From Left to Right: Paul Selver, Jerold Kayden, Meenakshi Srinivasan, Kent Barwick. Image Credit: LPC
Speakers spoke of the different priorities of City government and other stakeholders, examined preservation strategies of municipalities nationwide, and considered changes in the legal landscape that could affect landmarking. On October 26, 2015, , Meenakshi Srinivasan, Chair of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and Jerold Kayden, Professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, co-hosted an event titled “History in the Making: The New York City Landmarks Law at 50.” The event held at the New York City Bar Association consisted of multiple addresses and panels intended to provoke and challenge common assumptions and perceptions regarding historic preservation as the City’s landmarks law enters the second half of its first century. (read more…)
A rendering of the proposed IFC Center. Image credit: Kliment Halsband Architects
New space would add screening rooms, lobby to film center; extension would fill in vacant lot on Cornelia Street. On October 13, 2015, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a hearing on a proposed extension of the IFC Film Center that would face 14 Cornelia Street in the Greenwich Village Historic District Extension II. The Film Center, at 323 Sixth Avenue, adjoins and owns the lot at the rear, currently vacant, on Cornelia Street. The lot to be developed lies partially within an R6 residential zoning district, and will require a variance from the Board of Standards and Appeals for the planned commercial use. (read 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. (read more…)
