Update from Westerleigh
From the Staten Island Advamce
In Westerleigh, builders winning
But residents vow to continue battle against incursions by developers
Monday, February 12, 2007
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — The big white house was never of any real significance.
Not in the big scheme of things, that is.
Mike Morrell knew that much.
Sure, an argument might be attempted that the sagging building on the oversized plot on Jewett Avenue in Westerleigh was once the home of William and Ella Boole, who were early leaders in the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement. Then again, women have come a long way since back in those pre-World War I days, it could be said. And temperance, well, that baby was tossed out with the same bath water that made room in America for reality television, and right-wing radio and computer-generated sales calls, wasn’t it?
And buildings are razed every day, aren’t they?
So, it wasn’t the actual structure that Morrell and the rest of the folks gathered in the bone-numbing chill of Friday afternoon were trying to save. In fact, the house in question had already been torn down, the bulldozed heaps of 110-year-old wood and plaster and window weights already hauled away to who knows where?
Instead, the protesters with the signs were on Jewett Avenue in an attempt to preserve something else entirely.
They are trying to rescue an idea.
A notion.
It has to do with the rights of everyday people.
In this case it’s about tearing down homes in one part of town because there happens to be money to be made there, and in the place of single homes putting four, or five, or six, or more, residences in its place.
‘SHOULD HAVE VOICE’
And it’s about taking those actions against the will of the vast majority of the people who live there.
“We think we should have a voice,” is the way Morrell, a retired schoolteacher and president of the Westerleigh Improvement Society, quietly described the dilemma.
And who can argue that?
For those who don’t know it, here is the Cliffs Notes version of the Prohibition Park area of Westerleigh. It is an old neighborhood, populated in part by eye-pleasing, turn-of-the-last-century homes.
It is a pretty place.
Especially in the summer when the shaded streets are as nice a walking area as you can find in the borough. The stretch of Jewett Avenue involved in this particular argument is in the heart of the district.
The house in question is already on its way to becoming four two-family houses. When construction is complete, there will eight families — minimum — where there once was one.
“There’s nothing we can do about it now,” admits Morrell. And just across the street there are as many as six houses going up where one used to stand.
That project is also a fait accompli.
And next to that site are two more stately old homes whose owner has been approached by builders. In total, you’re talking about adding approximately two dozen homes and 30 or 40 more families to what is pretty much one block.
Does the pattern sound familiar?
It should.
From the mid ’60s until a few years ago, Staten Island was pretty much pillaged by real-estate interests and the building industry.
The evidence is everywhere.
They carved up neighborhoods, and, in cahoots with politicians of the day, built over not just open fields, but creeks and swamps and various lands that would have been better off left alone. They squeezed and twisted and bent the rules and regulations, and that was on the days they weren’t outright breaking them. And now, after all that bad acting, we have what we have, which I will leave for all of you to assess individually.
Mike Morrell and his friends are trying in their own way to get a handle on it all.
The first approach of the Improvement Society was to think “Historic District” for the Prohibition Park area.
But that was met with opposition.
“People worried about not being able to change a doorknob,” lamented Morrell. Then the organization contacted the City Planning Commission looking to have the area down-zoned. They petitioned to allow only one-family homes to be built in the area.
“A compromise,” with the builders, thought Morrell.
That process of applying began with high hopes a couple of years ago. City Council members Mike McMahon and Jim Oddo joined in the fight, along with Borough Hall.
The group held meetings and there was back-and-forth with City Planning staffers. “Everyone was being very helpful,” said Morrell.
As time went on, the Prohibition Park problem was beginning to look very much like a situation that would reach a sensible and just conclusion for just about everyone.
The builders would be allowed to build responsibly. The sellers of properties would still realize windfall-type profits.
And the people who lived next door and up the block and around the corner from such sites, would not be overwhelmed by a wholesale face-lifting of their neighborhood.
It seemed like a successful American civics lesson in the making. Then sometime last year the phone calls stopped coming from City Planning. There were no more face-to-faces. Basically, there was no contact at all between the Islanders and city government on the issue.
And just recently the down-zoning request was denied.
“Not appropriate,” was the decision.
The response to that news has been about what you’d expect in the area of Jewett Avenue.
“We were blindsided,” is the way Morrell sees it.
Which brought us to the icy weather of Friday afternoon, when a couple of pieces of heavy equipment rumbled away behind a shield of unsightly blue plastic that covered the fencing at the construction site.
Mike Morrell stood outside the fence with his neighbors and McMahon and Oddo, watching the work. The group is down over the action of the City Planning action. Upset at what they view as a lack of responsiveness.
But as far they’re concerned, the idea still lives.
“We’re not giving up,” Morrell promised on Friday.
And you got the feeling he meant it.
Cormac Gordon is a columnist for the Advance. He can be reached at [email protected] .
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