Skyscrapers Plan Unites Lower East Side Tenants In Opposition

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — Lower East Side residents will bring a new plan to the city that would impose a strict height limit on the waterfront area if approved.

The land use committee of Community Board 3 voted Wednesday to join three tenants groups in their application to regulate the Two Bridges waterfront and impose a strict height limit on new buildings. The stretch of land between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges has been home to one of the most intense debates over development in New York City. Residents and activists gathered for a packed meeting on Wednesday in the shadow of Extell’s One Manhattan Square, a hugely controversial 800-foot skyscraper that’s currently under construction. Three more developers have announced plans to build additional skyscrapers in the small neighborhood. Residents have opposed these plans for years, saying the luxury high-rises will exacerbate gentrification in the area and be out-of-place with the neighborhood’s character.

Wednesday marked a new step in the community’s long-running fight to block the skyscrapers. The tenant groups — CAAV Organizing Asian Communities, Good Old Lower East Side and Tenants United Fighting For Lower East Side — presented a plan to rezone the neighborhood to implement a strict height limit as well as affordable housing requirements in new developments. The four planned towers, which developers want to build at 247 Cheery St., 260 South St. and 259 Clinton St., would all stretch more than 700 feet high. Under the rezoning proposal, the height limit would restrict new buildings to top off at 350 feet. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

The rezoning effort that residents are trying to pass would apply to the pink area on the map, under the current proposal:

Thanks to Wednesday’s agreement, the local land use committee will be a co-applicant with CAAV, GOLES and TUFFLES in what’s known as a 197c application to the City Planning Commission. The partnership will allow the expensive filing fees to be waived.

The committee voted unanimously to join the groups in their fight, but did not commit to the complete plan presented by the tenants group. The vote on Wednesday marked an agreement to be co-applicants in crafting a new proposal that would regulate development in the area.

Committee member Lisa Kaplan said she had “real reservations” about some aspects of the tenants groups plans, calling certain ideas “unrealistic,” but said that the community had to start the conversation to block the developments.

“I think at this point we have to be negotiating about what’s going to happen in this area,” Kaplan said. “The proposal on the floor now is so outrageous and so out of scale that we have to sit down and be part of a discussion about reconsidering this area.”

Numerous residents spoke in support of the plan. Annie Tan, 28, pleaded with the committee to support rezoning efforts to prevent future gentrification in Chinatown and the Lower East Side.

“I want to beg you on behalf of my neighbors who have been pushed out of the neighborhoods that I live in,” Tan said before the vote. “I urge you to continue and pass this alongside fighting with everything you have for us.”

In addition to the height limit, the rezoning plan would create anti-harassment protection for tenants and require commercial stores to go through a community review process before opening, among other measures.

Some residents expressed frustration that the rezoning plan presented was just one piece of the broader Chinatown Working Group plan, a long-running community initiative that would regulate future construction across all of Chinatown and the Lower East Side, and not just on the waterfront. That plan, which has stalled on the sidelines for nearly a decade, has already been rejected by the City Planning Commission.

Melanie Wang, an organizer with CAAV, explained that the groups support implementing the full Chinatown Working Group plan, but said that the waterfron needs immediate rezoning before construction moves forward and is irreversible.

Council Member Margaret Chin, who represents the Two Bridges area in City Council and is running as a Democrat for re-election, announced her support of the rezoning initiative at the beginning of the meeting.

“This community-led effort to rezone the waterfront has my full support,” Chin said. “When there is community consensus I am not afraid to take on the [de Blasio] administration.”

The rezoning effort is one of a number of strategies that local residents and politicians have started to try and block the planned towers and prevent any future similar developments from breaking ground. Last week, Chin and Manhattan borough president Gale Brewer filed a zoning text amendment last week, which would require developers to get a special permit for new construction. The same tenants groups who have proposed the rezoning effort have also promised to sue the developers should they break ground on the projects.

Once the land use committee and the tenants group complete a final rezoning application, they will submit to the City Planning Commission. Should it be approved there, it will proceed to the full City Council.

Lead image credit: Ciara McCarthy / Patch