways to meet the University’s housing needs without doing so at the expense of the existing community. A variety of formulas were put forward that would provide for the coexistence of a stable long term residential community in the same physical space as the more transient Columbia affiliates.
After five years of being strung along, Columbia came back with their counteroffer that would allow folks with more than 30 years of service the right to remain in their homes upon retirement. The community members saw no point in continuing fruitless negotiations and the Advisory Board was disbanded.

Then, as now, with the West Harlem Local Development Corporation’s practically meaningless Memorandum of Understanding, it’s all about PR and has next to nothing to do with any substance.
If Columbia wants to be serious about meeting its responsibility for the lack of affordable housing, it could honor the suggestions in the 197-a Plan by ceasing vacancy deregulation and setting aside the few remaining rent-regulated apartments it owns as low income housing for community residents in perpetuity. That is certainly a much more cost efficient way to provide affordable housing than the $20 million mentioned in the Memorandum of Understanding, an amount which does not even add up to the units Columbia wants to take over in the expansion zone.

It seems clear that Columbia is determined to ignore the lessons of the past and will continue on its disastrous course. This can only hurt Columbia and the community. There are more of us than there were in ’68 and we have learned our lessons. Sooner or later another spark will ignite the resentment from all the unnecessary pain and suffering Columbia has caused. We are entering a period when ignoring reality will no longer make it go away.

The author is a member of the Columbia College class of 1966. He is a founding member of the Coalition to Preserve Community.

Friday, February 22, 2008

City College Expansion Plans Incite Heated Debate at CB9


City College Expansion Plans Incite Heated Debate at CB9
By Daniel Amzallag
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 22, 2008

Sparks flew over City College of New York’s proposed expansion and a resolution concerning the relocation of Hamilton Grange to St. Nicholas Park at a Community Board 9 general meeting Thursday night.

City College, a campus of the public City University of New York located at 137th Street, has proposed to expand its campus in the wake of city approval of Columbia’s Manhattanville plans.
While representatives and architects for the college presented their expansion plans to the community board and promised to hear its concerns, they later announced that plans could no longer be changed. This ignited outrage among board members.

“Some time ago there was some time for community input, but unfortunately not now,” City College Director of Urban and Government Affairs Karen Witherspoon said at the meeting, responding to a question from CB9 Chair Pat Jones regarding “mechanisms for community input.”

“We do not mean to exclude the community, we don’t mean to take the community’s space, but we’re very lacking in science, so painful sacrifices must be made. As much as I understand these concerns, we are desperate for this space,” Witherspoon added.

Board members and attendees expressed frustration with what many characterized as “after-the-fact consultation.” City College should have followed City Charter regulations and consulted with CB9 years ago when change was still possible, said board member and former chair Jordi Reyes-Montblanc. “Don’t be surprised that a lot of people here are kind of upset that something is being constructed that we have very little information about and is being done in a very nonchalant way,” he said.

The expansion, which will contain new health and science facilities, will yield benefits for the community in its “health-oriented” research, said a City College administrator who attended the meeting. He called the college’s plan “a public goal, not a private one,” and maintained that the campus would remain open to the community.

But, said board member Savona Bailey-McClain, the community should be compensated with short-term benefits and ways to mitigate potential impacts of the college’s expansion. Others took issue with aspects of the expansion plan itself, such as the demolishment of centuries-old trees and a running track that used to be open for community use.

Close to the end of the meeting, Ron Melichar, president of the Hamilton Heights-West Harlem Community Preservation Organization, switched the focus to discuss the Hamilton Grange plan. Melichar spoke of a “four-week window” during which changes to the plan to move the historic home of Alexander Hamilton from its current location on W. 143rd Street into St. Nicholas Park can be made.

A resolution regarding the Grange relocation, and concerns that its facade will face a different direction, had been tabled by CB9’s executive committee for voting at Thursday’s meeting due to what Jones said was “a lack of clarity.”

Local resident Michael Henry Adams expressed anger with the situation, accusing CB9 officers of being “sell-outs” and “doing this deliberately to destroy a great landmark.” Adams entered into a loud conflagration with other board members, and at one point had to be physically restrained.

