Advocates Request More Money for LPC
From the Queens Ledger
Dateline : Thursday, March 15, 2007
If We Had a Million Dollars…
By Nik Kovac
The very same week that the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) created some neighborhood-based controversy by calendaring Sunnyside Gardens on Tuesday, they also stood before the City Council on Friday, hoping to get more funding in order to create even more such controversies.
“You’ve probably read a little bit about that,” smiled LPC Chariman Robert Tierney, while detouring slightly from his prepared testimony. “It’s generated some attention, interest and discussion, to say the least. But I believe we are heading in the right direction.”
That direction appears to be a decided emphasis on surveying and Landmarking districts and buildings outside of Manhattan. Last year the council gave the LPC an additional $250,000 specifically so that they could research the so-called outer boroughs.
With that money, testified Tierney, LPC “hired five new staff members for the Research Department which, combined with the Commission’s already-existing staff, has resulted in the largest Research Department the Commission has had in almost ten years.” Since last Septmember, 15,000 builidngs have been surveyed.
“The majority of the areas,” recalled Tierney, “have been in Queens, including the neighborhoods of Addisleigh Park, Ridgewood, Flushing, the northeastern section of Queens and potential individual landmarks in downtown Jamaica. We have also surveyed Prospect Heights, Ditmas Park West, Alice and Agate Courts, and Bedford-Stuyvesant.”
Bob Furman, the chairman of the Four Borough Neighborhood Preservation Alliance (4BNPA), which pushed hard last year for more “outer-borough” Landmarks, is still confused as to why Richmond Hill is not on that list. “That’s our first priority,” he told the Ledger/Star after hearing Tierney’s testimony, “and I can’t understand why they are ignoring it.”
Another preservation advocate in attendance – Simeon Bankoff of the Historic Districts Council – chose to see the glass half-full. “Last year,” he testified, “the city council made a strong commitment to the work of the Landmarks Commission with an additional allocation of resources, a commitment that bore impressive fruit. We now ask the council to renew and redouble that commitment. If $250,000 can create a historic district in Sunnyside and Crown Heights, imagine what $1,000,000 might bring.”