The 27 City Council members who have announced their support for the project by way of a letter to the MTA board and its chairman, Joe Lhota, include Jimmy Van Bramer, Margaret Chin, Laurie Cumbo, Rafael Espinal, Ben Kallos, Brad Lander, Carlos Menchaca, and Jumaane Williams.
The Wall Street Journal reports that on Wednesday, three new bills to protect POPS were introduced in the City Council, sponsored by Council members Ben Kallos and Daniel Garodnick. The first of the three bills would raise penalties for building owners from $4,000 to $10,000 for first offenses, and to $20,000 for additional offenses. Under the bill, a fine of up to $2,500 could be imposed for each month a violation goes unattended.
The dreaded tenant blacklist that debriefs landlords on whether prospective renters have appeared in housing court is still making it hard for those on the list to rent apartments in New York City. Now, Councilman Ben Kallos has introduced legislation to the City Council’s Consumer Affairs Committee that would require the blacklist to paint a fuller picture of why certain tenants have ended up in housing court, the Times reports. Unsurprisingly, things aren’t always as they seem on the database.
A group of Sutton Place residents and politicians have filed plans for a rezoning drafted by urban planners that would block the development of supertall towers in that area of town. The East River Fifties Alliance has formally submitted their plan for a rezoning of the area bounded by First Avenue and the East River between 52nd and 59th streets to the Department of City Planning. The rezoning text is an effort between bigwigs like Senator Liz Krueger, City Councilmen Ben Kallos and Daniel Garodnick, Borough President Gale Brewer, and community stakeholders to thwart the encroachment of tall towers, like the 900-foot development Bauhouse Group has planned for East 58th Street between First Avenue and Sutton Place, on the neighborhood. "We are drawing a line on the march of superscrapers at billionaire's row to protect our city's residential neighborhoods," Kallos said in a statement.
It sounds like the developer and the community have two different ideas about how to honor the quiet Upper East Side enclave. In August, backed by a growing alliance of area co-op and condo boards, Councilman Ben Kallos (who adamantly opposes the project) told the Times that his move to rally against the development is "about preserving our residential neighborhoods and the light and air for the people who live there." Lisa Mercurio of the East River Fifties Alliance, a community group rallying against the development, said in a statement, "The entire community remains opposed to this inappropriate development project."
"We want to make sure these buildings are in the context of what we have and what we want to be. We want to make sure we don't have the dog wagging the tail when it comes to planning," Councilman Garodnick said at July 23's meeting (although Central Park South is arguably already wagged.) Although 57th Street may be a lost battle at this point, DNAinfo suggests that attention is now turning to the Upper East Side after DDG's 551-foot-tall condo building was greenlit in mid-June. Council member Ben Kallos, whose district it's in, urged meeting attendees to press the neighborhood's community board to adopt a resolution to change the Upper East Side's zoning to restrict larger developments. Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, who has gained a reputation for curtailing development, attended the meeting to cheer Kallos on.
