Letters to the editor

Letters to the editor

Your seminary source

To The Editor:
Re “Seminary prays new project design will convert its critics” (news article, Oct. 27):
Thank you, Chelsea Now!

Thank you for keeping us up to date on the seminary plans. I attended the first meeting, held in the rain, standing room only, and I'm convinced there was great attendance because we residents of Chelsea had found out about what was going on. This time I found no mention of this meeting anywhere - nothing from Community Board 4, nothing from the Hell's Kitchen Hudson Yards Alliance (I'm on both of their lists) and certainly nothing from the seminary - except in your paper, and as a result, I was not surprised to hear that only 100 people attended.

I would have preferred to be there - as a longtime resident of Chelsea and someone who intends to remain here, this is an important issue for me. But at least I know someone from the press was watching. I do believe the seminary was thinking they would get by under the radar at that first meeting.
Thanks for being our watchdog!
Melodie Bryant
Foreman flubs the facts

To The Editor:
“Seminary must survive for gay rights and for Chelsea” (talking point, by Matt Foreman, Oct. 20):

I am writing this letter to correct factual inaccuracies in Matt Foreman's talking point. Since Mr. Foreman is a very good friend of Maureen Burnley, C.F.O. of the General Theological Seminary, it is a shame he did not let her correct the errors before he submitted it for publication. The quotes that follow are his, the answers are mine:
“It is burdened by the enormous cost of maintaining dozens of historic buildings.” There are 20 buildings on the campus, not dozens.

“Residents of the 15-story building across the street denounce the seminary as violating the scale of the avenue for proposing a building that is the exact same height as their own.” The 15-story building across the street was built in 1929, prior to the height zoning limits, and has less than half the bulk of the new Sherrill Hall.

“…[W]hen Chelsea was redlined in the 1960s and 1970s, the seminary provided deeply discounted mortgages for scores of the very same townhouses these landowners now enjoy.” Scores of houses? How about some? The seminary later reneged on a few of these proposed mortgages. Many institutions assist their neighbors who cannot obtain mortgages on their own, so that they can make needed repairs, and also in order to preserve the institution's property values.

“…[I]t would be better to have a big-box store on Ninth Ave. than to give G.T.S. an inch.” This is a base canard that the seminary has been trying to promote. No one wants big-box stores on the Ninth Ave. frontage of the seminary. Quality shops, which now can get high rentals, were proposed as a way the seminary could have a continuous revenue stream. That and several other sound alternative proposals were rejected by the seminary, which refuses to budge from a disadvantageous deal with its developer.
Robert Trentlyon
Trentlyon is president, Save Chelsea Historic District

Dissects dean's letter

To The Editor:
The Council of Chelsea Block Associations is a coalition of block associations representing 20 blocks active in the Chelsea area with thousands of residents.

This letter is being written in response to Ward B. Ewing's letter “Support for the seminary” in your Oct. 20 issue and the Lawrence Lerner article “Seminary prays new project design will convert its critics” in the Oct. 27 issue.

The most controversial component of the seminary's plan is to build higher than the 75-foot height limit. It should be understood by all involved - the seminary, the community, the decision-making agencies and the elected officials - that the community fought for decades to establish the Chelsea Historic District, and the seminary actively opposed it.
It should be understood by all involved in this process that the Chelsea community compromised more than what should be expected of it by agreeing to accept the Chelsea 197a zoning plan. After years of hard work, this agreement, among other things, limited the height of the Chelsea Historic District to 75 feet. To obtain the approval which was agreed to by the elected officials and appropriate agencies, the plan allowed the building of much taller buildings throughout the Chelsea area, the consequences of which you see today by looking upward as you walk through our Chelsea community.

In conclusion, I want to point out an important inaccurate statement in Dean Ewing's letter. He wrote, “The seminary has repeatedly demonstrated that a 75-foot-tall building does not begin to save its other historic buildings. No one needs to take our word for this - the New York City Landmarks Conservancy analyzed and confirmed our plan.”

I spoke with the Landmarks Conservancy yesterday. They agree that money is needed to fix and maintain the seminary's buildings in the future. However, with regard to the Landmarks Conservancy “confirming our plan,” as Dean Ewing wrote, this statement is not correct. I was advised that at this point in time, the Landmarks Conservancy position is that the seminary is moving in the right direction, but they, the conservancy, have not made a final decision about the seminary's plan.

When the final decision is made by the appropriate city agencies and elected officials, the Council of Chelsea Block Associations trusts that the commitment to maintain the 75-foot height limit in the Chelsea Historic District will be honored.
William Borock
Borock is president, Council of Chelsea Block Associations

Doesn't care for Koch

To The Editor:
I already look forward to reading your paper on Fridays. It is a nice new voice with previously uncovered new stories about the area. I also love The Villager and this is a nice complement to that paper.

My only suggestion would be to get your own movie reviewer. I'm sure there are lots of qualified people who would write reviews for you if you paid for their admission to a movie, or possibly someone would do it for free for the exposure. Who cares what crazy Ed Koch thinks about movies? I think that is the one area where you could introduce a fresh voice.
Tim Dietrich

E-mail letters, not longer than 350 words in length, to news@chelseanow.com or fax to 212-229-2790 or mail to Chelsea Now, Letters to the Editor, 145 Sixth Ave., ground floor, NY, NY 10013. Please include phone number for confirmation purposes. Chelsea Now reserves the right to edit letters for space, grammar, clarity and libel.