“What was raised here was not raised at the executive meeting,” Jones said with regard to the committee’s decision. The next opportunity to vote on the resolution will take place after the end of the four-week window.
NB - Columbia University has shown more respect for CB9M than City College that under New York City Charter is REQUIRED to consult the Community Board. This lack of respect goes back many years and many Board Chairs. Fortunately Karen Whiterspoon has assidously, since assuming the position formerly held by Tony Rogers, been working to correct that situation.
Perhaps this is the dawn of a new relationship with CUNY and CCNY in particular.
Regarding the relocation of Hamilton Grange, it is worth remembering that there exists an agreement reached after long and extrenous negotiations which would result in the construction of National Parks Rangers living quarters and a community/visitors center at the current location once vacated.
The preservationists in our midst have focused on the orientation f the entrance to a house that has been relocated several times and reconfigured each time. In my opinion, this is a total waste of time, effort and ink. The Fact is that National Parks will do as they will do and that the Community opinion is not their concer.
What should be of conern to the Community is the Fact that the agreement reached with National Parks, the City, the Community and faciliated by Congressman Rangel is not being abrogated unilaterally by National Parks and the Community once more is being defrauded.
It makes me sick to the stomach to see the lack of focus and concern about the breach of the basic agreement and the nonchalant attitdue about such breach by the preservationist who seem totally fixated on the orientation of the entrance to the Grange and wondering wheter the ghost of Alexander Hamilton might find its way into the Grange.
Alec Hamilton himself would be as concerned as I am about the breach of an agreement with the Community and not all about the entrance way to his home as he was smart enough to have contributed so much to New York City. - JRM

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

On history's ash heap



On history's ash heap
Wednesday, February 20th 2008, 4:00 AM

By one count, there were 638 CIA plots to kill him. But the exploding cigar didn't work. Neither did the poison pen syringe. The Bay of Pigs was a botch job. In the end, it was Fidel Castro's own aged body that removed him from the Cuban presidency - nature taking its course.

"I believe that all of us ought to retire relatively young," Castro told Playboy in 1967, nine years into his reign.

If only El Jefe had been true to his word.

Castro's fellow Cubans, on the island and in the U.S., would have been spared almost a half-century of misery. But no, he steps down at 81 after an extraordinary run on the world stage.

How very long ago it was that fiery young revolutionary Fidel Castro, joined at the hip with comrade Che Guevara, fought his way down from the Cuban mountains to overthrow Fulgencio Batista and roll victoriously into Havana.

And how easy it was to believe Jan. 8, 1959, that this athletic, Jesuit-educated, swashbuckling guerrilla would lead Cubans to a brighter future.

Indeed, he did free his people from a brutal dictatorship.

And then, immediately, he began oppressing them even more. From the start, he maintained an iron grip on power by the bullet, not the ballot.

The Cuba Archive project has documented 6,000 firing-squad executions and more than 1,000 extrajudicial assassinations since Castro took power. And in this "democracy," collecting signatures on a petition for government reform was grounds for 20 years behind bars.

Here was a proletarian paradise from which proles paddled furiously.

But Castro was devilishly smart. He made himself a global player by serving as the cat's-paw of the Soviet Union. And, 90 miles off our shore, he was the perfect distance for taunting 10 U.S. Presidents.

There was Dwight Eisenhower, who put in place the first Cuban embargoes and hatched early plans for regime change.

There was John Kennedy, who for 13 days in October 1962 stood at the brink of nuclear war because Castro had welcomed Soviet missiles onto his island.

There was Jimmy Carter, who tried to make nice, only to be flooded with Mariel boatlift refugees - many of them from prisons and asylums.

There was Ronald Reagan, who invaded Grenada to turn back Cuban adventurism.
And there was Bill Clinton, into whose lap fell 5-year-old pawn Elian Gonzalez.

All the while, to the Cuban people, Castro was a thug. To this day, agents spy on dissidents. An assembly of more than three people, including for religious services in homes, has been punishable by prison.
And, of course, trying to leave without permission is a crime - one that countless Cubans have committed in ramshackle boats.

Health failing fast, unseen in public for months, the old Cold War relic now passes the cigar to his faithful younger brother Raul- by "younger," we mean age 76 - who leads Cuba's military and runs domestic security.

