Updates from GVSHP: Billboards, NYU & Rally to Save the South Village
1) Please see Metro NY’s story on GVSHP’s work around, and frustration with, the proliferation of illegal billboards in the Meatpacking District — see www.gvshp.org/documents/MetroNY10-04-07.pdf or http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/article/A_miniTimes_Square/10216.html. Please also see www.gvshp.org/documents/DOBBillboardLetterOct2007.pdf for GVSHP’s recent letter to the Department of Buildings tracking illegal billboards in our neighborhood and urging swifter enforcement action be taken.
2) Please also see the NY Sun story on newly released plans by the City to work with NYU and other universities to address their growing space needs by helping them to locate new farther afield satellite campuses (see http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=63918&v=3234051911). The city’s Economic Development Corporation is in charge of this initiative, and they are targeting sites like Governor’s Island, Downtown Brooklyn, and Long Island City.
In our 2002 report to city officials titled “After the Kimmel Center,” GVSHP called for changes in city policy and university planning in light of the debacle of the new Kimmel Center. GVSHP recommended that “the City …assist institutions in finding locations to begin secondary campuses…as part of the City’s economic development infrastructure, through the Economic Development Corporation” (see www.gvshp.org/AfterKimmelCenter.pdf item 2 “Comprehensive Master Planning from Institutions,” recommendation 2). When GVSHP began its community-wide push to get NYU and the City to pursue satellite campuses for the university almost two years ago, we specifically called upon the City to look at developing areas such as Governor’s Island, Downtown Brooklyn, and Long Island City (see http://www.nysun.com/article/29515, http://www.gvshp.org/documents/NYUAuxCampuses.pdf#page=7, and http://www.gvshp.org/NYUexpansion.htm). GVSHP and other representatives of the coalition calling for the secondary campus plan also met in 2006 with several top city officials to promote the idea.
Please also remember to come to Father Demo Square, at Bleecker and Carmine Streets at Sixth Avenue, on Monday October 8th at 10:30 am for a Columbus Day celebration of the South Village’s history and Italian-American heritage, and to urge the city to move ahead with the proposal for landmark designation of the area (see www.gvshp.org/southvillagenews.htm).