LOWER EAST SIDE REZONING PLAN:
REAL ESTATE MACHINE'S
NOT-SO-SECRET AGENDA
By Bill Weinberg

[July 20, 2008] In a scene reminiscent of the Lower East Side class warfare of the 1980s, more than 100 partisans of the Coalition to Protect Chinatown/Lower East Side (CPC/LES) packed a Community Board 3 (CB3) meeting on March 25 to protest a new rezoning plan that they say is actually a ploy to facilitate displacement of community residents for luxury development. A May 12 CB3 hearing on the plan similarly erupted into angry protest, including one arrest when Chinatown residents repeatedly stood up and disrupted the meeting to demand Chinese translation.

The coalition charges that the plan gives too much to real estate interests within the rezoned area, and protests the exclusion of Chinatown from the rezoning area altogether, calling it a strategy to divide the traditionally working-class Community Board 3 area and a sell-out of low-income residents to the development juggernaut.

The proposed rezoning area stretches from 13th Street on the north to Grand Street on the south as far east as Ludlow, where it dips down to Delancey as far east as Pitt Street. The eastern border is Avenue D as far south as Houston, and then Pitt to Delancey. The western border is actually an imaginary mid-block line approximately 100 feet east of Third Ave./Bowery, strategically leaving this key artery open for the mega-development already underway there.

The plan originated in the efforts of Lower East Side activists to halt developer Greg Singer's scheme to build a 20-story student dormitory on the site of the former Charas community center on Ninth Street. But, crafted by the Department of City Planning (DCP) and CB3, the plan achieves the aim of halting the Singer scheme by shunting high-rise development into unprotected areas, opponents charge, with Chinatown the obvious target. CPC/LES says the plan basically protects that disproportionately white and affluent part of Community Board 3 known as the "East Village," while still grandfathering in the big developments already built or under construction within this zone.

Census data indicate the Community Board 3 district is only 28% white, but 73% of that population is within the rezoned area. Asian-Americans constitute 35% of CB3's population, but only 23% of them live in the rezoned area. Latinos' numbers in CB3 roughly equal those of whites, but only 37% live in the protected area.

Rob Hollander of Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, one the groups that make up the CPC/LES, says: "The Department of City Planning is dedicated to the proposition that development should be everywhere. They are in the business of clearing the ground for development. Their public face is very different, they make it seem like they are doing something for the community. But if you look at it carefully, it's all about big development. Hotels are being built all along the Bowery. On every side of Chinatown, big 23-story, 28-story luxury hotels are going up."

Hollander argues that the damage has already been done in much of the area that falls within the rezoning plan, "If you go down to Orchard Street and the old Jewish Lower East Side, there is one 23-story hotel on each of those blocks. This area is within zoning plan, but the hotels are already built."

The plan imposes a height cap of 75 feet for side streets and 80 feet (approximately seven stories) for avenues. Josephine Lee of the Chinese Staff & Workers Association and the CPC/LES says not including Chinatown in the protected area "sends a message that we can be displaced and they don't really want us here. The zoning plan puts more pressure for development on the nearby areas which are not protected. And this mainly consists of low-income residents who make $25,000 or less."

The CPC/LES sees bureaucratic loopholes that make the plan less than effective even within the zone it covers, such as the trading of "air rights," allowing developers to build higher if they provide token amounts of "affordable" housing. Developers can even build the "affordable" housing off-site and sell their height bonuses to developers who build no "affordable" housing at all.

This idea, known as "inclusionary zoning," supposedly gives developers an incentive to build "affordable" housing. Lee charges that not only is building the "affordable housing" optional, but this "affordable" housing is in reality not affordable to working families. "They try to sweeten the deal with low-income housing, but none of it is actually affordable to the people living in the neighborhood," she says. "And the plan just increases the pressure for luxury development on the periphery. The government is using rezoning as a tool to displace minority communities."

Edith Hsu-Chen of the Department of City Planning responded to these charges after the May 12 CB3 fracas, telling NY1, "That's really not fair, there's absolutely no racist component to this rezoning."

As of this writing, the plan is still pending. On July 15, more than 100 protesters gathered in front of the Municipal Building at 1 Centre Street, where CPC/LES delivered a petition with 10,000 signatures to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer demanding that the proposal be replaced with one that both includes stronger provisions for low-income housing and expands the plan to include Chinatown.

