
Proposed Rendering of 361 Central Park West Image Credit: Landmarks
Upper West Side community weary on rooftop addition and removal of stained glass windows. On March 3, 2020, the Landmarks Preservation Commission heard an application by the Children’s Museum of Manhattan for a Certificate of Appropriateness regarding 361 Central Park West, a Beaux Arts classical style church overlooking Central Park. The building is located on the northwest corner of Central Park West and 96th Street in Manhattan. Approval of the application would permit adaptive reuse of the building by facilitating roof additions, window replacements, alterations to entrances, door replacements, signage installation and the excavation of the cellar.
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Council Member Helen Rosenthal Gets a “High-Five from a Constituent. Image credit: NYCC/William Alatriste
City Council passes a package of bills intended to strengthen protections for tenants subject to harassment by landlords. Since the mid-2000s and largely due to the housing bubble, predatory equity has become a metastasis on the New York City housing market. The expulsion of both rent stabilized and market-rate tenants is accomplished through means both legal, by abusing technical loopholes in State law, and illegal, by dangerous living conditions and intimidation. (read more…)

Chair of the Committee on Housing and Buildings, Council Member Jumaane Williams. Image credit: NYCC/William Alatriste
City Council Committee to hear testimony on a package of bills intended to strengthen protections for tenants subject to harassment by landlords. Since the mid-2000s and largely due to the housing bubble, predatory equity has become a metastasis on the New York City housing market. The expulsion of both rent stabilized and market-rate tenants is accomplished through means both legal, by abusing technical loopholes in State law, and illegal, by dangerous living conditions and intimidation. (read more…)
Court found that DOB letter of objection exception to the Multiple Dwelling law was no longer valid. On March 17, 2016, New York Appellate Court reversed a Lower Court’s Decision and thus denying Grand Imperial LLC’s Petition for a Letter of No Objection to rent its property for shorter than the legally required time period. Grand Imperial LLC owns a Single-Room Occupancy building, located at 307 West 79th Street on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, with predominantly affordable housing units. (read more…)

Rendering of the interior of the Museum. Image Credit: LPC.
Approved addition, occupying a quarter acre of parkland, will increase connections for better museum circulation, provide additional space to store collection materials, and allow visitors to watch scientists at work. At its meeting on October 11, 2016, the Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to issue a binding report for the construction of an addition, and associated demolition, to the American Museum of Natural History, an individual landmark on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The addition, to be named the Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation, will be the first significant intervention on the museum campus since the completion of the Rose Center for Earth and Space in 2000. The addition would be sited on the western side of the museum, and would create new Columbus Avenue public entrance. (read more…)
Board votes for rent freeze despite strong push for a rent rollback by City Council coalition. On June 27, 2016, the New York City Rent Guidelines Board held a final vote to set guidelines for 2016-2017. This vote took place one year after the Rent Guidelines Board made a historic decision to freeze one-year leases instead of raising them. (read more…)