It's widely believed the new boss is less hard-line than the old one. Still, expecting markedly greater freedoms under Brother Raul is doubtful.

But true change will come to Cuba sooner or later.

And someday millions will enjoy the social and economic vitality and the basic human rights that for half a century have passed them by.

Early on in his fight to overthrow Batista, Fidel Castro mounted a failed revolution and was put on trial. Before the court, he delivered perhaps the most famous oration of his life, a four-hour address in which he said:
"Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me."

We do. It does. History will not.

AIA Kills Drive for Zoning Text Amendments


February 20, 2008

AIA Kills Drive for Zoning Text Amendments
The American Institute of Architects has withdrawn "from formal consideration" its proposed zoning text amendments, according to a post on Queens Crap. The AIA's push for the amendments—which would've increased lot coverage on smaller lots and allowed taller maximum base heights for some buildings in R6 through R10 zones—were criticized by some (most vocally, Queens Councilman Tony Avella) on the grounds that the tweaks hadn't gotten enough of a public airing. In a letter to Planning Chair Amanda Burden, AIA's past and present NYC presidents wrote that they "regret that these suggestions will not come to public hearing at the Commission or at City Council, but strongly urge that efforts go forward to identify and correct inconsistencies and deficiencies in the Zoning Resolution."
Posted by Gabby at 10:34 AM Comments (23) Categories: Zoning
Comments
This proposal brought up a number of questions:
What is the role of civic organizations in the NYC public policy discourse? When should they be allowed to speak?

What is the role of community review in proposed changes to public policy? Are statutory provisions enough?

How do you reconcile city-wide needs with individual community needs?
Why is Tony Avella so angry?

What is the new role of the preservationist movement in NYC: staunch supporter of the status quo, or neo-conservative reactionary?

Will architects ever be able to transcend the Scaranno effect?
Posted by:
guest at February 20, 2008 10:57 AM

The comments by 10:57 are probably the most intelligent ones I've seen during the whole back-and-forth. I read the response by the HDC and it was as brief and unilluminating as the material from the AIA. If we're (the royal "we") not capable of a comprehensive conversation about changes to the zoning resolution, does it matter that there wasn't greater public discourse?
Or are we going to develop the zoning code based on fear and other ill-informed emotional responses. So far the latter, to my disappointment.
Posted by:
guest at February 20, 2008 11:20 AM

"Or are we going to develop the zoning code based on fear and other ill-informed emotional responses. So far the latter, to my disappointment."

You may blame that on the non-transparent way the AIA went about this entire charade.
IF they had wanted to truly improve the text for the benefit of all of NYC, then all of NYC should have been able to be better educated by the AIA, not left in the dark.

Knee-jerk reactions form CBOs, Community Boards and City Council were due to the lack of public review that normal zoning changes go through.

Shame on the AIA and DCP for even allowing this to proceed past the drawing board stage without review from outside their insular lobbying group.

Nice of them to withdraw the application. Now let's see how they handle a better informed public whom have many questions and criticisms.
Posted by:
Action Jackson at February 20, 2008 11:58 AM

"Knee-jerk reactions form CBOs, Community Boards and City Council were due to the lack of public review that normal zoning changes go through."

The review process was the same 60 day review that is statutorily required by ULURP. All this language describing the proposal as a behind the scenes effort and "sneaky" was just a red herring from community activists that were too lazy to try and understand the substance of the proposals.

If additional review is necessary then change the statute that requires a 60 day period after a project is certified or referred by the CPC to CBs. But lets be honest and quit trying to make out like the AIA had some affirmative obligation to reach out to you and your cousins 11:58. Thats just wrong.

Now practically, speaking, 10:57 raises a good point "are the statutory provisions enough?" Practically speaking, it doesn't seem like it. The AIA might have had a better reception had they done some pre-application outreach. Its certainly not required, but it might have helped. Then again, most CBs didn't take the time to understand the project in the 60+ days they had. Whos to say they would have tried with more time? Its much easier to assume the worst case scenario and just vote against it because your sick of new buildings in your neighborhood.
Posted by:
guest at February 20, 2008 12:08 PM

You couldn't be more wrong about the CB's involvement, or at least my CB, which voted it down.The AIA came to our CB and gave a detailed explanation, point by point of the plan.We asked the AIA rep detailed questions about the proposal and on each and every point they had it wrong (save the bulkhead and rear dormer provisions, which might have been OK).You can blog and generalize all you want about how uninformed and biased you think the CB's are ... but that's all in your ltd. imagination and under your own preconceived bias.

