The Geenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation issued this rebuttal to City Council member Rivera’s three-card monty feint on zoning “protections.”
“In response to Councilmember Carlina Rivera’s release of a letter requesting a ‘zoning protection’ plan for requiring special permits for new hotels in the area south of Union Square following the City Council approval of the Mayor’s 14th Street Tech Hub (click here), the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation issued the following statement:
“Councilmember Carlina Rivera’s plan released today is a pale shadow of the zoning protections she publicly promised would be necessary for her to approve the Tech Hub, and hardly qualifies as ‘zoning protections.’ The requirement of a special permit for hotels will have little to no effect on the development problems the Tech Hub will exacerbate. First, any hotel can still be built with the approval of the City Council. Second, this really only applies to a portion of the affected area, since the zoning for about half the area already prohibits or restricts hotels. Third, hotels are only one of many forms of bad development this area is experiencing which this measure will not address, such as office buildings and high-rise condos, as well as doing nothing about affordable housing which the community rezoning plan Rivera promised to hold out for would have. Finally, it will take months for this requirement to be adopted into law, while the added development pressure from the Tech Hub approval takes effect now. Thus it is like firing a starting gun to developers, letting them know if they want to build a hotel in this area without going through the special permit process, they just need to get underway over the next several months before this measure takes effect. Councilmember Rivera broke her promise to the community and voted for a commercial upzoning which will increase development pressure on these neighborhoods without providing anything like the protections they need or she promised. Trying to pass off flimsy measures with little effect as the protections this community fought for won’t change that.”