Lower Manhattan Community Board Rejects SoHo Rezoning Plan

LOWER MANHATTAN, NY — Lower Manhattan's Community Board 2 voted Monday night nearly unanimously against Mayor Bill de Blasio's controversial NoHo/SoHo rezoning plan.

Of the board members who voted, all but one of them voted "yes" to approve a resolution rejecting the rezoning.

“[The rezoning] fails to achieve its affordable housing objectives and fails to protect against displacement of low-income tenants,” Community Board 2 said in its resolution. “Zoning changes will squeeze out small retail stores and negatively impact the quality of life for current and future residents.”

The resolution passed Monday by Community Board 2, which also represents Greenwich Village and the West Village, is only a recommendation — it does not have the ability to stop the rezoning plan.

With the long-awaited recommendation from Community Board 2 now over, the City Planning Commission can hold its lone hearing on the matter as early as September 1.

"We’re deeply gratified that Community Board 2 has joined the long and growing list of affordable housing and tenant groups, Chinatown groups, neighborhood groups, arts groups, and preservationists who reject this developer giveaway being rammed through the process in the dying days of the de Blasio administration," said Andrew Berman, the Executive Director of Village Preservation. "New Yorkers are seeing it for what it is — payback from the Mayor to the big Real Estate interests who’ve supported his campaign throughout his mayoralty and bought into his administration’s pay to play M.O."

Chris Dignes, the lone board member to support the rezoning, explained his vote to City Limits reporter David Brand — "33 percent of people experiencing homelessness are children and children need housing."

While real estate interests and housing were brought up repeatedly during comments Monday night, so was the issue of race.

"Thousands of people on Twitter will call you racist and the KKK, but there are millions — hundreds of millions of people — around the world who have come here to admire what we've built," Todd Fine, president of the Washington Street Advocacy Group and a historian, said.

Background

In October 2020, Mayor Bill de Blasio unexpectedly announced the start of the SoHo rezoning plan, which the administration says would allow for as many as 3,200 new homes to be built in the historically business and arts-centric community, including around 800 affordable housing units.

The rezoning project would cover an area bounded by Canal Street to the south, Houston Street and Astor Place to the north, Lafayette Street and the Bowery to the east, and Sixth Avenue and West Broadway to the west.

The Department of City planning also has a section on its website explaining why the specific Lower Manhattan neighborhood was chosen to rezone.

However, many local residents and organizations strongly oppose the rezoning plan, stating that it would actually let more real estate developers into the neighborhood and decrease the availability of affordable units in SoHo.

Supporters of the plan, though, point to the affordable housing it would add and the diversity it would bring to a predominantly white neighborhood.

You can find out more information about the SoHo rezoning plan, the required steps left for the plan to become reality, and all the available public documents relating to the plan on the Zoning Application Portal from the Department of City Planning.