Plain and simple, the AIA proposals left a LOT of room for unscrupulous developers and architects, of which NYC has a proven stock of, to cheat their way to overdevelop neighborhoods and reverse many changes that the community fought hard to win thru successful rezonings.

If you want to talk about it in details (and not sweeping generalizations) then by all means, go at it.
Posted by: guest at February 20, 2008 12:57 PM

12:08 stole my thunder. (Some of the phraseology even reads like I write; it's kind of spooky.) The review of the AIA-sponsored text amendment followed the same process as the recent yard and street tree amendments proposed by the Department of City Planning. I didn't hear any howling about "process" then, which suggests that it's a false argument now.

As a former member of a community board, and someone who still attends many community board meetings, I can state without equivication that, in general, community boards are poorly informed and frequently biased, often in ways they don't even see.
Posted by:
guest at February 20, 2008 1:22 PM
12:57PM, thank you.

Not only did the AIA present to our Board CB7 in Bklyn), which has several architects and tradesmen on committees (so stuff it! 12:08), I also attended the Brooklyn Boro Board meeting as saw the FIRST presentation.

Both places the AIA members (the lead guy at the Boro Board meeting) could not answer basic questions and were completely defensive.

Basic questions were asked by layman and tradesmen alike, and the AIA had no answers.

Ultimately (and the only honest thing they did) was to admit to the fact the text changes would allow their customers (developers) greater flexibility in maxing FAR (not increasing, maxing) and avoid the costly and time consuming process of going before the BSA. Period, end of story.

The fact that they listened to CBOs, our CB and City Council is a good thing, but too little to late.
I give them credit for withdrawing the application, but that was only after they came under severe pressure and scrutiny. That tells me something was wriong from Day 1.

And to add to 12:08's BS post, zoning text changes do not go through normal ULURP review, that was part of the issue. CBs and BPs are not required to hold public hearings like normal ULURPS, thank God our did (and others in the City).

Just by the fact the AIA was attempting to skate by without due process or review (regardless the application type) was the reason CB7 voted it down on principle, not even going into the detailed flaws of the text changes.

Do a wee-bit of research before you make accusations that CB's (heck BPs) were ill informed and CBOs had no right to weigh in. If I still remember correctly, this is still a democracy were under...for better or worse.
Posted by:
guest at February 20, 2008 1:26 PM

I forgot to add above (to my 1:26pm post) I (and my CBO and CB) were proud to stand beside CM Avella, HDC, MAS and other CBs against this trojan horse. Glad it did not have a change to get through the gates of CPC.
-ccgh
Posted by:
guest at February 20, 2008 1:28 PM

12:57 and 1:26 are obviously the same person. Just another reactionary NIMBY member of the "community" that hates new housing and development, and opposed the proposal based on fear of more "change".

I hope City Planning does the right thing and pushes the proposal forward. A minority of anti--everythings should not dictate the face of the city against the wishes of the majority.
Posted by:
guest at February 20, 2008 3:02 PM

"I hope City Planning does the right thing and pushes the proposal forward"
Uh, have you not read the post? It has been withdrawn. At least us supposed nimbys can read, jeese.

And no, I'm not both 12:57 and 1:26, just like minded.

And who said anything about hating change or new development.
I think you are confusing issues 3:02pm
-ccgh
Posted by:
guest at February 20, 2008 3:09 PM

CCGH, you are hilarious. It's obvious you haven't bothered to read the letter, nor do you have any background knowledge of the situation.

The reality is that City Planning is getting heat from the anti-everythings, so they are backing off for now.

Here's the relevent letter exerpts for the NIMBYs:
Regarding the withdrawal,"We do so at the specific suggestion of City Planning Department staff, to allow for more time for public discussion of the portions of the Zoning Resolution which limit the ability of architects to create good design."

