Angry local opposition jeered and escorted out by security. After a public review that included over 170 meetings with local residents, the Planning Commission voted to approve the Department of City Planning’s proposal to rezone the 125th Street corridor, which includes 124th and 126th Street.

Once a prestigious epicenter of African American culture, the 125th Street corridor has suffered from a lack of public and private investment since the 1960s. In recent years, however, renewed interest in the area has spurred development projects, including the 276,000-square-foot Harlem USA complex and the planned headquarters for Major League Baseball’s cable network. (more…)

Marilyn J. Taylor is from a small town in Iowa “with a population of 1,432.” Perhaps it is her Midwestern roots that allow her to remain upbeat and positive as two of her current planning projects—Columbia University’s campus expansion in West Harlem and Solow’s redevelopment of the Con Edison site in Murray Hill—plod their way through the City’s land use review process amidst political controversy.

Taylor is partner to Skidmore Owings & Merrill’s Urban Design & Planning and Airports & Transportation practice groups. She has represented SOM on such local projects as the Pennsylvania/ Moynihan Station expansion and redevelopment, John F. Kennedy and Newark International Airport terminal expansion, and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center redevelopment. Her practice is not limited to New York, however, and often includes projects in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. (more…)

Claim alleges that the City improperly skipped land use approvals in Randall’s Island agreement on private school use. Parents of public school students and community residents from East Harlem filed an article 78 petition in Supreme Court on June 14, 2007, seeking to void the City’s approval of a concession agreement between 20 private schools and the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation. The petition asks the court to invalidate the agreement and force the City to restart the approval process, this time following the City’s full land use review process, ULURP.

The City began renovation of Randall’s Island in June 2007. When completed in 2009, the park will feature 67 fields, including 35 for softball/ baseball and 32 for soccer, football and lacrosse. To help fund the $130 million dollar project, the City entered into a concession agreement with 20 area private schools. The concession gives the schools exclusive use of two-thirds of the fields for 20 years during after school hours between 3pm and 6 pm. In exchange, the private schools will pay the City $2.85 million per year, for a total of $52.4 million. The Franchise Concession Review Committee approved the agreement in February 2007, with only Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer voting against the proposal. The six-person committee also included four representatives from the Mayor’s Office and one representative from the City Comptroller. (more…)

Manhattan’s first green roof, installed in 1998, sits on top of the 1902 Georgian townhouse at 122 East 38th Street in Murray Hill, the home of Earth Pledge, a New York based nonprofit that promotes green building technologies. Founded by Theodore Kheel to support the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio, Earth Pledge now sponsors the Greening Gotham program, an initiative to get New York City developers, building owners, and government officials behind green roof installation. Leslie Hoffman, Earth Pledge’s Executive Director, spoke with CityLand about the city’s standing, its policy and turning affordable housing green.

Why Green. Hoffman began as a minimum wage carpenter in Maine, became a general contractor and moved on to design green building projects. She holds a degree in Architecture and Design from Colorado College, has co-authored green technology books and even runs an organic coffee farm. Hoffman explained that green roofs are fundamentally lightweight, engineered systems of insulation, drainage, soil, and vegetation constructed on top of a traditional roof. It’s an “an elegant solution to common urban problems,” Hoffman declared, listing green roofs’ ability to boost insulation, cool buildings, reduce energy use by 10 to 30 percent, lower area air temperature, absorb 80 percent of storm water lessening runoff, and protect the roof from weather cycles and UV rays. Installation adds about $10 per square foot, but Hoffman points out that a green roof can last for 50 years where traditional roofs need replacement after only 15. The Greening Gotham program envisions a network of green roofs stretching across the city’s skyline, which advocates and researchers believe could diminish the “urban heat island effect,” a term used to describe the fact that the city is 3 to 6 degrees hotter on summer days than its surrounding suburbs. (more…)

Facility to provide housing for low-income mentally ill. City Council approved the Planning Commission’s resolution adopted on September 8, 2004, allowing the construction of a six-story building with 50 units for low-income persons with mental illnesses. The Council’s action authorized the designation of an Urban Development Action Area and the transfer of six properties of City-owned land.

The project site, which is to be developed under the New York State office of Mental Health, is located on the north side of East 123rd Street between Park and Lexington Avenues in East Harlem. The site is part of the Park Avenue Urban Renewal Plan and comprises six City-owned properties totaling 1 0,000 sq.ft. Currently, the site contains underutilized vacant land and a vacant one-story garage, which will be demolished. (more…)