Speaking of forethought, what about Chinatown?
From Rob Hollander, LES Residents for Responsible Development
http://savethelowereastside.blogspot.com/
David McWater, CB3 chair, did a great service to the Lower East Side when he extended the rezoning of the East Village to the Lower East Side south of Houston, an area urgently in need of zoning protection.
Although throughout the three years since the rezoning was proposed no tall towers have been built in the residentially zoned East Village — even huge lots like Mary Help of Christians remain untouched — political will and money and influence wanted an East Village rezoning. It was the wisdom of the CB chair to take best advantage of that will to get something truly and desperately needed from it, a contextual down-zoning of the disappearing LES south of Houston, where tall towers rise everywhere as they do in the commercially zoned 3rd Avenue and east Bowery.
Time has come again for wisdom, this time the wisdom of forethought. The CB is currently planning a rezoning of the Bowery. If the Bowery and the LES are both rezoned to limit development, Chinatown will be placed at even greater risk as the last frontier for development and gentrification. Currently Chinatown is a C6-1 zone — the same zoning as 3rd Avenue, Bowery and Chrystie-to-Essex that are seeing hotels rise daily.
That’s the future for Chinatown unless the CB plans ahead.
It’s time to think ahead. Chinatown needs zoning protection. The Bowery and Chinatown need to be rezoned as a single package so that the rezoning of the Bowery does not push development into Chinatown.