De Blasio’s huge Midtown giveaway
Acentury ago, New York City enacted the first zoning resolution to control the size and density of development. Today, the de Blasio administration is poised to toss aside our zoning rules to foster construction of massive new towers in East Midtown, particularly around Grand Central Terminal.
The resulting office buildings will rise 80 stories and more straight up from the street, with little provision for the public realm.
In 1916, New Yorkers were appalled to see the Equitable Building rise 41 stories without setbacks. Covering the entire block at Broadway and Pine St., it obliterated the sky and cast the streets and buildings below in perpetual shadow. Did the citizens want this? Would this be their inevitable future?
Rather than surrender decisions about the shape of the city to Darwinian real estate interests, Progressive Era leaders enacted the zoning resolution. They understood that the public had a right to light and air on their streets, and that no one could privatize the sky. That zoning resolution called for setbacks to assure that daylight would reach the sidewalks below.
Even so, towers could reach heavens, just as long as they rose behind a relatively low street wall and covered only 25% of the lot. The Empire State Building, which we all love, is the ultimate example of zoning at work.
To squeeze maximum value out of East Midtown, the Department of City Planning has proposed rules that, in essence, remove all constraints. This is directly contrary to the rules of the 1982 Special Midtown District, which defined the amount of daylight buildings must allow on the street. A clear formula determined a Daylight Evaluation score: 75% of the sky left open was passing.
One Vanderbilt, the prototype for the new zoning now rising at Madison Ave. and 42nd St., scores negative 62! Under the proposed rules, it would score plus 20, still a far cry from the old standard, which served Midtown well for 35 years.
This is not a well-considered plan, merely new rules allowing developers to build as big and as tall as they desire. That does not serve the public interest.
Some buildings in East Midtown are actually overbuilt, so there is no incentive for demolition. The new rules would permit rebuilding for a fee. In sum, the city would have a financial interest to approve structures could not have been previously.
This is not planning. This nothing but zoning for dollars.
This proposal also threatens our historic city. In the last few years the Historic Districts Council, the New York Landmarks Conservancy and the Municipal Art Society identified dozens of buildings meriting protection. But the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated only 12, and the chairwoman has declared that her agency will consider no others, disregarding in advance any and all public entreaties.
Anything unprotected in East Midtown, no matter how historic or beloved, no matter how big, is now a development site.
Finally, the new zoning gives the public realm only minimal consideration, except as provided by and controlled by private interests. Really, the only improvements we will see are a few elevators, stairs and escalators in local subway stations, and widened sidewalks (merely repurposing existing public space).
Can Bryant Park absorb all the new workers who will be filing out of those towers at lunch hour? Can the subway platforms handle more commuters?
For some historical perspective, consider a 1974 New York Times editorial about new protections for planned communities: “Increasingly, the city has been recognizing environmental and social values in its zoning legislation; it has, in fact, treated these regulations as a tool to improve New York or safeguard what is good about it . . . . New York’s planners are continuing a trend toward the progressive and creative interpretation of zoning in the interests of a more livable city.” Now that’s an artifact of a different city, and a different set of values.
Mayor de Blasio claims the mantle of progressivism, but his administration is betraying that proud tradition. Once, urban progressives used the levers of government to protect the people from the interests. Today, the mayor sees government as a way to further those interests over the rights of the people. that built is