Letters to the Editor

St. Vincent’s plan is inappropriate

To The Editor:
I have lived on West 11th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues for the past 36 years. As an 11th Street resident, the proposal to redevelop the St. Vincent’s property directly opposite me would be an immense personal benefit. However, I am also a Villager, a New Yorker and an architect. When viewed from these perspectives, the St. Vincent’s proposal would cause tremendous damage.

The sheer scale of the buildings that have been proposed for 7th Avenue would have a devastating effect on the Village. At over 300 feet, the proposed hospital would be roughly the height of a 35-story apartment building. To understand its impact, one could stand at the corner of Greenwich and 7th Avenues (at the “tile wall”) and picture a building nearly twice as tall as the apartment building on the northeast corner of 7th Avenue and 12th Street. However, unlike the apartment building which sets back as it rises, the proposed hospital would be a continuous wall running from the northeast to the southwest corners of the Maritime Building, bellying dramatically out toward the corner of 7th Avenue and 12th Street. This, coupled with the new apartment building proposed for the east side of 7th Avenue between 12th and 11th Streets, would destroy the urban quality of the current St. Vincent’s triangle and dwarf the Greenwich Village scale.

St. Vincent’s provides important services to our community and to the City as a whole.

In the past, I have supported the various St. Vincent’s plans for modernization and improvement, including some which compromised my own living conditions. It seemed to me that the proposals were, for the most part, addressing legitimate space and facilities needs. It also seemed that the expansions were designed to minimize damage to the Village, both to scale and to continuity. The currently proposed plan is, however, first and foremost about money. There is no question that if the sale of the St. Vincent’s property were not the driving force for this proposal, a totally state-of-the-art medical facility could be built without any increase in the existing building volume. There is also no question that this proposal will fundamentally compromise the scale of the Village forever. In this, it is different at its core from any of the St. Vincent’s expansions in the past 50 years, the period in which we came to realize the incredible value of the unique qualities of our historic neighborhood.

The first 300-foot tall building in the Village will be a watershed. Once this precedent is set, it will be that much harder to argue for “contextually” scaled development. Historic preservation (or perhaps one should call it “cultural preservation”) will be more about protecting specimens rather than maintaining the vibrant and dynamic continuum that is still the Village today. Some supporters of the St. Vincent’s proposal argue that urban development and preservation must avoid the “dusty museum” syndrome. Ironically, implementing the current proposal would encourage just that by establishing huge, disconnected islands within the communities, islands which degrade the essential viability of their hosts.

I fully support positions which recognize the need for change and growth, positions which view urban culture and fabric as alive and dynamic; however, this growth must not be at the cost of centuries of history. The most important quality of any historic area, be it Greenwich Village or the Left Bank of Paris, Venice, Kyoto, is sense of place: genius loci. This asset belongs not just to the residents but to the world. Once this is gone, it can never be restored. Extinct is forever.

Carl Stein, FAIA

City undermines own zoning rules

To The editor:
Re “Chelsea still the center of the art world, but L.E.S. beckons” (News/Arts article, Nov. 30, 2007):

Thank you for this extensive article documenting the rise of the Chelsea Gallery District. I would agree with the authors’ assertion that West Chelsea’s transformation into the center of the art world was made possible by the area’s manufacturing zoning, which by prohibiting luxury residential development prevented the kind of competition which would have inevitably forced the galleries out. As is noted in the article, these are the same restrictions which helped make SoHo the world-wide center for art in the 1970s and ’80s, until the City began to ignore its own zoning regulations for SoHo, which restricted residences to those for “artists in residence” only.

Worth noting, however, is that in 2007 the City decided to allow, for the first time ever, owner-occupied condo-hotels in manufacturing zones, with its approval of the Trump SoHo “Condo-Hotel,” now under construction. With this decision, the City is again undermining their own rules, in essence allowing luxury condos into any light manufacturing zone, threatening a key element in the success of the Chelsea Art Gallery District. That is why several Chelsea art galleries joined the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the SoHo Alliance, and dozens of community and business groups from across the City in opposing the City’s approval of this project, an approval now being challenged in court.

History may well repeat itself in Chelsea if the City is allowed to ignore its own rules regulating luxury condo development, and strangle an arts district in the process.

Andrew Berman

Vanishing neighborhoods

To The Editor:
I wonder how Mayor Bloomberg can sleep at night. How can he allow the very soul of this great city to be bulldozed by the relentless march of real estate development through one neighborhood after another? Doesn’t he care about New York? Shouldn’t the Mayor at least dramatically increase the budget of the Landmarks Preservation Commission so that they’ll have the staffing needed to help prevent the wanton destruction of historic New York?

The special old places that define New York neighborhoods are disappearing at astonishing speed. The corner diner, the historic row of houses, the old gorgeous neighborhood church from the 1890s, the nightclubs where many of us had outrageously wonderful times, will soon be just a distant memory. What kind of warm, neighborhood feelings will New Yorkers get from block after block of giant, sterile, steel-and-glass condo towers? And how will this change us as New Yorkers, when neighborhoods have lost their unique charm and we’re left with no sense of community? If only Jane Jacobs were here to help us at this desperate time.

Rima Finzi-Strauss