Discussion Panel Summary

Thursday, January 28 6:00 pm, Free—1 AIA LU Michelle de la Uz Executive Director, Fifth Avenue Committee, Inc

NYC is planning to commence the official rezoning process for the Gowanus Study Area. The rezoning will address an 80 block area that has been under discussion for years.

Learning Objectives • Outline key steps of modifying land use in

New York City (otherwise known as “rezoning”) • Identify the pros and cons of current land use policies and procedures in New York City • Introduce concept of environmental justice as an overlooked aspect of traditional land use policy • Develop awareness of the differences between urban zoning (a technical process) and neighborhood planning (developing a vision) Michelle de la Uz is the Executive Director of Fifth Avenue Committee, Inc. (FAC) and has over 25 years of experience in public and community service. Michelle oversees the organization’s mission and comprehensive programs serving more than 5,500 low- and moderate-income people; a budget of nearly $8 million and several nonhousing affiliate corporations with annual budgets of over $6 million, real estate assets over $120 million, and a housing development pipeline of over 1,900 units, representing more than $850 million in total development costs. Under her leadership, FAC became a NeighborWorks America member.

Prior to FAC, Michelle was Program Director for the Center for Urban Community Services in Washington Heights and Harlem and was Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez’ first Director of Constituent Services and directed her South Brooklyn District Office. She was active in advancing transportation, environmental justice, immigration reform, and employment policy initiatives. Michelle is the first in her working-class immigrant family to graduate from college, is a product of bi-lingual education, a former trustee of Connecticut College, and recipient of the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World award.

Michelle serves on the National Board of Directors of the Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC), the New York Housing Conference, and the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, among many others. Additionally, Michelle was appointed to serve as a City Planning Commissioner on the New York City Planning Commission from 2012-2021. Michelle is an alumna of Connecticut College, Columbia University and of Harvard Kennedy School’s Executive Education Program. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.

Karen Blondel NICET Engineer Assistant and CADD Operator, Urban Manpower Program Tom Angotti Founder and Director, Hunter College Center for Community Planning and Development

Karen Blondel is a graduate of NEW Nontraditional Employment for Women and The NYS DOT Joint Urban Manpower Program where she became a NICET Engineer Assistant and CADD Operator. Karen joined FAC in 2016 as the Fifth Avenue Committee’s (FAC) Turning the Tide (T3) Environmental Initiative Community Organizer. Karen is a long-standing environmental justice advocate and is educating residents around issues of environmental justice, climate change, social resiliency, social cohesion and equity. She is responsible for conducting community outreach and facilitating T3 Leadership Development Workshops and Tours, alongside advocating for social, economic and environmental justice for South Brooklyn Public Housing residents. This initiative has successfully amplified the voices of local residents in the implementation and policy decisions about environmental cleanup and climate adaptation. Tom Angotti is Professor Emeritus of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He was the founder and director of the Hunter College Center for Community Planning and Development. His recent books include Transformative Planning: Radical Alternatives to Neoliberal Urbanism, Zoned Out! Race, Displacement and City Planning in New York City, Urban Latin America: Inequalities and Neoliberal Reforms, The New Century of the Metropolis, New York For Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate, which won the Davidoff Book Award, and Accidental Warriors and Battlefield Myths. He is an editor of progressivecity.net and Participating Editor for Latin American Perspectives and Local Environment. He is active in community and environmental issues in New York City.

Wednesday, February 24 6:00 pm, Free—1 AIA LU

Learning Objectives • Develop broader awareness of architectural history at both the national and local levels • Understand how communities of color were created from 1835-1885 (roughly a generation pre/post civil war) • Understand the connection between the built environment and political representation/power • Understand how historical context can facilitate design collaboration with communities that architects serve Carla L. Peterson Professor emerita in the Department of English University of Maryland

Her field of expertise is nineteenth-century African American literature, history, and culture. She has published numerous essays and two books: “Doers of the Word”: African-American Women Speakers and Writers in the North, 1830-1880 (Oxford, 1995) and Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City (Yale, 2011), which was awarded the 2011 prize for the best book on New York History by the New York Society Library and was a finalist for the GilderLehrman 2011 Frederick Douglass Prize. With a fellowship from the Guggenheim fellowship, she is currently at work on a new project, “All Things are Becoming New: Taste and the Making of African American Modernity in Antebellum New York and Philadelphia.

Peterson has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, most notably from the Guggenheim Foundation, Ford Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History, the New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Peterson’s scholarship also addresses non-academic audiences. She has published four essays for the online New York Times Disunion Project. She has served on several museum consulting teams, notably the New York Historical Society’s two exhibits on slavery and its legacy in New York City as well as its more recent Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow, and the Museum of the City of New York’s permanent exhibit on the history of New York City.

Suzanne Spellen Columnist, Brooklyn blog Brownstoner.com

Louis P. Nelson Professor and Vice Profost, Architectural History and Academic Outreach, University of Virginia

Suzanne grew up in the village of Gilbertsville in Otsego County. She went to Yale, and then moved to NYC to pursue a career in opera and costume design. Living in Bedford Stuyvesant and Crown Heights North Brooklyn inspired a new career in writing about old house restoration, and the history, architecture and people of Brooklyn. She is a long-time board member of the Crown Heights North Association, Inc. (CNHA), which has worked tirelessly for landmark and National Register designation for the neighborhood.

Suzanne is a columnist for the popular Brooklyn blog brownstoner.com, her early work written under the pen name “Montrose Morris.” Her expertise on the architecture and history of Central Brooklyn has led to books, lectures, walking tours and research projects for many organizations, individuals and causes. She is a 2015 recipient of the Historic Districts Council of New York’s “Grassroots Award” for her writing and historic preservation activities. Suzanne has also been a member of two teams receiving NY State Historic Preservation Awards. One in 2017, along with other CHNA board members and another in 2020 as part of the team writing the National Register designation report for all of NYC’s Carnegie Libraries.

