Anthony Wood

Save our skyline. If not, tear down the Chrysler building and demolish the Empire State Building. If action isn’t taken these stars of the New York City skyline will be permanently eclipsed. If the public can’t see them, why preserve them? Even the preservation resistant Real Estate Board of New York would likely gasp at the notion of demolishing these two iconic New York landmarks. “The view of the New York skyline is nationally and internally renowned,” so stated Judge Richard McGill in a ruling against a Weehawken project that would have blocked it. The presence in the skyline of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building are as quintessentially New York as Central Park or the Statue of Liberty. The public can still feast their eyes on them from multiple vantage points, whether from the approaches to New York City or from its sidewalks. How much longer will that be the case? (read more…)

REBNY undertakes projects to investigate current residential issues in NYC. Image Credit: REBNY

REBNY report shows that housing production, particularly affordable housing, is drastically lower in landmarked areas in the five boroughs. In 2013, the Real Estate Board of New York conducted a study which showed that nearly 28 percent of Manhattan is landmarked and that fewer than 2 percent of new housing units built in Manhattan over a ten-year time period (2003-2012) were constructed on landmarked properties. On July 1, 2014, REBNY released a new report which analyzed properties and new housing activity in the other four boroughs over the same time period. REBNY found that although there are not as many landmark designations as in Manhattan, the creation of housing and affordable housing is also “sharply curtailed on landmarked properties located in those boroughs.” (read more…)

Steven Spinola, president of REBNY

The Landmarks Preservation Commission’s (LPC) process for designating New York City historic districts is being used more and more to take the place of zoning.  The designation of historic districts has been pursued to promote many different agendas: to address issues of height and scale, to stop new development and to limit development on vacant or near-vacant sites by purposefully including these sites within the boundaries of historic districts.  These objectives are contrary to the intent of the NYC Landmarks Law and touch on actions specifically disallowed by that law, such as limiting the height and bulk of buildings and other characteristics governed by zoning regulations.

This continuing drift toward misusing the landmarks law as a planning tool to limit change across entire neighborhoods is evident in the remarks by Otis Pearsall, a noted preservationist, at the 2011 Fitch Forum symposium on the history of preservation law:

(read more…)