De Blasio administration launches public
process for controversial SoHo/NoHo rezoning
BY MARK HALLUM
If changes to the neighborhood have
not already been extreme over the past
two decades, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced
on Wednesday the kick off the
proposed SoHo and NoHo rezoning public
review process — a plan that received
plenty of pushback from the community.
The rezoning proposal was created
in a fashion that the administration says
will protect the aesthetics of the area and
while making the largely affl uent area more
affordable.
But this plan, marketed toward equitable
housing and small business survival, failed
to resonate with activists who said the administration
snuck by the city’s advisory
board on this project which has mainly
been back by real estate development interests,
something they believe undermine
the social benefi ts for working class New
Yorkers.
In terms of concerns that the rezoning
will only benefi t developers, de Blasio
was skeptical that a “publicly sponsored”
change would be a detriment compared to
a “private application” by builders.
“In SoHo, NoHo, you’re talking about an
area that has very little affordable housing,
we have an opportunity here to create affordable
housing, to bring to an area that
has been upper income a greater mix of
New Yorkers and create more balance,” de
Blasio said. “This is a rezoning that has
been proposed to really create substantial
community benefi t and there’s a lot of support
on the ground for the idea that there
needs to be affordable housing in every
community.”
Where the current zoning only allows
for buildings of no more than the 300 feet
tall, City Hall’s upzoning proposal seeks to
allow development two to three times that
height in sections defi ned by Canal Street
to the south, Houston Street and Astor
Place to the north, Lafayette Street and the
Bowery to the east, and Sixth Avenue and
West Broadway to the west.
“Today’s proposal to create a more inclusive
and resilient SoHo and NoHo rests
on the rigorous community engagement
work that artists and residents, businesses,
preservation groups and property owners
PHOTO BY MARK HALLUM
participated in last year. That work is even
more essential now as we seek to ensure
that these iconic neighborhoods, and New
York City as a whole, fully and fairly recover
from the economic challenges wrought
by COVID-19,” said Anita Laremont,
executive director of the Department of
City Planning.
But communities have been less than
pleased with this proposal in the past year
expressing dismay toward what they view
as an upzoning that will only serve wealthy
landowners and developers.
Early sentiments toward the project
were chaotic as a public meeting February
by the Department of City Planning was
taken over by concerned members of the
community speaking out of turn with an
apparent lack of an agenda or specifi c
details regarding the zoning change, as
reported by Bowery Boogie at the time.
“In spite of assurance for months to
the contrary, it looks like city offi cials are
moving full steam ahead with a plan to
upzone SoHo and NoHo, to allow vastly
increased amounts of super-luxury housing
in the neighborhood in out of scale highrise
towers, while they continue to refuse
to consider measures that would produce
more affordable housing while preserving
neighborhood scale and character,” Village
Preservation Executive Director Andrew
Berman said. “This upzoning approach of
super luxury towers with a small set aside
for affordable units is bad for New York
City, bad for our neighborhoods, and bad
for affordability.”
According to the de Blasio administration,
the zoning change would allow for
up to 3,200 new “homes” to be created,
with approximately 800 of them being
permanently affordable homes as part of
the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing.
MIH was approved by City Council in 2016
and requires 10% of new developments to
be affordable at 40% of the area median
income, calculated by region rather than
by zip code.
Many critics of this formula say that
it calculates affordability by including
incomes of wealthier New Yorkers rather
than what working class city dwellers are
really making in the area, which only fuels
displacement.
LUNGS Harvest Arts Festival shows how New York
City is thriving creatively during the pandemic
Rumors that New York is dead are highly exaggerated.
Downtown, arts and music and spoken word continue the vitality of the
city even amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The recent LUNGS Harvest Arts
Festival on the Lower East Side, video shoots, book launches, music outside of
restaurants or in the park prove that New York City is not dead.
Photos by Tequila Minsky
Part of LUNGS Harvest Arts Festival —the band Source at La Plaza Cultural
with a socially distanced audience. Everyone happy to be out after
months of confinement.
Clayton Patterson outside of his Outlaw
Gallery at the launching his latest
book.
On Tuesdays, Kat Minogue sings country
rock and roll ballads outside of Thompson
Street Chemists.
4 Oct. 8, 2020 Schneps Media