Translation: City Planning is revisiting this in the near future.
Posted by:
guest at February 20, 2008 3:23 PM

12:57 and 1:26, right on. 12:08 is an ignorant hack.
3:02 loses to Godwin's Law by crying NIMBY! NIMBY! NIMBY!!!!!!!!!1!!!ONE!!
I'm so goddamn sick of that crybaby whine.
Posted by: guest at February 20, 2008 3:35 PM

Translation: AIA got such heat from Community Boards and City Council, Recommendations from Borough Boards to change the text, pressure from CBOs and Preservation Organizations (who are also for intelligent design in the City) that City Planning felt forced to ask them to withdraw the application.

I don't know I would add 18 Community Boards, several City Councilmembers, the Brooklyn Borough president, Historic Districts Council, Municipal Arts Society, Queens Civic Congress...etc. in with nimby's who "hate everything."

While I do find myself funny at times, I'm not sure you realize who's doing the laughing now.
-ccgh
Posted by:
guest at February 20, 2008 3:36 PM

CCGH: Of course you are laughing. You live for this. NIMBYs like yourself have no lives and get pleasure out of blocking things and preventing buildings from being built.

I love your laundry list of "talking points", as if the QCC or HDC is influential, representative of the public, or has ever supported anything having to do with design or good government.
You are lying about MAS. They are not in opposition.

18 Community Boards? That means 41 Community Boards did not sign up for your crusade. One Borough President? That means four did not sign up for your crusade. Community Boards are not representative of their communities; they are Boss Tweed zones for political hacks, with a few senior citizens thrown in for good measure. The Bushwick board, for example (Vito's board), is dominated by an ethnicity that departed forty years ago.

The fact that a few "community" groups have the ear of Tony Avella means that there will be further delays, and the issue won't be put to a vote until there is more "community" consultation, which means many months of "reaching out" and appeasing voting members of the council.

Once this consultation ends, the plan will be passed in modified format, and you can commence your crying about more "consultation" and "input", because of course you think we need machine Commnity Board hacks, not architects or planners, to guide the city's zoning text and built form.
Posted by:
guest at February 20, 2008 4:04 PM

Wrong as usual ccgh. See section § 201 of the City Charter.
"Applications for changes in the zoning resolution may be filed by any taxpayer, community board," etc... and "the commission prior to taking action upon any such application shall refer it to the affected community boards or borough boards for a public hearing and recommendation."

The AIA brought it to you and about 30 other CBs to review pursuant to the due process described in the charter and you denied it because they didn't bring it to you sooner. But more importantly you denied it because your a MORON!
Posted by:
guest at February 20, 2008 4:05 PM

The Brooklyn Borough Board voted 16 yea, 6 nay, 3 abstentions to approve the text amendments with modifications. Not quite sure who exactly "ccgh" is referring to.
Posted by:
guest at February 20, 2008 4:07 PM

A. that zoning reso does not apply to text changes. I checked. With the BP's office and DCP.

B. the Borough Board did vote YES, with substantial recommendations on all 6 of the texts.

C. AIA made presentations to 18, not 30 CBs and only after the CBs asked for them. They did not do it voluntarily. I was there.

D. again, this was not a typical ULURP so they were not required to bring it to the CBs, nor did the CB's Land Use Committee have to take it up. Again, check that reso again.

Enough back and forth. We all know they screwed up, could have handled it better and now have withdrawn the app. Hopefully they will have listened to the BP's recommendations and those from the CBs and CBOs.

If so, then they might actually be doing the City a service , and not just their clients. And that's the bottom line here folks. $$$
Posted by:
guest at February 20, 2008 4:51 PM

re: item C ^above^
-and DCP didn't volunteer to make presentations on the yard and street tree text amendments, so your point here is...?
Posted by:
guest at February 20, 2008 5:26 PM

"DCP didn't volunteer to make presentations on the yard and street tree text amendments"
That is the point. text amendments are not full ULURPs.
Thank you for clarifying what I was saying.
Nite.
Posted by:
guest at February 20, 2008 5:54 PM

Queens Civic Congress is the foremost community group in Queens and proves rather effective at building coalitions. Some of the foremost activists enjoy leadership roles there.
Posted by:
guest at February 21, 2008 12:38 AM

CCGH = NIMBY
Posted by:
guest at February 21, 2008 8:19 AM

Ew, cut me to the quick with your anonymous comments. Roll and burn shmucks. This proposal screwed the pooch for community-based planning.
Windsor Terrizen
Posted by:
guest at February 21, 2008 8:40 AM

