Saturday, May 17, 2014

BSA chair is now head of LPC

Photo from Pardon Me For Asking
From Wall Street Journal:

Mayor Bill de Blasio is set to nominate an urban planner to guide the Landmarks Preservation Commission, as the 49-year-old agency attempts to balance the mayor's pro-development agenda with its mandate of preserving New York's built history.

The mayor has chosen Meenakshi Srinivasan, who for the last decade has been chairwoman of the New York City Board of Standards and Appeals, an agency that makes often highly technical decisions about granting exemptions to zoning for individual lots, according to city officials. Ms. Srinivasan also spent 14 years at the Department of City Planning.

The nomination is set to be announced Friday. It still needs City Council approval.

The selection of Ms. Srinivasan signals a desire by the administration to have the commission be more in tune with planning concerns. That includes the mayor's pledge to promote new development around the city as a way to create both affordable housing and jobs.

Ms. Srinivasan, a native of India, is an architect.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

As BSA chair -- she in my view helped destroy our neighborhoods. She is a curt individual that called the shots. Many of which supported developers that built and continue to build contrary to zoning.

Basicially, the BSA rewards individuals for Building contrary to Zoning. The Board has powers that they do not use to do what they are mandated to do.

The BSA needs to be done away with.

She destroyed and now she wants to preserve?



JQ said...

no coincidence that this woman was in charge of all the shady zoning maneuvering that led to the pandemic of blade runner towers and condos.

And just like his acquaintance in the white house,he is hiring another establishment hack from the previous administration to continue enriching all the developers and equity firms that will own and run these monoliths.

But these are progressive thinking people and its doing it for good reasons right?

Its like that story of the scorpion and the frog.

Anonymous said...

Well, perhaps it IS time to rewrite the Landmarks Law cause we know it will only benefit insiders.

Anonymous said...

It's from from the frying pan into the fire!
Lament, you preservationists, who were all hoping for a better deal than Bloomberg's LPC stooges gave you.

Anonymous said...

There goes the NYC historic district that Broadway-Flushing was hoping for under a new LPC chair.

Anonymous said...

It's high time that a REAL historic preservation group find themselves a lawyer and SUE the LPC for its discriminatory practices of ignoring certain nabes (particularly in Queens) over a Manhattan preference.

Lawsuits talk and bullshit walks!

Anonymous said...

It looks like Broadway-Flushing will have to learn to be content with those ridiculous National Register bronze plaques in lieu of real LPC plaques.

What a waste of time and money. They make Queens Historical Society's Queensmark plaques seem more real...and they're a joke.

Only genuine LPC plaques represent protection for a structure or district.
All else adds up to fantasy or folly.