Proposal would permit Council by a majority vote to review variances and special permits. The City Council’s Land Use Committee heard public testimony on July 24, 2007 on Local Law Intro. 261 to amend the City Charter’s review procedures on BSA decisions. The amendment, sponsored by Council Member Tony Avella, would give the Council the power to review BSA variances and special permit decisions if a majority of the full Council votes to take review. … <Read More>
Yeshiva ordered to close catering business
DOB wins appeal modifying C of O issued in error. Yeshiva Imrei Chaim Viznitz, located on 53rd Street in Boro Park, Brooklyn, operated a catering hall out of the basement of its three-story building containing its school and synagogue. The Department of Buildings applied to BSA to revoke the building’s 1999 certificate of occupancy. Buildings claimed that the certificate listed the catering use in error since the use was prohibited by the site’s residential zoning … <Read More>
HPD proposes large complex for South Bronx
Plan for seven buildings includes Boricua College campus, 679 residential units and over 36,000 sq.ft. of retail. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development proposed to amend the Melrose Commons Urban Renewal Area Plan in the Bronx to facilitate a large, seven building, mixed-use, residential and commercial complex called Boricua Village to be constructed on a 4.2-acre lot in the northeast corner of Melrose Commons.
HPD’s plan called for 18 changes to the existing Melrose … <Read More>
HDC’s Simeon Bankoff Talks About Life on the Preservation Front Lines
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 … <Read More>
Federal court challenge to Atlantic Yards dismissed
Residents failed to show that the project offered no public benefit. Brooklyn residents sued in federal court, challenging the state’s plan to use eminent domain to take their property as part of the Atlantic Yards project. The residents claimed that the project failed to meet a public purpose, and that the state was taking private property solely for the private benefit of Forest City Ratner Companies, the project’s developer.
Defendants, including the Empire State Development … <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>