Increasig lot coverage was a bad idea but facade height alignment is a good idea.
Most noteable is R6b, which has a maximum 40ft streetwall - used by DCP to be in context with brownstones. However, most brownstone facades are 42ft-46ft so the infil development is out of character.
Posted by:
guest at February 21, 2008 10:03 AM

http://www.brownstoner.com/brownstoner/archives/2008/02/aia_kills_drive.php

Monday, February 18, 2008

Government abuses eminent domain

Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2008 12:39:35 -0800 (PST)
From: "Anne Z. Whitman"
Subject: Fwd: Government abuses eminent domain
To: "Jordi Reyes Montblanc"

Note: forwarded message attached.

Anne Z. Whitman, President

This story was sent to you by: aw
--------------------
Government abuses eminent domain
--------------------

Raymond J. Keating

February 18 2008

How did downtowns - or any set of buildings - ever get built on Long Island
without government development plans and politicians threatening property owners
with condemnation?

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-opkea185582308feb18,0,6403009. column

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Government abuses eminent domain
Raymond J. Keating
February 18, 2008

How did downtowns - or any set of buildings - ever get built on Long Island without government development plans and politicians threatening property owners with condemnation?

Well, it turns out the private sector works pretty darn well.

Entrepreneurs, businesses and property owners actually have the incentives to bargain, buy, sell and build. They earn profits by serving residential and commercial markets.

Raymond J. Keating

Bio
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Matters go awry when government gets in the way with high taxes and costly, unnecessary regulation, including inflexible zoning. Government also needs to keep the streets clean, fill the potholes, and protect people and property.

But this Economics 101 lesson is lost on many politicians. They think that government plans lead to prosperity, and abusing eminent domain powers is crucial to development. They mistakenly believe that government violating property rights - by taking property from one private entity and handing it to another that is politically favored - is good for the economy.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court somehow upheld such blatantly unconstitutional actions in its 2005 Kelo decision. Subsequently, assorted members of the political class have argued against measures meant to stop eminent domain abuse. Still, many states have passed positive reforms, with New York not among them. So, the abuse continues here. Consider what's going on in Riverhead.

Early this month, the town board gave Vintage Square Properties, a private developer, thumbs up to start negotiating with property owners to build a $70-million project. Newsday reported that this "would level an existing block of stores, offices and homes." A stationery store owner noted that uncertainty has stopped him from making investments to transform his store into a luncheonette. He asked: "What if they come to me two months later and say this building is coming down to dust?"

Meanwhile, Apollo Real Estate Advisors, a firm undertaking a different, $120-million downtown Riverhead project, has requested that the town condemn property it needs from four owners. On Tuesday, Newsday noted: "Riverhead Supervisor Phil Cardinale said he was excited to get Apollo's request last week and predicted that just beginning the condemnation process would encourage the current owners to sell."

Excited? Is government coercion really something to get excited over? Funny how a threat from government to take your property might encourage a sale.

Is any of this necessary? Of course not. Consider two reports recently released by the Institute for Justice. A January 2008 study found that states passing eminent domain reforms have suffered no negative economic consequences in key areas cited by reform opponents - construction jobs, building permits, property tax revenues.

Even more powerful, though, is a report titled "Development Without Eminent Domain: Foundation of Freedom Inspires Urban Growth," written by Curt Pringle, mayor of Anaheim, Calif.

Pringle details how a dramatic economic revitalization in a district called the Platinum Triangle is being accomplished "without the government violating the property rights of our residents and business owners." City officials decided not to provide public subsidies, and not to use or threaten the use of eminent domain. They have protected the property rights of landowners, made zoning requirements more flexible and relied on market forces. Permitting, environmental impact requirements and regulations have been streamlined.

"The development of private properties," Pringle said, "has been completely at the discretion of the individual property owners.

"The result? Pringle reports that "the area is blossoming with more economic activity than ever imagined." He concludes that "Anaheim is flourishing and becoming a place where freedom is not just a phrase but also a practice." Pringle's report should be required reading for every elected official on Long Island and across New York State.

more in /news/columnists

Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.

http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-opkea185582308feb18,0,6403009.column

Moving the Grange, and Twisting It Around, Too

Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:50:57 -0800 (PST)
From: "Anne Z. Whitman"
Subject: Fwd: NYTimes: "Moving the Grange and Twisting It Around Too"
To: "Jordi Reyes Montblanc"
fyi Anne

Note: forwarded message attached.

