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What does NY need? Another historic district, of course! Downtown Express is reporting that Community Board 3 has finally voted in favor of the Lower East Side Historic District, a proposed 20-block area that comprises 450 buildings from East Houston to Canal and from Allen to Essex streets.
Officials at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum have been vocal proponents of the district, which has been pushed forward by the Lower East Side Preservation Coalition, an alliance of neighborhood groups and stakeholders (“Save the Lower East Side!” is their tagline). Like many localized, ground-up efforts to create landmark districts, the group’s mission is to preserve the neighborhood’s character in the face of condo development, record prices per square foot and sky-high rents. Organizers are pinning their hopes on minimizing demolition.
“Right now, the chances of landlords spending the money to do gut renovations are slim to none,” said Mary Spink, executive director of the Lower East Side People’s Mutual Housing Association. “By landmarking the area, we can at least prevent them from tearing down the building.”Another aspect to landmarking, say advocates, is that it will keep rents down. But, according to developer Sion Misrahi, “[a]ny small landlord who needs to spend $10,000 to replace a window will sell that building so fast your head will spin.” The possible beneficiaries? Larger management companies. The other option? Raising rents, natch.
With a rezoning plan also in the works, we think it’s safe to say that the neighborhood’s one-two punch against development is in full force. However, we have to wonder, despite the cuteness of pickle wars, is it too late? Or has the area already been, per the NY Post, clubbed (and we'd add almost developed) to death?
Update: According to Landmarks Preservation Commission Communications Director Elisabeth de Bourbon, agency staffers currently "are surveying the neighborhood to evaluate the potential for historic districts or individual landmarks." She added that the survey process involves taking photographs of buildings and doing preliminary research on each structure's architect, date of construction, architectural style and use.
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When will preservation advocates learn that heaping regulation on private owners in order to have keep the appearance of buildings from changing actually hurts low and middle income renters by driving up the cost of maintenance?
Does that historic district make you horny, baby?
#1 has a point, but then again for that 'hood its too late anyway.
Hopefully it will keep rents down and preserve the neighborhood for low income artists like it did in Greenwich Village. Oh, wait...
sadly, it's way too late, unless that big blue turd is historical.
save it for 2107.
Why does anyone want to preserve it? Do you want to remember the days when strung out heroin junkies sat in every doorway and flaming mattresses regularly got hurled out windows? It's a pit. It's not 'charming,' it's dirty and disgusting and anyone who actually went there in daylight would agree. Let them build all the chic hotels they want and wipe out that blight.
MT: You seem to be more interested in telling everyone how much you hate the LES than making any sort of informed point.
Speaking of uninformed, you also seem to think landmarking a district preserves the character of the neighborhood (which according to you consists solely of heroine junkies and burning mattresses).
All it will do is prevent the built environment from being dramatically altered (plus you can still tear down and build new, you are just subject to closer review and more design restrictions). So, unfortunately (in my opinion) or fortunately (for people like MT), designating the LES a historic district will have little effect on keeping it from becoming fully gentrified. The rezoning might, but that's another animal.
Landmarking was never meant to be an affordable housing tool, nor was in meant to maintain the socio-economic character of neighborhoods. It is simply meant to preserve the built environment and architectural heritage of a given district. It certainly has effects on property values, but those effects aren't consistent or dramatic enough for anyone to say it is always good/bad for affordability and/or property values.