As we’ve indicated in previous stories, community groups are responding in different ways to the city’s rejection of a sweeping rezoning plan for the Chinatown Working Group. Community Board 3 leaders are talking with officials from the Department of City Planning about adopting a scaled down version of the plan. Other groups are taking to the streets, denouncing the de Blasio administration’s decision.
The Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side got some attention in today’s Daily News for its march from Extell’s Cherry Street construction site to City Hall on Friday. In a story carrying the headline, “Rising fury at Mayor de Blasio over luxury developments,” Albor Ruiz writes:
Mayor de Blasio, fortunately for the great majority of New Yorkers, is not Mike Bloomberg, whose contempt for working people was legendary. That’s why the hundreds of Chinatown and Lower East Side residents are planning to gather outside the Extell luxury condominium construction site (227 Cherry St.)… to march to City Hall, will feel a little uncomfortable. After all, they elected de Blasio, the Tale-of-Two-Cities mayor, because he promised to pay attention — really pay attention — to their problems. Marches and protests such as this should not be necessary, right? Yet, they are. The community, organized by the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side, has encountered only obstacles from City Hall to their demand that de Blasio protect their waterfront community from luxury developments.
You can read the whole story here. The march begins at 227 Cherry St. (at Pike Street) at 4 p.m. on Friday.
