Preserve West Park North, a new coalition of neighborhood activists, organized the Speak Out after they spotted an ad in a real estate magazine two weeks ago. It was an artist’s rendering that showed part of their community, the stretch of Columbus Avenue between 97th to 100th Streets, barely recognizable, looking like a glitzy midtown street. In the drawing, three uninterrupted blocks with 235,000 square feet of upscale glass shops supported a centerpiece – a 29-story luxury residential tower jutting up from what is now an airy esplanade of 45-year-old shade trees.
Finally, the residents had a picture of what their landlord intended to do to their unique community of almost 5,000 people, whose original planners had carefully balanced the size and shape of buildings with open space and sky around them. These proposed glass buildings would stick out like a sore thumb amidst the subdued red brick 16-story architecturally uniform apartment houses that now sit placidly on landscaped lawns.
Residents dubbed the alien-looking tower “The Spike,” “El Pincho” in Spanish.
This mammoth structure being marketed by their landlord would cut off the three Park West Village rental buildings on Columbus Avenue from the four mixed condo and rent stabilized buildings on Central Park West, creating a barrier that would slice their original planned community in half. If the plan is realized, the superblock holding 784, 788 and 792 Columbus Avenue will be without direct access to Columbus Avenue and will no longer be physically unified with their sister buildings 372, 382, 392 and 400 Central Park West. Landscaped green spaces that were part of the village’s original late 1950s plan would be built on or paved over. Resident parking lots would disappear.
Already four blocks of local shops that served the community – including the diner, discount store, hardware store, bakery, restaurant, deli and supermarket – are boarded up, perhaps for years. And residents believe “The Spike” is only the beginning.
“There is more land here to be dug up. We just don’t know his strategy.” said Lois Hoffmann, president of the Park West Village Tenants Association. She added that the city may be formulating plans to build on open spaces in the Frederick Douglass complex, too.
For months landlord Laurence Gluck and his partner Joseph Chetrit had kept their plans under wraps. The first indication that development was afoot came last September, when 11 local shops and eateries that lined the village along Columbus and Amsterdam received notices to vacate. Community pressure
managed to keep them open for a few extra months. The C-Town supermarket – geared to serve a range of familes from condo owners to working and poor families – was the last to close on May 5. The community held a rally with 300 people pushing empty shopping carts to show their distress. But despite pleas from residents and elected officials, the landlord withheld his grand scheme from the people who would be most affected…until that illustration surfaced in the trade magazine.
“Fifty years ago, Robert Moses encouraged the city to acquire this land by eminent domain. It was sold to developers at bargain prices in order to create attractive, affordable housing for working and middle class families,” said Vivian Dee, president of Preserve West Park North. “The people built a unified neighborhood that has endured for years. Is it justified that someone should buy this property and make an enormous profit by dismantling what was created as a special planned community?”
“The original plans for Park West Village created the Central Park West and Columbus Avenue superblocks and developers were allowed to build seven large buildings of 300 and 400 apartments each in exchange for open spaces,” Hoffmann added. “At least 5,000 people call these 2,500 apartments home. If someone is going to affect our community by increasing the acceptable density of housing and by disregarding the needs of our longstanding community, we have to have a voice.”
The closing of the shopping strips was the catalyst for forming Preserve West Park North, a coalition of resident, community and religious groups between Central Park West and Amsterdam Avenue, from 86th to 106th Streets. It is a formalization of the close-knit relationship among activists who live in Park West Village; current and former Mitchell-Lamas such as Tower West, Central Park Gardens, Town House West and Westgate; and NYCHA-owned Frederick Douglass Houses. Their motto: “Nothing About Us Without Us.”
Residents have so far gathered almost 2,000 petition signatures to present to Mayor Bloomberg, Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. The petition asks them to save and preserve Park West Village and Frederick Douglass Houses and to assure that any future development meets the needs of the surrounding community. They have hired a lawyer.
At the Speak-Out, the group will survey the attendees to find out what they would like to see in the community, explained Sue Susman, president of Central Park Gardens and founder of the citywide Mitchell-Lama web site www.save-ml.org.
“We want a voice in what happens in our neighborhood, to protect our homes particularly in the longstanding community between 97th and 100th Streets between Central Park West and Amsterdam Avenue,” Susman said. “Among other things, we want to stay healthy with light and air and open space. We want affordable shopping and affordable housing. We want our community to stay intact.”
Hoffmann summed it up: “We had restaurants where neighbors would gather and places to shop and now you have to walk blocks and blocks just to get a newspaper or a cup of coffee. They’re chipping away our hometown feeling.”
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6/1/06
(For more background on Preserve West Park North, you may refer to the web site www.preservewpn.org, where you will find the news release and clips from the May 6 Shopping Cart Rally.)
