By Co-Presidents Lesley Doyel and Michael Bhagwandin and the board of Save Chelsea | Currently, and somewhat ironically, as it celebrates its 50th anniversary, the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) has proposed de-calendaring 95 properties in all five boroughs. If this proposal is implemented, all 95 sites would no longer be protected and would therefore be at serious risk. Save Chelsea joins many other organizations and individuals in urging the Landmark Preservation Commission to reconsider this drastic action.
To begin with, each of these sites has significant historic, architectural or cultural value, or they would not have been considered eligible for landmark designation and calendared to begin with. Especially in today’s climate of over-development, we greatly fear that removing these sites in a mass de-calendaring with no further examination opens them to hasty demolition or irrevocable alteration. Here in Chelsea we are experiencing the wholesale loss or drastic alteration of many currently unprotected buildings of historic merit.
The LPC was created to protect New York’s heritage, not to dispose of it for reasons of time and economy! We agree with our fellow organizations that these sites should not be viewed as a burden, but rather as a part of our history in need of protection and worthy of preservation.
We are gratified that the LPC is, at last, requesting public input. We also remind them that the public was extremely outspoken last December, when the threat of de-calendaring was first announced. If the new leadership needs to make sweeping changes in order to more effectively move forward, a wholesale purge of the many worthy buildings and sites that have already been determined by the LPC as valid for serious consideration is surely not the answer. Instead of the new broom sweeping clean, creative alternatives (many good ones have been suggested) should be put on the table, and the process of dealing with the 95 threatened properties expedited.
