The New York City Council yesterday approved a bill sponsored by local Council member Margaret Chin to require the city to notify communities when urban renewal areas are set to expire.
The legislation was prompted by the development frenzy in the Two Bridges neighborhood, including the construction of Extell’s 80-story One Manhattan Square and three additional mega-towers now in the planning stages. Just last week, another bill sponsored by Chin — aimed at fast tracking certain land use applications — became law.
The Two Bridges Urban Renewal Area expired in 2007, three years before Chin took office. In the recent City Council election, she faced criticism for reacting too slowly to out-of-scale development projects in the neighborhood. Chin and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer are trying to push through a zoning text amendment to require a full ULURP for the new towers.
In a statement, Chin said:
The lack of public access to urban renewal plans has left too many communities in the dark about their impact on neighborhood preservation. When these plans expire, it can open the door for enormous development to threaten vulnerable neighborhoods. We see this happening in Two Bridges, where I am actively working with residents to create tools to fight back against out-of-scale luxury development. By requiring public notification for expiring urban renewal areas and a publicly accessible website with information about currently and formerly designated urban renewal areas, this legislation would empower more communities to take action to protect their neighborhoods.
More than 150 urban renewal areas have been established in New York City since 1949. The plans are not available online and cannot be publicly accessed without a special request. At a public hearing this past summer in which the bill was discussed, Chin and her Council colleagues grilled city planning officials about their approval of numerous large-scale luxury projects. They argued that the city’s land use approval process obviously needs to be reformed, since large development plans can be implemented without any real role for communities in the decision-making process.
There are no remaining urban renewal areas on the Lower East Side, so the legislation, if allowed to become law by the mayor, won’t be applicable in this neighborhood.
UPDATE 12/14: In this story, we noted that there are no more active urban renewal areas on the Lower East Side. Paula Segal of the Urban Justice Center yesterday sent us a link to Urban Reviewer, a website she helped develop. According to the site, there is one active URA in this neighborhood. It’s the “Lower East Side I Urban Renewal Area,” which covers a small section of the LES bordering East Houston Street, Delancey Street, Forsyth Street and Allen Street. It was adopted in 1983 and expires in the year 2023.
