Rendering of a portion of the East Midtown Greenway. Image Credit: NYC EDC/Stantec

The 1.5 acre stretch of open space, to be completed by 2022, is part of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway initiative to create continuous loop around perimeter of Manhattan. On November 22, 2019, Mayor Bill de Blasio and top agency officials celebrated the commencement of construction of a new waterfront public open space, the East Midtown Greenway, which will stretch between East 53^rd Street to East 61^st Street. The East Midtown Greenway project is a piece of a larger project, Manhattan Waterfront Greenway. The Manhattan Greenway Project’s goal is to create accessible public waterfront space and safe bicycle pathways along the outer edge of Manhattan. (more…)

The Center for New York City Law and the Center for Real Estate Studies cordially invite you to:

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The Center for New York City Law and the Center for Real Estate Studies cordially invite you to:

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Hotel Seville

Support for individual landmark designations of Beaux-Arts Hotel and Neo-Renaissance Office Building expressed at hearing. On February 20, 2018, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held public hearings on the potential designations of Hotel Seville and the Emmet Building, both in East Midtown, in the area to the north of Madison Square. Landmarks added both buildings to its calendar in December of 2017. (more…)

One Vanderbilt. Image credit: Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates PC

Early in January 2017 the City of New York began the official public approval process for a proposal to rezone East Midtown Manhattan. The proposal was based in part on a report by the East Midtown Steering Committee co-chaired by the Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and the District 4 Council Member Daniel Garodnick.

The new 2017 proposal is the third proposal for rezoning East Midtown. In 2013 the Bloomberg Administration proposed to rezone East Midtown, but was forced by opposition to withdraw the proposal.  In 2015 the City rezoned the limited area along the Vanderbilt Corridor adjacent to Grand Central Terminal.  Both the current 2017 proposal and the 2015 adopted Vanderbilt Corridor rezoning are an improvement over the Bloomberg Administration’s withdrawn proposal; a developer cannot just write a check to receive bonus floor area, but must build an improvement to the public realm.  Still, both the new proposal and the Vanderbilt Corridor rezoning represent “zoning-for-dollars,” and take zoning in a wrong direction.  How might we do better? (more…)