The temperature was in the 90s the day Simeon Bankoff met with City- Land. Mr. Bankoff, Executive Director of the Historic Districts Council, a prominent city preservationist organization founded in 1971 as part of the Municipal Art Society, and operating independently since 1986, had just returned from a demonstration on the steps of City Hall. While most would have wilted, the charming and voluble Mr. Bankoff animatedly discoursed for over an hour on the Historic Districts Council, the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and the future of preservation in the City.

Raised in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, and a graduate of Stuyvesant High School, Mr. Bankoff has only left the city for the four years that he attended Sarah Lawrence College in Westchester County. After a series of positions with preservation- oriented organizations and as one of HDC’s first paid employees, Mr. Bankoff became its executive director in 2000. (more…)

When asked to recall projects throughout his 35-year career, land use attorney Paul Selver’s discussion becomes a vivid narrative of how the economy translates into New York City’s physical changes. Selver sees 1977 as the point when developers started looking ahead for the first time; the 1981 to 1988 development boom coincided with the economy’s exuberance and ended with the stock market crash. To Selver, his current projects, like a six-block rezoning in Coney Island, the potential five-acre reinvention of Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal, and the Trans Hudson Express Tunnel, New Jersey’s proposal for a second rail tunnel under the Hudson River to West 34th Street, reveal another market change. With the upper-middle class being “priced-out” of Manhattan, development moves to where housing can be built, and the need to transport commuters into Manhattan becomes greater.

Selver talked to CityLand about landing in land use, development bellwethers and potential new battles in Brooklyn.

An Extension of Childhood. Selver mentions many reasons for ending up in land use law, including a summer internship with the Lindsay Administration, a final Harvard Law School paper on affordable housing and his perceived inability to draw as well as needed to become an architect, but he ultimately sees it as a natural extension of growing up in Manhattan. Its buildings, its politics and its ever-changing streets interested him. (more…)

Comprised of Battery Park City, the Financial District, South Street Seaport, and Tribeca, the neighborhoods of Manhattan Community Board 1 are in the midst of a period of tremendous growth and development. New apartment buildings are bringing thousands of new residents to the district. At the same time, large redevelopment projects, such as the World Trade Center, promise to return millions of square feet of office space along with expanded retail and cultural spaces. Under the leadership of Julie Menin, Community Board 1 is working hard to “bring a holistic approach” to development, one that takes into account the community’s needs. CityLand talked to Menin about the important issues facing Lower Manhattan and how the Board is preparing for the future.

A Rising Voice. Menin grew up in Washington D.C. and first moved to the City to attend Columbia University. After obtaining a political science degree, she studied law at Northwestern University, and then moved back to D.C. to begin her career. In 2000, after eight years as a regulatory lawyer, Menin left her practice and opened Vine, a restaurant located on Broad Street across from the New York Stock Exchange. After 9/11, her business, like so many others in the downtown area, suffered economically. Menin said Vine and eight other businesses on Broad Street ultimately closed, in part due to new security measures that closed the street. (more…)

Catering hall operated independently of synagogue use. In the 18,000- square-foot basement of its synagogue and school building, Yeshiva Imrei Chaim Viznitz operated a public catering hall. The catering hall had two lobbies, two kitchens and separate entrances to the street, and operated events seven days a week. In 2004 and 2005, the hall held over 320 events including weddings with over 500 guests.

The Department of Buildings issued an order to close down the catering hall, citing the fact that the site’s residential zoning prohibited commercial uses, and Buildings could not categorize the large catering use, which advertised in the yellow pages, as an accessory use to a school and synagogue. Buildings applied to BSA to revoke the Yeshiva’s certificate of occupancy, arguing that Yeshiva Imrei received it by fraudulent means.

Yeshiva Imrei sued, obtaining a court order to enjoin BSA from issuing any decision and requiring BSA to accept its variance application. It then argued that BSA should deny Building’s argument or, alternatively, grant a variance for the catering hall since the school and synagogue needed the income to stay afloat. It added that it spent millions on the basement space in reliance on the C of O, and case law and federal law required BSA’s approval.

When questioned by BSA as to whether all the events held in the hall related to the school’s students or the synagogue’s members, Yeshiva Imrei said that 50 percent of the events did, but it offered no proof to support that claim. It added that Brooklyn’s Boro Park community needed a low-cost alternative for weddings. As a final justification, Yeshiva Imrei mentioned several other religious groups and cultural institutions, like the 92nd Street Y, Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Riverside Church and the Museum of the City of New York, which it claimed operated similar events.

To be an accessory use, Buildings pointed out that the catering hall must be incidental, generally found on the same site, and secondary to the permitted uses of the school and synagogue.

BSA ruled that the use was not accessory and denied the variance. BSA noted that the income stream could be used to support the synagogue, but this alone would not justify the catering hall’s location in a residential district. No evidence submitted by Yeshiva Imrei showed that the catering hall supported the school or synagogue in its day-today functions, and the Yeshiva failed to prove that the site, building, or lot created a hardship. BSA emphasized that Yeshiva Imrei never offered any evidence that the mentioned institutions operated to the same frequency and, after BSA’s independent review, it discovered that several sat in commercial zones. Finally, there was nothing in the federal law that prohibited BSA’s denial since the decision would not impact the Yeshiva’s religious expression. The Yeshiva was free to use the catering hall for a permitted accessory use, like a student lunchroom or synagogue events.

BSA: 1824 53rd Street (60-06-A), (290- 05-BZ) (Jan. 9, 2007) (Stuart A. Klien, for Yeshiva Imrei Chaim Viznitz; Angelina Martinez-Rubio, for DOB). CITYADMIN

CITYLANDComment: The revocation of the Yeshiva’s C of O is pending before BSA. A special hearing on the issue is tentatively scheduled for March 2007.

In December 2005, Mayor Bloomberg signed Local Law 99, the first significant step towards the City’s goal of replacing the current Building Code, unrevised since 1968, with a national model code. Local Law 99 selected the International Building Code as the City’s model code and directed the Department of Buildings with preparing, and presenting to the City Council, modifications to the IBC making it responsive to New York’s unique construction, density and safety issues. As part of the law, DOB prepared complete modifications to the IBC’s plumbing, administrative and enforcement codes to become effective if the remaining modifications obtain City Council approval.

CityLand interviewed Phyllis Arnold, DOB’s General Counsel, and Fatma M. Amer, its Deputy Commissioner for Technical Affairs, who share responsibility for overseeing DOB’s Model Code Program. Arnold, a graduate of Columbia University School of Law, served as DOB’s General Counsel for four years under Commissioner Gaston Silva and returned to the job in 2002 to join Commissioner Patricia Lancaster. Amer, a licensed professional engineer, started at Buildings in 1981 and worked her way from plan examiner to chief engineer for Manhattan, Queen’s Deputy Borough Commissioner, and the agency’s Executive Engineer before assuming her current role. (more…)