Preservation Efforts Sidelined By Community Board Rules
Preservationists fight for historic P.S. 186
from the Columbia Spectator
By Kim Kirschenbaum
Published Friday 22 January 2010.
Walter South is trying to save a historic building, but a complex bureaucracy is stopping him at every turn.
South, chair of Community Board 9’s Landmarks & Preservation Committee, mobilized local residents this month to call for the preservation of P.S. 186, a public schoolhouse on 145th Street between Amsterdam and Broadway that has been vacant since it closed in 1975.
But his coalition seeking to preserve the decaying building hit a major roadblock at Thursday’s CB9 full board meeting in Harlem.
He wrote an internal committee resolution urging the building’s preservation, which passed unanimously in the Landmarks Preservation Committee several weeks ago. But his ambitions were stalled last week when CB9’s Executive Committee, composed of the CB9 officers and the chairs of the standing committees, voted down the resolution by a narrow vote of 8 to 7. This prevented it from appearing on the agenda for a vote at Thursday’s general board meeting.
Had it passed the general board meeting, the resolution to preserve the historic site would have been adopted—and the board would have moved forward with an effort to stop the demolition.
South felt that the executive board was precluding the general board from considering the issue, so he took legal action.
“The whole point of taking legal action in the first place was to resolve the fact that the executive board is not a gatekeeper for the [general] board,” South said.
There is an official petition to save PS 186. The goal is 1,000 signatures so spread the word:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/3/save-historic-building-ps-186-in-harlem