Anne Z. Whitman, President
Forwarded Message [ Download File ]

Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:27:30 -0800 (PST)
From: "J Thomas"
Subject: NYTimes: "Moving the Grange and Twisting It Around Too"
To: whitmananne@yahoo.com

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/nyregion/18grange.html




N.Y. / Region

Moving the Grange, and Twisting It Around, Too

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times
The Grange, Alexander Hamilton’s country home in Upper Manhattan, is squeezed between an apartment house and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. This spring, it will be moved a few blocks to the edge of St. Nicholas Park, although a debate continues about which way it should face.

By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: February 18, 2008
Correction Appended

The idea is to restore Alexander Hamilton’s country home, the Grange, to a state that Hamilton himself would recognize.

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Alexander Hamilton's country home, the Grange, in its original location, approximately on what is now West 143rd Street, between Convent Avenue and Hamilton Place. The front entrance faced southwest.

The question is: Would he be able to find the front door?

This spring, the National Park Service plans to move the Grange from a cramped nook on Convent Avenue to a far more generous setting in a hillside corner of nearby St. Nicholas Park in Upper Manhattan.

In doing so, the service will swing the house around to face West 141st Street. That means that the Grange’s front door will end up oriented northeast rather than southwest, as was intended by Hamilton and his architect, John McComb Jr., when the home was completed in 1802.
This is a grave concern to some preservationists, who believe the government is squandering a chance to authentically restore the home of a towering founding father.

“It’s Preservation 101 that the house should be retained in its original orientation,” said Ron Melichar, president of the Harlem Heights-West Harlem Community Preservation Organization.

Orientation affects not only the exterior appearance but the way that light plays within the house’s octagonal parlor and dining room.

Darren Boch, a spokesman for the park service, said a southwest orientation “would defy common aesthetic sense” because it would leave the house facing the steep ridge from which City College rises.

“To the greatest degree possible, we’re trying to retrieve what has been lost to history: the character of Hamilton’s home as a freestanding mansion,” Mr. Boch said. He added, “The reasons for McComb’s orientation had to do with views and natural light, neither of which can be replicated, regardless of orientation, on the new site.”

Of course, there is a chance that visitors will be misled into thinking that the house was designed to front 141st Street, even though the gridiron street plan was drawn up a decade after the Grange was built. If the house instead turned its back on the street, there could be no such mistaken assumptions.

There may be more accommodating spots in the 23-acre park, but the 141st Street corner is particularly appropriate because it was once part of Hamilton’s estate, meaning that there is a 200-year-old connection between the building and its new setting.

One could argue that the Grange and the neighborhood around it are so transformed that orientation is scarcely a defining characteristic any longer. Or one could say, as preservationists do, that because so many changes have taken place, the government is obliged to maintain whatever original qualities can be preserved.

The case of the Grange illustrates an abiding tension in preservation between accommodating the public (in the interest of exposing as many people as possible to a historical structure) and striving for pinpoint accuracy.

The Grange is especially important because it is both a city landmark and a national memorial, a rare survivor from a time when Upper Manhattan was largely farmland, and a tremendous — though often overlooked — cultural resource in Harlem.

More than just a pretty face on a $10 bill, Hamilton served in the Revolutionary War, wrote many of the Federalist Papers, served as the first secretary of the Treasury and founded the Bank of New York and The New York Post.

He was mortally wounded in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804. The house was acquired in 1889 by St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and moved two blocks south to its current site at 287 Convent Avenue, abutting the church. The entrance was moved to one side of the house. It came under park service stewardship in 1962.

The missing original entranceway, the front and back porches and other architectural features are to be restored as part of the $8.2 million project. When the house reopens to the public in the fall, it will occupy a verdant setting, visible from all four sides, for the first time in 119 years.

“Even given the differences of opinion on orientation, it’s going to be a happy day for the house when it finally moves,” said Adrian Benepe, commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation Department, which supports the park service plan.

