Fringe looms large, p. 13
Volume 82, Number 8 $1.00
West and East Village, Chelsea, Soho, Noho, Hudson Square, Little Italy, Chinatown and Lower East Side, Since 1933
July 26 - August 1, 2012
Key site in early gay rights history faces demolition
Photo by Tequila Minsky
Ruth Rennert, a Washington Square Village resident, left, and Paul and Marianne Edwards, 88 Bleecker St. residents, shouted their displeasure over the Council’s anticipated vote on the N.Y.U. plan as they were ejected from the Council Chamber’s balcony Wednesday.
Council O.K.’s N.Y.U. plan; Antis booted out before vote BY LINCOLN ANDERSON According to Judith Callet, former resident chairperson of the Bleecker Area Residents’ and Merchants’ Association, they were supposed to start chanting after the vote. “Many of us put hundreds of hours in on this and we wanted to be there,” she said. “Let’s just say, we would have had a reaction to the vote.” Instead, as Council Speaker Christine Quinn started to speak in support of New York University’s superblocks megadevelopment plan on Wednesday, opponents sitting in the balcony began to hiss and call out, at first only a few. “Shame!” and “Shame on you!” they spat out. “We’re going to ask for quiet one more time, and then we’re going to clear the balcony,” Quinn warned. But the cries only increased in frequency and intensity, and Quinn promptly took action. “All right, sergeants, please clear the balcony,” she stated.
Police officers and Council security quickly moved to herd out the 75 or so opponents — though it took about 10 minutes to clear them all out of the balcony. Angrily brandishing their yellow “N.Y.U. is Wrong for the Village” signs, the opponents unleashed a barrage of jeers as they shuffled out. “Democracy is dead!” “Corruption and greed in City Hall!” “Shame on Quinn!” Swept out along with them were N.Y.U. officials, since all the public was seated in the balcony, as the full body of the Council occupied the floor below for the vote. When it appeared to the opponents that the N.Y.U. officials might try to re-enter the Council Chambers, they started yelling, and ultimately the university representatives also had to leave City Hall along with the opponents. John Beckman, an N.Y.U. spokesperson, later denied the N.Y.U. group had been thinking about going back in. Quinn said the N.Y.U. plan that the Council was about to vote on represented
a 27 percent reduction in square footage to the plan that was originally presented. This, however, refers to the space the project would add aboveground. When new underground space is also included, the final project was cut more than 20 percent from the original. In total, the university’s plan now is to add 1.9 million square feet of new development to its two South Village superblocks, between Houston and W. Third Sts. and LaGuardia Place and Mercer St. Quinn and Councilmember Margaret Chin, whose district contains the superblocks, both said the plan, in its final form, “strikes a balance” between allowing N.Y.U. to grow and flourish while ensuring that the surrounding community isn’t overwhelmed. At a press conference before the vote, The Villager asked Quinn to reconcile the Council’s approval of the project with the fact that Community Board 2 had voted an “absolute no” on it.
BY ALBERT AMATEAU The new owner of an 1824 Federal Period house on Spring St. has applied for a demolition permit, prompting the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation to ratchet up its demands for a South Village Historic District. The demolition application for the vacant four-story building at 186 Spring St. near Thompson St. was issued July 2. A Department of Buildings spokesperson said on Tuesday that the application was under review but that she could not say when a decision would be made. Andrew Berman, the G.V.S.H.P. executive director, on July 13 urged the city Landmarks Preservation Commission to protect the immediately threatened 186 Spring St. and designate a 35-block area within which the building is located as a city historic district. “Among the many reasons why the commission should immediately designate this area, including its threatened 1824 house, is its powerful and unique connection to the early gay rights movement and New York’s earliest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities,” Berman said in a letter to
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L.P.C. Chairperson Robert Tierney. In the early 1970s, the Spring St. house was the home of several key figures in the early gay rights movement. Jim Owles, founding president of the Gay Activists Alliance, one of the earliest gay advocacy organizations in the post-Stonewall era and the first openly gay candidate for political office in the city, lived in the building in the early 1970s. In 1973 he became the first openly gay candidate for the City Council. Owles, who died in 1993, went on to be founder of the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats (GLID) in 1974, and in 1985 was a founding member of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), now a nationwide group that influences media coverage and depiction of lesbians and gay men. Dr. Bruce Voeller, a pioneer in the fight against AIDS and a specialist in human sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases, also lived at 186 Spring St. in the early 1970s and 1980s. An early president of the Gay Activists Alliance, in 1973 he founded
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EDITORIAL, LETTERS PAGE 8
KIM’S KEEPING IT REAL PAGE 23