Blood Center Opponents Invoke Rare Clause In Bid To Kill Project

Update, 9:37 a.m. Tuesday: the City Council subcommittee vote on the Blood Center rezoning has been postponed until Wednesday.

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — As the New York Blood Center's divisive rezoning on the Upper East Side faces a deciding vote in the City Council, opponents have launched a last-ditch effort to derail it.

A Council committee is expected to vote Tuesday morning whether to approve the Blood Center's bid to upzone a stretch of East 67th Street in order to build a 276-foot research tower. The proposal has stoked intense opposition in the neighborhood for nearly a year, including from local member Ben Kallos, who has railed against the tower for its impact on an adjacent park and school.

But Kallos's wishes could be thwarted by his own Council colleagues — reports emerged that they may vote to approve it anyway and thus upend the decades-old practice of "member deference" that would respect his wishes.

Still, Kallos asserted Monday that opponents of the project have a procedural end run of their own: community members filed a formal protest with the city that takes advantage of an obscure City Charter provision to raise the vote threshold on rezonings. The objections filed would raise the required vote from the typical majority to three-quarters of Council members — a level that Kallos believes will doom the project.

"I don’t believe that the City Council can get 39 people to vote against member deference," Kallos told Patch. "Especially with a developer that’s refused to even meet with the local Council member."

The objections were filed by the board of 301 East 66th St., one of two adjacent buildings that is included in the Blood Center's plans as part of what critics say is a bid by developers to broaden the rezoning and avoid charges of an illegal "spot zoning."

The latest setback for residents seeking to kill the zoning came hours earlier on Monday, when Land Use Committee Chair Rafael Salamanca Jr. told POLITICO that he would vote to approve it.

"It’s hard to tell a nonprofit that saves lives, to say no to them, when they’re trying to increase their capacity and their research for New Yorkers," Salamanca told the publication. "It’s hard to tell them no when your only argument is you’re concerned about the shadows in your community."

Council leaders had given no indication that Monday's vote would deviate from the typical majority threshold, but Kallos said he was confident that the objections would have their desired effect.

Tuesday's hearing by the Council's Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises will begin at 10 a.m., and will be streamed at council.nyc.gov/livestream.

Patch writer Matt Troutman contributed reporting.

More Blood Center coverage:

• Blood Center Hearing: New Concessions, But Opposition Holds Firm
• Supporters Of Blood Center Tower Step Up Lobbying Ahead Of Vote
• Brewer Rejects UES Blood Center Rezoning, But Battle Continues
• Who Supports The Blood Center's Upper East Side Expansion?
• UES Blood Center Tower Disapproved By Board, Heads To Boro Prez