Anita Laremont. Image credit: LinkedIn/Anita Laremont.

Current General Counsel is appointed Executive Director. On August 22, 2018, the Department of City Planning announced the appointment of Anita Laremont as its new Executive Director. Laremont is currently the Department’s General Counsel and Chief Analytical Officer. Laremont will succeed outgoing Executive Director Purnima Kapur. She will begin in her new role on September 4 and will continue to serve as the General Counsel until a replacement is named.

The Department of City Planning is the City’s primary land use agency and was created in 1936 under the New York City Charter. The Department is instrumental in the design of the City’s physical and socioeconomic framework. The Department strategic objectives include: catalyzing long-term neighborhood improvement through integrated planning; encouraging housing production, affordability, and quality; promoting economic development and job growth; enhancing resiliency and sustainability of neighborhoods; ensuring integrity, timeliness, and responsiveness in land use reviews; and supplying objective data and expertise to a broad range of planning functions and stakeholders.

Laremont joined the Department as General Counsel in 2014. Previously, Laremont was a partner at Harris Beach PLLC practicing real estate, land use, and government agency. Laremont currently serve as First Vice-Chair and Chair of the Development Committee at Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Gardens in Staten Island. She has served as a Trustee of the Citizens Budget Commission, and as Co-Chair of its Economic Development Committee. Laremont is a magna cum laude graduate of Mount Holyoke College, and received her J.D. from the New York University School of Law, where she was a Root Tilden Scholar.

During her time at the Department, Laremont helped create and adopt the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing and Zoning for Quality and Affordability text amendments. She was key in the City’s efforts to redevelop East Midtown, through the Vanderbilt Corridor and Greater East Midtown plans, and the related exploration of the transfers of development rights as a tool to promote the public interest.

“With a deep mastery of land use policy and planning, legendary problem solving abilities, a storied public service career and her trademark good humor, Anita’s promotion means that DCP will continue to focus its significant talents and energies on planning, urban design, transparency and efficiency to benefit communities across the five boroughs. I am thrilled that Anita has agreed to take on this new role,” Department Director Marisa Lago said. 

“I am honored and delighted to be named DCP’s next Executive Director. With big shoes to fill, I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues at DCP, in New York City government and in communities throughout our city on the important land use challenges and complexities that we face as we work to make sure that our city continues to be the best that it can be for generations to come,” Anita Laremont said.

“I am thrilled that my longtime friend, Anita Laremont, will be named Executive Director of the Department of City Planning. Anita has been an exemplary public servant as long as I’ve known her, and she has been a champion for affordable housing – which the city desperately needs – throughout her career. She knows the city backwards and forwards on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis, and I am confident her expertise will serve the city well. I wish her the best of luck and I congratulate her on this exciting new role,” City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said.