VOLUME 6, NUMBER 14 APRIL 09, 2014
THE WEST SIDE’S COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER SERVING CHELSEA, HUDSON YARDS & HELL'S KITCHEN
Budget in Tow, Electeds Fill CB4 Meeting BY EILEEN STUKANE On Wednesday, April 2, the packed room at the Community Board 4 (CB4) Full Board Meeting at Roosevelt Hospital (10th Avenue between West 57th and 58th Streets), heard from more than its usual share of elected offi cials. Two days earlier, on March 31, the New York State Executive Budget had been approved and Albany officials brought news of state funds to be spent on health, education, transportation and more.
First to the podium, however, was Midtown South Precinct’s Commanding Officer Edward Winski. He was invited by CB4 to speak about actions the precinct was taking to improve safety in the community, particularly pedestrian safety (Midtown South extends from east of 9th Avenue to Lexington Avenue, from 29th to 45th Streets). He reported that Mayor de Blasio has enlisted the NYPD to strongly pursue
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Town Hall Panel Touts Strategies, New and Ongoing BY ZACH WILLIAMS City Councilmember Corey Johnson hosted local and city officials at a March 25 town hall meeting held at the School of Visual Arts Theatre (333 West 23rd Street). Over 100 residents attended as Johnson moderated a discussion on topics including education, traffic safety and noise mitigation — with a focus on new strategies being employed to improve quality of life. Interagency cooperation is the key to unlocking solutions, officials said in response to audience questions read by Johnson
throughout the meeting. Asked how the increasingly crowded Chelsea and Greenwich Village area can accommodate the demands of universal pre-kindergarten, Department of Education representative Sadye Campoamor said community organizations have submitted an abundance of proposals to provide space for a projected 20,000 area youngsters. The approval that day by the department of a new middle school at 75 Morton Street was an example, said
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TALKING POINT, LETTERS PAGE 8
FESTIVAL GUIDE PAGES 11-20
Photo by Sam Spokony
State Senator Brad Hoylman and other electeds spoke forcefully, at an April 6 rally against the 124 W. 16th St. development.
Neighbors Crusade Against Church Air Rights Sale BY SAM SPOKONY Residents of West 16th Street, now joined by local elected officials, are continuing their fight against the “monstrous” and “out of scale” development currently underway on their block — and they’re also hoping for some divine intervention that could cut the planned building’s size in half. The block residents have been outraged since last December, when Einhorn Development Group revealed they were building an 11-story condo building at 124 West 16th Street (between Sixth and Seventh Avenues), next to and above the 180-year-old French Evangelical Church. Those plans were first laid back in April 2012 when Einhorn bought the former No. 124 building from the
church for $4 million (later demolishing it), and simultaneously bought the air rights over the church itself, at 126 West 16th Street, for an undisclosed sum. As part of the deal, the church not only received more than twice the money necessary for $2 million worth of repairs to its aging facade and interior, but also gained 5,000 square feet of space in Einhorn’s new condo building, some of which it reportedly plans to rent in order to establish an endowment fund. That air rights purchase allowed the developer to bump up the building height from six to 11 stories, while keeping it as-of-right based on city zoning laws — but that hasn’t stopped the residents from railing against both Einhorn and the church.
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“They’re disregarding the needs of the hundreds of people impacted by this development,” said West 16th Street resident Doug Halsey, who was joined by around 30 of his neighbors at a rally outside the development site on April 6. Amid chants of “Shame on you!” he also reminded the crowd that the Einhorns — Hal and Yiannes, the father-and-son leaders of the development group, as well as Hal’s wife Valery — have said they plan to live at 124 West 16th Street once it is built (completion is currently expected by 2016). “It’s cruelly ironic that they plan to live in the building, because they’ll be bathing in the natural sunlight they
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