A big plot has been cleared on the Northeastern end of the Park, the first development on Gramercy Park since it received landmark designation in 1966.
Landmark designation no longer ensures preservation: vide as well the landmarked houses on Ninth Avenue and 14th Street and the Tony DaPalito Recreation Center. Both sites’ preservation fell prey to what the city cited as irreparable structural issues–that could, in actuality, and should have been repaired. The DaPalito “demolition by neglect” is still being fought.
Then there’s the fabled Palace Theatre, which Carroll allowed to be upended from its placement on the street and instead humbled into incorporation in a huge, unattractive internal shopping mall.
The Gramercy Park demolitions are shameful, one more example of the way that real estate developers are able to ride roughshod at will over the public interstate. They represent a complete refutation of the Landmark Preservation Commission’s mandate. Needless to say, this will be the tallest building on the park.
No wonder Sarah Carroll is (finally) resigning as Chair of the LPC. How frustrating it must have been for a trained preservationist–unless Carroll is a total opportunist–to watch as City Hall insisted she betray her agency’s mandate. But she has been much too compliant, presiding over what is in fact the darkest period in LPC history since its founding in 1962. Carroll “is there to implement the Mayor’s agenda,” another preservationist told me not long after De Blasio appointed her. But perhaps this disgraceful fail on Gramercy Park motivated her to leave. Had it not, dereliction of duty on this scale would surely have sparked demands for her to step down. I’ve been calling for her to do it for years, as the LPC seemed to spend more time devising creative new ways for developers to dodge landmark designation than it did protecting designated landmarks and designating worthy buildings and districts. As they have done with the Union Square South, an historic in -everything-but -official designation district, they stonewall or deny designation over and over again.
Yes, De Blasio’s previous LPC chair Meenakshi Scrinivasan, was even worse, but pubilc outcry forced her out of the Chair very quickly.
It has been open season on the remaining historic, low-rise character of Third Avenue all through the De Blasio-Adams interregnum, but I frankly never dreamed that the blocks facing Gramercy Park itself could be vandalized this way. Now, everything is up for grabs.
This city is finished if Mamdani cannot do anything about the luxury over-development that is leveling neighborhoods–and, btw, destroying lots of lower-rent low-rise housing.