VOLUME 29, NUMBER 12
JUNE 16 – JUNE 29, 2016
WATERSHED VOTE
Controversial Water St. arcade plan gets Council committee green light
File photo by Milo Hess
Battery Park City Authority chairman Dennis Mehiel considers allowing only elected offi cials to speak at authority board meetings while restricting residents to submitting written comments to be a “reasonable approach” to growing calls for more community input.
Speechless Suggestion box, not soap box for public at BPCA meetings BY COLIN MIXSON Faced with growing demands from residents and local lawmakers to allow public comment at its board meetings, the Battery Park City Authority has offered what many are calling a “half measure” — permitting only elected officials to speak at meetings, but restricting residents to submitting written comments — a move that satisfies no one except the governor’s hand-picked appointees on the board, according to state Sen. Daniel Squadron. “This was never about elected officials’ opportunity to be heard. We have many opportunities to be heard,” said Squadron. “It’s about local residents sharing their local perspective with a board who overwhelmingly resides elsewhere.” A cadre of Downtown legislators put their names to a letter in April calling on the authority to provide locals the opportunity to speak for themselves at the board’s meetings, with Squadron, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Borough President Gale Brewer, Assemblymember Deborah Glick and City Councilmember Margaret Chin writing that “public comment is an important part of public engagement.” SPEECHLESS Continued on page 31
Photos by Yannic Rack
Downtown Alliance president Jessica Lappin (inset) is poised to declare victory in her group’s quest to allow developers to put retail space into the Water St. pedestrian arcades (left) in exchange for sprucing up the area’s public plazas (right), after the Council’s Land Use Committee unanimously endorsed the proposal on Jun15, setting up approval from the full Council on June 21.
BY YANNIC RACK It’s game over for the Water St. arcades. The City Council is set to sign off later this month on a controversial zoning change that would hand two football fields worth of public space to developers along Water St., after the Land Use Committee unanimously approved the plan on Wednesday. Downtown councilmember Margaret Chin had successfully pushed for several changes to the text amendment to reflect community concerns, but the measure’s chief critics — who decry it as a giveaway to developers that shortchanges the community — still argue the zoning text change is a
bad deal for Lower Manhattan, and for public open spaces across the city. “It’s depressing that this is going through. It just opens the door — it sets a precedent,” said Alice Blank, an architect and member of Community Board 1 who spearheaded local opposition to the plan, in part because she feared it could lead to similar public spaces being handed over to landlords elsewhere. “Any agreement of taking away public space is a bad idea,” she added. At the initial subcommittee hearings last month, several of the legislators expressed grave concerns about the deal, but once Chin came on board this week opposi-
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tion on the committees evaporated, since councilmembers usually defer to the local member when considering a measure that falls entirely within their district. The zoning text amendment, introduced by the Downtown Alliance and the city’s Economic Development Corporation and Dept. of City Planning, seeks to hand 110,000 square feet of covered arcades at 20 Downtown office towers to building owners for retail development in exchange for upgrades to public plazas in the area. Both the walkways and plazas — which are privately owned ARCADES Continued on page 12