CB7 Community Forum on 420 42nd Street
From Aaron Brashear, Concerned Citizens of Greenwood Hts., [email protected]
Rainy greetings,
Great community turn out! Packed the house at CB7, at least 65-75 folks came out to ask questions of the DOB, CB7 members and attend a presentation of “Know your rights!” as it pertains to new development in Sunset Park and all of CB7 area.
Several reps of our elected officials were there to “listen” and the head of St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church was also there to to lend his support.
While there were some nay-sayers in the crowd (and a bit of heckling) I do believe Ken Lazar, our community liaison to the DOB, did a great job of presenting whatever information he could share on 420 42nd St., the outstanding objections to the plans, the use of “community facilities” in R6 zoning and an overview of the zoning in Sunset Park.
Of course there were answers he could not address. As he said on several occasions, “DOB enforces the by laws, we don’t write them.” Point well taken and for another discussion as to how to get our electeds to effect some reform FOR DOB to give them more enforcement powers and eliminate some outdated (and abused) by laws.
John Burns, CB7 Land Use Chair, gave an overview of what was successful in our rezoning. Randy Peers, CB7 Chair, fielded questions from the Community Board end and I, new CB7 Buildings & Construction Chair, gave a “Know your rights!” presentation based off an updated document available on southsouthslope.com (along with an adopt a site form). Both are attached.
AND, we of course discussed what guerrilla tactics could be used to put pressure on the developer of 420 42nd St. (311 calls, video/photo documentation, protests, etc.) along with a big picture discussion as to how to put pressure on City Planning and have them refocus on the needs of Sunset park and the rest of CB7’s zoning concerns.
it was a late night, but well worth it for a great initial discussion to an ongoing problem.
Make sure to attend the larger Sunset Park Alliance of Neighbors (SPAN) Community Meeting this Saturday. Info here (and in yesterday’s e-mail):
http://brooklynian.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=353060#353060
All for now…again, great support to our neighbors in SSP and ALL of the ‘nabes in CB7.
Aaron