Last week I spoke at a meeting convened by NYC Commnity Board 2 to discuss City Hall’s latest assault on the public interest: it’s unexplained insistence that the landmarked 1908 Tony DaPalito gym at Carmine Street and Seventh Ave. South must be demolished.
The gym closed during the pandemic but then never reopeoend. The city deliberately lied to the gym’s patrons, insisting that repairs would be finished by an ever-shifting date and the gym would reopen.
City Hall has lost any credibility on land-use issues. It played this same game with the nineteenth-century houses on Ninth Avenue and 14th St., insisting that they were structurally too compromised to save, when it knew, and the Landmarks “Preservation” Commission knew, that that was bunk.
The City hasn’t provided any documentary data, of course. An assessment of structural issues needs to be conducted by an independent consulting firm that has no connections at all to City Hall. But, please, we know in this day and age that engineering problems can be remedied.
The City says it may transfer the DaPalito facility to the monster-sized tower it wants to build at 388 Hudson Street. We’ve seen the way that free-standing buildings like the Donnell library, owned by municipal institutions, are sold at fire-sale prices to developers who then shoehorn those institutions in the basement or bottom floors of the gigunda building they put up in place of what was once an independent public structure.
Obviously a contributor to Mayor Adams’ campaign wants to build another unwanted, intrusively-scaled tower at Carmine St. Already 388 Hudson is set to be the tallest building in the Village, when it was supposed to use this City-owned land to build much more modestly scaled housing for low-income seniors. The tower that is going up will be strictly commercial.
In a city that is less and less affordable for working people, Mayor Adams wants to destroy one of the few accessible resources available to the public.