The plan has been approved by a vote of CB3, with some dissenting "points and principles" that it asked the Department of City Planning (DCP) address. DCP has approved the Uniform Land Use Review Process (ULURP) for the plan, and it now awaits Stringer's signature before it is passed on to the City Council and Mayor Michael Bloomberg for final approval. The changes along the way have not appeased opponents. Stringer's signature is expected by Aug. 11.

Similar plans are underway throughout the city and are similarly drawing protest from neighborhood residents. On April 30, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn ordered the balcony of the city council chamber be cleared by police after a large group of Harlem rezoning opponents created a so-called "disturbance." The council then approved the rezoning by a vote of 47-2, with only members Charles Barron and Tony Avella dissenting.

The Harlem plan, centered on 125th Street, calls for 50% "income-targeted housing." But the lowest level of "income-target" range the plan mandates housing be built for is 40% of New York's average income. "This is still way higher than the average income of the people living in that community," says Hollander. "So more than half the community is going to be left out of this so-called ‘affordable housing.' Then the other 50% is market-rate housing. So they are talking about a total transformation of the Harlem community."

David Galarza of Sunset Park Alliance of Neighbors (SPAN) is organizing opposition to a rezoning plan currently being developed by the DCP for his Brooklyn neighborhood, which, like Manhattan's CB3, is a traditionally Latino and Asian community now targeted by developers for a new class. "This is going to put more pressure on landlords to harass and evict low-income tenants and charge much higher rents to the yuppies who are going to be coming in from Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights and elsewhere," he says.

The proposed plan would "upzone" Fourth Avenue, one of Sunset Park's main Latino drags, and Seventh Avenue, a main Asian strip, allowing higher developments there, while "down-zoning" side streets. But Eighth Avenue, also a hub of the neighborhood's Asian community, is excluded from the plan, as is Chinatown in Manhattan's CB3.

Galarza and SPAN oppose both the "upzoning" and the exclusion of Eighth Ave. from the plan. Like their counterparts in Manhattan's CB3, they want the terms of plan changed as well as its geographic scope extended. A recent letter from Sunset Park community leaders, including clergy, to DCP Brooklyn director Purnima Kapur stated: "Our sense is that Eighth Avenue has been‘conceded' to the developers."

"If you look at Fourth Ave. now, you can see what's planned," Galarza says. "There was a rezoning recently in Greenwood, and now they're calling it ‘South Slope.' It's pretty clear that what the city has in mind is a monolithic corridor from developer Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards all the way down to Bay Ridge. They want to turn it into a canyon of ugly, unaffordable development. It's already started. You look down that avenue now south of the Slope, and its all giant, totally out-of-context condominiums."

The Harlem plan, which opponents see turning 125th Street into a canyon of overdevelopment, has been approved, and the Sunset Park plan is still being developed. But this is the very last moment to halt or alter the CB3 plan. After approval by Scott Stringer, it goes to the mayor's City Planning Commission, which must complete its review by October 10. Then the City Council will have 50 days to vote on it. The mayor's signature, which makes it official, is considered a mere formality.

Meanwhile, the CPC/LES is keeping up the pressure. Lee says Chinese Staff & Workers want the rezoning extended to Chinatown, and the "inclusionary zoning" to include real low-income housing. They also call for rezoning to allow light manufacturing, keeping alive and revitalizing an economic base not driven by real estate.

We have a community that has bounced back from the devastating effects of September 11," Lee says. "The economy is generated by the people who live there, the people who have small businesses there, the people who work there. Not by big real estate. There's so much speculation, and there are all these empty luxury buildings now. It is questionable whether they'll even be filled. There's all this construction for this market that might not even be there. Meanwhile, Chinatown has the highest population density in the US, and we need affordable housing. And that is not being provided by the government."

Even as the rezoning plan goes down to the 11th hour, Lee remains hopeful. "Under the Bloomberg administration, they want development at all costs, and they're using the rezoning as a tool to get that. But from Harlem to Sunset Park to Fort Green to Chinatown, there are people who are very concerned about this growing trend of displacement and the government's role in pushing it. There's a movement coming together around this, and that is going to grow."

[For more on this story, see Save the Lower East Side at: <http://savethelowereastside.blogspot.com>–Ed.]