Giant development project planned for LES

From Crains:

Lower East Side residents and city officials have spent more than four decades sparring over what should go on five fallow city-owned lots, totaling seven acres, just south of Delancey Street near the Williamsburg Bridge. But courtesy of a 2008 rezoning, a few determined community leaders and many compromises, it looks as though the area will finally be transformed into a huge complex with housing, as well as retail and office space. It would be the largest redevelopment project on underutilized city-owned land south of 96th Street.

The proposal for what is known as the Seward Park Mixed-Use Development Project is likely to pass its first hurdle May 22, when Community Board 3 is expected to give the plan its overwhelming approval.

If all goes well, the five surface parking lots will be turned into a 1.65 million-square-foot mixed-use development comprised of 40% commercial and 60% residential units, with roughly 900 apartments, half of which will be affordable. It is expected to be approved by the necessary city officials and the City Council by this fall. The city would then likely seek a developer early next year. Only then can the site begin to catch up with the area north of Delancey Street, which in recent years has blossomed with the arrival of trendy shops and restaurants, hip bars and even a luxury condo tower called Blue.

Don't blame historic preservation

From the NY Times:

It’s not preservation that’s at fault, but rather the weakness, and often absence, of other, complementary tools to manage urban development, like urban planning offices and professional, institutionalized design review boards, which advise planners on decisions about preservation and development.

It’s that lack, and the outsize power of private developers, that has turned preservation into the unwieldy behemoth that it is today.

Today decisions about managing urban development are frequently framed as decisions about what and what not to preserve, with little sense of how those decisions affect the surrounding neighborhood.

Worse, these decisions are mostly left to the whims of overly empowered preservation boards, staffed by amateurs casting their nets too widely and indiscriminately. And too many buildings are preserved not because of their historic value or aesthetic significance, but because of political or economic deal-making.

Instead of bashing preservation, we should restrict it to its proper domain. Design review boards, staffed by professionals trained in aesthetics and urban issues and able to influence planning and preservation decisions, should become an integral part of the urban development process. At the same time, city planning offices must be returned to their former, powerful role in urban policy.

That’s the way things work in Europe, where vibrant contemporary cities like London, Berlin, Paris and almost any city in the Netherlands blend old and new without effacing their normal evolutionary processes.

By the city, for the city

Does your neighborhood need a facelift?

Does that empty lot on the street corner need some fresh design attention?

What sites in your borough have unrealized potential or need a thorough re-imagining?

Want to give your input and help to create a better New York?

Well, you can. From now through April 30, the Institute for Urban Design (IfUD) will turn to the New Yorkers to reframe the debate about the future of the cityʼs public spaces. By the City / For the City (BtCFtC) is an innovative two-part open call for ideas that asks New Yorkers where they see potential for improvement in the cityʼs physical fabric. Nominate an untapped opportunity somewhere in the five boroughs today.

Then IfUD will ask the international design community to respond to the challenges set forth by the public. Together, ideas from citizens and designers alike will represent an atlas of possibility for the cityʼs future, which will provide the foundation for the first-ever Urban Design Week from September 15–20.

We'd like to get a wide range of ideas submitted, spread out in every neighborhood across the five boroughs.

For more information, contact Brendan Crain at IfUD at 212-366-0780 or crain@ifud.org.

Ok folks, I asked whether this applied to private spaces as well as public spaces, and I was told both. So, send them your thoughts or leave your suggestions below and I will submit them to the organizers. Abandoned lots that could become community gardens or parks, strips of concrete that should be prettied up, etc. You know your neighborhoods best.