Downtown Alliance president Jessica Lappin (inset) declared victory in her group’s quest to allow developers to put retail space into Water Street’s “uninviting and underutilized” public arcades (left) in exchange for sprucing up the area’s equally bleak public plazas (right) when the Council unanimously approved the measure on June 21.
BY YANNIC RACK
The City Council unanimously passed a controversial zoning change last week that will hand two football fields worth of public space along Water St. to building developers.
Downtown’s councilmember Margaret Chin had successfully pushed for several changes to the text amendment to reflect community concerns, but the measure’s chief critics — who decry it as a giveaway to developers that shortchanges the community — argue the zoning text change is still a bad deal for Lower Manhattan, and for public open spaces across the city.
“It’s depressing that this is going through. It just opens the door — it sets a precedent,” said Alice Blank, an architect and member of Community Board 1 who spearheaded local opposition to the plan, after an earlier vote before the Council’s Land Use Committee. “Any agreement of taking away public space is a bad idea.”
At an initial hearing on the bill last month, several legislators expressed serious concerns about the deal, but once Chin came on board last week, opposition on the committees evaporated, since councilmembers usually defer to the local member when considering a measure that falls entirely within their district.
The zoning text amendment, introduced by the Downtown Alliance and the city’s Economic Development Corporation and Dept. of City Planning, will hand control over 110,000 square feet of covered arcades at 20 Downtown office towers around Water St. to building owners for retail development in exchange for upgrades to public plazas in the area.
Both the covered walkways and plazas — which are privately owned public spaces, or POPS — were originally ceded to the city by landlords in exchange for permission to construct taller, bulkier buildings than zoning laws allow.
The idea behind the text amendment, according to the Alliance, is to incentivize landlords to bring in more of the retail amenities so lacking along the Water St. corridor and make the area more attractive to its growing residential population.
As originally written, the text amendment would have allowed landlords to develop the arcades any way they saw fit, barring a few restrictions, with only a sign-off by the City Planning Commission. Under the modifications secured by Chin, any retail infill at the six largest arcades will be subject to extensive public oversight through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP.
Other changes include limiting banks and drug stores to 30 and 50 feet of retail frontage, respectively, and restoring some compliance and reporting provisions that the original proposal would have eliminated, leading Chin to throw her support behind the plan.
“This wasn’t an easy decision to make,” Chin said in a statement. “The modified proposal seeks to strike a balance of community input and public oversight with regard to the infill of arcades while providing flexibility to achieve the desired goals of improved public space, neighborhood retail, and pedestrian experience.”
Landlords that do infill will be obliged to spruce up the nearby public plazas, to bring the 1960s-era spaces into compliance with new standards instituted in 2007 and 2009 that require more plantings and greenery.
