Inflection Point

By Joel Lobenthal

Once again, the West Village must mobilize. NYC is being bulldozed out from under us, brutally upzoned by Mayors Bloomberg and de Blasio. Lame duck de Blasio’s latest valedictory proposal to upzone the landmarked districts of Soho, Noho, as well as part of Chinatown, may prove the most damaging to date. As Brian Pape wrote in these pages recently, it is “an unprecedented attempt to destroy a world-famous historic area of NYC.” The City Planning Commission—composed of development power brokers—has announced that it will continue its upzoning juggernaut under the new mayor. Thus, what happens further downtown could also be a harbinger of the West Village becoming home to 100-story condos, big-box stores, and, yes, more New York University expansion. 

Ostensible justification for the Soho/Noho/Chinatown upzoning resides with the mayor’s favorite fig leaf: affordable housing, or should I say, “affordable” housing. As someone asked at the New York City Council’s public hearing on November 9th, “What kind of affordable housing demands a minimum income of $65,000 per year?” The allegedly affordable housing built by de Blasio is certainly out of reach for New Yorkers hit hardest by our housing crisis. Riddled with loopholes and exemptions, the mayor’s new proposal is actually going to disincentivize construction of any “affordable,” let alone truly affordable, housing. 

But actual accessible housing, i.e. rent-regulated apartments in these districts, is certain to be eradicated, doomed by the profit incentive extended by vastly inflated height allowances for new construction. As the rent reform laws passed in 2019 failed to prohibit demolition of rent-regulated apartments, the new game plan of landlords is to dispense with rent-regulated apartment holdings, a strategy that can be applied to many low-rise buildings in the areas targeted. 

Underpinning an alarming development picture is de Blasio’s recent lawless condemnation of nine 1840s designated landmark houses on Ninth Avenue. By law, designated landmarks cannot be demolished without formal review by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. But the mayor simply proclaimed that because these buildings were so structurally unsound, they had to be demolished immediately—so that yet another tower could rise. The mayor could not produce documentation to support his claim; but he really didn’t need to. The municipal agencies that, theoretically, could stop this kind of abuse—the LPC, the Buildings Department, the CPC— have each been captured by City Hall. 

The Soho/Noho/Chinatown upzoning has been decried by U.S. Congress members Maloney and Nadler, New York State Senator Hoylman, and State Assemblymember Glick. Nevertheless, the way our NYC’s land-use game is rigged, none of that has as much influence as it might. Approval rests entirely with the city council, particularly with individual members whose catchment areas are affected. Local council members have put up almost no resistance to upzoning. But the decision is “still very much up in the air,” declared Andrew Berman on December 19th. Berman is the director of the organization Village Preservation. 

We can hope for the right outcome from the city council. Nevertheless, I think we must also realize that NYC has arrived at a crisis of governance. Local community boards must be empowered to begin to right the power imbalance that leaves New Yorkers largely voiceless on land-use matters. Community Board 2 voted overwhelmingly against the mayor’s Soho/Noho/Chinatown plan, but their rejection has no enforcement muscle. 

Landmarks are living history. The city’s attempts to wipe out its own history is redolent of the way dictators try to make pre-dictatorship history go away. Do we really want NYC’s population wandering around in an ahistorical stupor? It’s clear that quite a few people at the top want just that.