on upzoning ZONING, continued from p. 14
win the Chelsea Plan, the community had to accept upzoning in other areas, he noted. What about City Planning’s contention that the rezoning would relieve future first-floor residents from the annoyance of having to keep their drapes drawn all day long? “Of all the problems facing New York,” he said, “I haven’t found keeping your blinds shut to be a major problem that New Yorkers have.” Berman sharply disagreed with Weisbrod’s denial that the rezoning plan is being rushed through by the city. “They’re fast-tracking this,” the preservationist accused. “They’re moving from the scoping to the public-review process really fast — and this is a plan that has such broad ramifications. And there’s no analysis on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis on what the impact would be. “The irony is,” he continued, “these areas are parts of the city where it was felt there was a special character to be preserved, and this proposal would upend those rules.” Would community activists and organizations sue to stop these changes? “I think it’s too early to say,” Berman offered. “But this is of enormous concern. And if this is adopted as is, we would look at all of our options. But I hope it doesn’t get to that point. Some very, very serious changes need to be made before this could even be considered,” he said of the city’s zoning proposal. C.B. 2 Chairperson Bergman was among the group of concerned community members who packed the plan’s recent scoping hearing to voice
their concerns, and to call for slowing down the process. “The contextual zoning that was put into place was the result of years of community planning,” he told The Villager. On the other hand, he said, this new rezoning is being driven, not at all by the community — but by the developers. On that point, Bergman said he attended a “borough board” meeting at City Hall in February, at which leading members of Manhattan’s community boards got their first presentation of the proposed zoning scheme. “They kept saying, ‘Practitioners tell us...,’ ” Bergman recalled with a wry chuckle. “By that, they don’t mean neurosurgeons — they mean developers. “The scoping shouldn’t have been done only with ‘practitioners.’ ” The board chairperson added that the “give” the city is offering the community right now simply isn’t enough. In other words, who’s to say that the senior or affordable housing — part of the whole justification for the plan, but which is only voluntary on developers’ part — will even get built? Other local affordable housing schemes haven’t panned out. “If this is truly about creating better buildings and affordable housing in contextual zones, let’s make sure we really get the affordable housing,” Bergman emphasized. “The Hudson Square rezoning turned out to be a bonanza for developers of luxury housing but the affordable housing isn’t getting built. “This plan allows a 20 percent height increase in R7A zones for developments with no affordable housing. That’s just a big mistake,” he said. “There has to be a give to get.”
4 catastrophe cats still missing after the East Village explosion CATS, continued from p. 13
mass media, which would not initially put our pleas to find our missing pets in their newspapers or on the network news. The major media only showed interest after Laszlo was saved by the F.D.N.Y., which I first wrote about in The Villager two weeks ago. At that point, the mass media were clamoring for interviews and photos of cute cats and handsome firefighters. I preferred to tell my story myself and stayed with the alternative media. The return of Kathleen Blomberg’s cats was covered by all the major papers, and later young Hannah Lipsky was interviewed, and that was very helpful, as she is desperEastVillagerNews.com
ate to find Ryce. We who have had the joy of having had our pets rescued and returned are feeling deeply for our friends and neighbors who are still waiting, hoping and praying for some happy news. Could we not as a community help them? Let us all put pressure on our elected officials to ask the ASPCA and ACC to go into the gardens, alleys and courtyards of the interior of the block and to also search Enz’s store and basement. We, the people of this disaster, may be feeling beaten down and battered, but we are nonetheless still strong and we are as one. We need to help our smallest neighbors and we need to do it now.
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