In 2012, Suzanne left Brooklyn for Troy, NY. She quickly became a part of that city’s preservation efforts. She was on the city’s citizen’s advisory board for the 2018 Comprehensive Plan for Troy, is Vice-Chair of the Troy Community Land Bank, has a seat on the Troy Planning Commission, and has just joined the board of the Hudson Mohawk Industrial Gateway. She writes about Troy’s fascinating history and architecture in her blog Spellen of Troy. He is a specialist in the built environments of the early modern Atlantic world, with published work on the American South, the Caribbean, and West Africa.

His research engages the spaces of enslavement in West Africa and in the Americas, working to document and interpret the buildings and landscapes that shaped the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Nelson is working on a second collaborative project to understand the University of Virginia as a landscape of slavery.

That important work, combined with the events of August 2017, led to Nelson’s co-edited book of essays: Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity; and increased focus on outreach into the local community. His first-hand experience with the recent conflicts in Charlottesville combined with his enslaved labor research brings an informed scholarly perspective to global racial issues, historical and present, makes Nelson a sought-after speaker in Charlottesville, across the country, and internationally.

Nelson is an accomplished scholar, with two booklength monographs published by UNC and Yale University Presses, three edited collections of essays, two terms as senior co-editor of Buildings and Landscapes—the leading English language venue for scholarship on vernacular architecture—and numerous articles.

Wednesday, March 17 6:00 pm, Free—1 AIA LU

Scattered throughout Brooklyn, palatial banking halls are slowly disappearing. These spaces date back to a different era when banks functioned as the backbone of the community.

Join AIA Brooklyn to visit a pair of recent projects which transform defunct banks to accommodate new programs. Is it possible for these buildings to function as community infrastructure once again? Drew Hartley, AIA Principal and Project Manager, Acheson Doyle Partners

Drew Hartley is a Principal and project manager with twelve years of professional experience at Acheson Doyle Partners. He has extensive experience with hospitality, commercial, institutional, municipal and residential clients, working on all phases of design and construction. Recent major efforts have been as the manager of both the Metropolitan Club and the University Club’s planning and design projects. Drew has specific expertise working with historic buildings and landmark preservation issues and has recently represented ADP in their role as Executive Architect for a new 24-story condominium building in a New York City Landmark District on lower Fifth Avenue; led the team on the $15 million reconstruction of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral and was also the Project Manager for a private residence renovation at the penthouse of the Plaza Hotel, a project that included design studies prepared for The New York Landmarks Conservancy and the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Drew coordinated Landmark Preservation Commission and City Planning Commission of NYC approvals for a complex restoration air rights zoning scheme for the Marble Collegiate Church with Moshe Safdie. He also managed coordination with three design firms, Land Use Attorneys, and Preservation Consultants and has worked on large international projects requiring coordination between many interest groups.

Rickie T. James, Associate AIA Text as submitted by Rickie James Ward Dennis Partner, Higgins Quasebarth & Partners Mary Jablonski President and Senior Architectural Conservator, Jablonski Building Conservation, Inc

I lived a beautiful life was born in Kings County Brooklyn New York the 4th child of 8 children was a talented left handed young teen we tried my talent in advertising, the demand as so on a young employee was so great I quit. The attraction of freehand drawing brought me ever closer to my passion History of Art which is architecture.

In the years that followed the protest in demolish of great built structures the Frank Lloyd Wright office building and church and the older Grand Central Station and the now threats to the new Grand Central Station on 42nd Street. Inch me towards Preservation of historic Property and gave me the strength to stand up and march under protest picket for preservation of many things of history.

As graduate from college my career was purchased by the Buffalo News from High School on into College SUNY Buffalo State as the City of Erie proclaimed a Design student. What brought me even closer to that goal of complete architecture were the young faculty and their interest in me personally, I was never short a team on construction workers and the internship of many prominent Architects, Engineers, Designers, Preservationist and Teachers were abound, which if you know me could not worn out and there was a thirst for that knowledge of still more. Ward Dennis is a partner at Higgins Quasebarth & Partners, a preservation consulting firm specializing in the restoration, rehabilitation and adaptive use of historic properties throughout New York City. Ward’s work combines his training and background in materials conservation, urban history and land-use planning. He specializes in federal tax credit and local landmarks review, including design consultation on new buildings in historic districts and additions to historic buildings. Ward’s current and past Brooklyn projects include the residential conversion of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower on Hanson Place, rehabilitation of multiple buildings at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and approvals for new buildings in DUMBO and Fort Greene.

A resident of Williamsburg for over 25 years, Ward served as chair of the land use committee for Community Board 1 during the 2000s. He is a board member of North Brooklyn Parks Alliance and Friends of Bushwick Park, and past board member and co-chair of North Brooklyn Neighbors. Ward lectures frequently on the history of Brooklyn. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Historic Preservation program at Pratt and previously taught at Columbia. Mary Jablonski is the President and a senior architectural conservator of the firm of Jablonski Building Conservation, Inc. She established the firm in 1995 to provide a full range of conservation services to a varied client base.

She holds a MS in Historic Preservation from Columbia University. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University, teaching conservation courses, particularly architectural finishes. Ms Jablonski is a Fellow with The American Institute for Conservation of Historic & Artistic Works and Applied Preservation Technology International. Ms. Jablonski has presented numerous papers at conferences, published several articles on a variety of preservation and conservation topics, and edited two books on architectural finishes. She is involved internationally in architectural finishes research.