Residents Prevent Development in Fight Over Open Space

Appellate Division finds that Buildings improperly issued construction permit for nursing home after misinterpreting the zoning resolution. Park West Village is a complex located on a superblock bounded by West 100th Street to the north, West 97th Street to the south, Columbus Avenue to the east, and Amsterdam Avenue to the west on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The complex was built in the 1950s and 1960s as part of a federally … <Read More>


East Side transfer station clears judicial hurdle

Sanitation proposed to reopen marine waste transfer station near Asphalt Green and Bobby Wagner Walk. After the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island closed in 2001, the Department of Sanitation contracted with privately-owned transfer stations, landfills, and waste-to-energy facilities to dispose of residential waste. Sanitation now delivers a large percentage of waste to transfer stations within the City, where tractor- trailers pick up the waste and drive it to landfills in other states.

In 2004, … <Read More>


Third challenge to East 91st transfer station rejected

Additional hearing on park status set for August 2007. State Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell, IV and Upper East Side residents opposed the City’s plan to reopen the marine transfer station at East 91st Street in Manhattan as part of the Bloomberg administration’s Solid Waste Management Plan. The parties filed an article 78 petition, alleging that the environmental impact statement for the entire waste management plan was insufficient since it failed to adequately assess the construction … <Read More>


Basement apartment ruled legal; Condo’s “peace” sign ruled illegal

Buildings charged that owner unlawfully converted basement into additional rental apartment. In 2013 the Department of Buildings charged the owner of 345 W 70th Street, a multiple dwelling, with creating an illegal apartment in the basement. At the administrative hearing, Buildings submitted three I-cards for the building from 1916, 1938 and 1945. Before 1938, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development used I-cards to record the occupancy and arrangement of the buildings HPD had inspected. … <Read More>


Attorney General Settles with Developer for Concealing Prohibited Rent-Controlled Tenant Buyouts

Upper West Side developer must pay $540,000 dollars in settlement costs. On June 6, 2016 New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced reaching a settlement for $540,000 with 165 West 91st Street Holdings, LLC for the loss of two rent-controlled apartments in an Upper West Side building, while it was being converted into a condominium, as a result of prohibited agreements to buy-out tenancy rights. The LLC owns an apartment building at 165 <Read More>


Court Dismisses Suit in Opposition to Hospital Development

Upper East Side community group did not meet burden of proof that City acted arbitrarily.  On July 28, 2014, the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan denied petitions for declarative and injunctive relief against the proposed expansion of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital.  The petitions were brought by the Residents for Reasonable Development and several Upper East Side residents acting individually.  The petitioners argued that the institutional uses of the project were incompatible with the largely … <Read More>