So does the Landmarks Preservation Commission, saying that “the orientation of the house relates to its original siting as a mansion on a promontory.”

Robert B. Tierney, the commission chairman, is left with only one small concern.
“When the ghost of Alexander Hamilton returns to the Grange,” Mr. Tierney said, “I hope he doesn’t go in the back door by mistake.”

Correction: February 22, 2008 An article on Monday about plans to move and restore the Grange, Alexander Hamilton’s country home in Upper Manhattan, attributed an erroneous distinction to that home. At least one other house associated with Hamilton survives: the Schuyler Mansion in Albany (also known as the Pastures), where he was married. The Grange is not the only one associated with him that still exists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/nyregion/18grange.html

NB - It is incredible what for osme people is so important and totally disregard the real question. Not whether the Founding Father's ghost can find its way into the house but
what will happen to the vacant lot left on Convent Avenue after the Grange is moved.

After long and ardous negotiations an agreement was reached with the Community faciliatated by Congressman Rangel and involving the Federal government in the form of National Parks Service, the City of new York Parks Dept. and Community board 9 Manhattan.

Under that agreement NPS would build a housing facility for the NPS Rangers and a Community/Visitor Center in the lot vacated by the Grange.

Now NPS has renege and will not do anything of the agreed buildings.

Yet the preservatinists are fixated on the orientation of the Grange at its new location and very little is said or done about the broken agreement. I have no doubts that Alec Hamilton, if he were alive would be more concerned about the breach of an agreement with the Community than he would about which way the house is oriented.

But then that is the way things are for preservationists and an uninvolved community.

When someone comes aroung and builds a tower condominium in that space you will hear the crays and moans of the preservationists, but then it will be too late. - JRM

High Rise Condos Divide West Harlem Residents


HOME » NEWS

High Rise Condos Divide West Harlem Residents

By Kevin Shin
Created 02/18/2008 - 3:03am

A new development rising into the West Harlem skyline is also raising the tempers ofsurrounding residents.

The project, which will be located in what many consider the last residential neighborhood in Manhattan untouched by redevelopment­, has divided West Harlem residents. Though developers and architects claim the building will be welcomed, new plans for 2201 Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. have already alarmed many living nearby.

The six-story, 35-unit residential condominium at 130th Street, with its concrete and glass modernist facade, brings a new look to an old street lined with brownstones and pre-war walk-ups. The development’s construction continues in the midst of new state and city initiatives aimed at creating affordable housing.

“To capture the spirit of the Harlem Revitalization, this West Harlem mid-rise condominium developer wanted a building that would celebrate the fabric of city life and the spirit of the community,” lead architect Marc Spector explained in a statement.

But some residents are concerned that the building’s construction, like that of other recent developments in West Harlem, will lead to higher rents and the flight of longtime residents who could be replaced by students and white-collar professionals.

“I’m not against improving the community,” said Donny Ochs, who has lived in his rent-stabilized apartment in a nearby building for over 20 years. “I just wish there were some way to do it without completely changing our neighborhood, although I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

According to the developers, WA Design and Development, apartments will be priced at $900 to $1,100 per square foot. The building will feature a gym, 24-hour doorman service, two levels of parking garages, and rooftop swimming pool surrounded by a terrace and a running track.

Recently proposed state and city legislation seeks to put vacant lots—like 2201 Adam Clayton Powell Blvd.—back on the market for residential development.

These laws would remove an existing tax benefit for vacant residential sites above 110th Street and require property owners to register vacant properties with the city, outlining plans for those properties’ futures. Owners would also have to pay the government a fee of up to $5,000 for each year the property remained vacant.



NB - Once again let me educate an Spectator reporter and hopefully the Spectator editorial staff.

WestSide Harlem commonly called West Harlem boundaries are the same as those of CB9M.

In the south, West 110th Street from the Hudson River to Manhattan Avenue.

In the north, West 155th Street from the Hudson River to Edgecombe Avenue.

In the west, the Hudson River.

In the East Edgecombe Avenue into Bradhust at West 145th into St. Nicholas Avenue and at West 123rd into Morningside Avenue into Manhattan Avenue.

Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard aka 7th Avenue is completely in Central Harlem or "Harlem" or Black Harlem. - JRM