Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer hosts (presents? chairs?) the Town Hall tonight from 6-8 at the Tompkins Square Park Library branch... neighbors are encouraged to attend ... and discuss community issues and speak directly to their local elected leaders.
Perhaps we should have a Town Hall Warmup... What do you think are some major issues facing the neighborhood? (Not a broad question at all!) Perhaps:
• Rampant development
• Perceived spike in crime
• Lack of affordable housing
• Over-abundance of bars/liquor licenses/woo
• Decreasing retail diversity
• Rent hikes
• Cuts in after-school programming
• Pedestrian safety
• Potential loss of senior centers
These are broader issues, of course ... Residents will often have more specific concerns to discuss... For instance, there's always an array of topics at the 9th Precinct's Community Council meetings every month ... During the June 19 meeting, a resident complained about the noise at the 13th Step on Second Avenue... residents complained about Double Wide on East 12th Street leaving their doors open late... and, according to the minutes, "Resident complained about large bright illuminated sign from a massage parlor on St Marks."
So it's very possible someone will bring up a topic like this...
So you now have the floor to speak...Or comment.
18 comments:
Many serious societal topics in the list. But for now and in the near future, the proliferation of bars and the ensuing chaos that they have on the neighborhood is my No. 1 topic of concern. It has been out of control, and the nightlife strain is only getting more pronounced. I have ZERO faith in any elected official to do a thing about it.
Therefore I find any such Town Hall Meeting to be a waste of time and breath.
I think I'm on every government/community board e-mail distribution list but I've seen nothing about this Town Hall until today through your site. Intentional on their part? Thanks for posting.
Too many Lady Gaga sightings.
Too many women in their labia-flashing skirts and stiletto heels while texting and zig-zagging down the sidewalk crashing into almost everyone.
But seriously, all of the above, esp. the proliferation of bars, which attracts or produces the wooooo-ers. What's ironic about this is that Giuliani/Bloomberg/CB3 were all for the bars opening, to improve the quality of life in the EV. Quality of life for whom? The bar-owners and certainly not the residents. And before someone says for me to move to the suburbs, please, the EV is a residential neighborhood, not industrial, or commercial like midtown where during the day it's bustling with office workers and mostly dead at night, where bars are ok.
As for this town hall meeting, agree with the first, anon., this town hall meeting is a waste of time and just a façade. It's as ineffectual as those signs outside the bars telling people to 'keep it quiet' or to 'respect the neighbors'.
it is impossible to make a list - it would take 50 pages
stunningly high rents force tenants, and long-term and family businesses out
those that can cling to their apartments for stores face the ever growing party-time me-me-me population that feeds the bar-club scene frenzy
along with the university grab of buildings and apartments (with nyu in he lead and cooper union not too far behind) for their more fortunate students to party in
add the cuts to services for seniors and the poor - bike lanes, select bus service (who are the select?)
i don't have much hope for the future of this neighborhood that is has been destroyed by greed, developers, bars, and selfishness WITH THE COOPERATION of our elected officials who benefit from the more affluent newcomers the most.
hang in there and hope for more intelligence then the occupiers offer.
1. Up near the top of my list the the HOSTILE assault on the EV by Citibank/Citibike. It is offfensive and outrageous marketing scam by Citi with three docks on my block ALONE! They need to reduce the docks by a good 75% for this to be in any way feasible... They cannot simply bathe the entire East Village in loud, Citibank marketing ploys.
2. Taxpayer money going mainly to fund tourism programs and the cosmetics of the city while all social programs are slahed. We are losing all our hospitals, nursing homes and schools while getting shiny Cemusa stands and new busstops?? WTF?
3. The total lack of policing on our neighborhoods' most violent and disrespectful offendors - the Frat/Jock/Jap/Yuppie types who absolutely swarm upon and destroy our neighborhood, pissing and vomiting all over the place, crashing into our senior citizens without so much as an "excuse me" (I see this ALL the time). Watching seniors hobble down Avenue A with fear in their eyes and paralytic steps is absolutely heartbreaking and an unnecessary tragedy. These types also trash the place, throwing garbage cans in the street and other bouts of demented roid rage, etc. That there were ZERO police on the street on St. Patty's day was an absolute outrage. A friend of mine compared that night to Hurricane Katrina!! The punks, hoods, crusties and junkies were NEVER THIS BAD. PERIOD. Even the gangs are not this bad!
4. We need to have anti-chain zoning like the upper west side and some level of protection for the mom and pop shops that form the fabric, history, culture and scenescape of our neighborhood, are yet being wiped out as if by plague, too many to count and hundreds more threatened. Jeremiah Moss correctly said this era will later be known in NYC history as the period or massive cultural extinction... Let's stop the madness NOW and prevent more of our treasures from being plundered by realtors and developers! Part of the sting is that we lose places so old, so wonderful, so irreplacable and designed to serve New Yorkers and replaced by some awful shiny chainstore designed to serve tourists and the indifferent, moneyed transients. It's an outrage.
5. EV/LES is a low-rise neighborhood and until a few years ago there were laws designed to protect that. Now these crooked developers and corrupt Dept of Buildings let them destroy our skyline, our sunlight, and the residential qualities of our area by building insanely tall and glass and steel monstrosities, totally out of scale to the existing architecture. They often do so on the premise of providing affordable housing for just a handful or resources and a community resource in the retail space, but then do neither, and are never penalized. This precedent must be reversed immediately, it is destroying the character and landscape of the EV/LES.
6. We sorely need historical and landmark designation as many architectural treasure just become victimes of the wrecking ball. These structures, once lost, can never be replaced.
7. What happened at Cabrini should have never been legally possible and was possibly the most shameful day the east Village has ever scene, our greatest generation, residents of a long-time East Village nursing home, literally kicked to the curb by the king of building violations, vulture developer, Ben Shaoul, who is converting their building into high end condos. That is the most extreme example, but we need to protect our most vulnerable residents from ALL forms of realtor abuse, most especially, the elderly and the poor. It is inhuman what these landlords and developers get away with, and along with the corrupted city agencies that enable them, such as the DOB, I see this as the most core group responsible for destroying the EV/LES today. They have far, far too much power over our demographics and future and they use it very, very poorly.
Phew!
Fun as it is to kvetch about the woo, I'm much more worried about school overcrowding (worsened by charter schools being shoehorned into public school buildings), psycho motorists menacing cyclists and pedestrians (the woo is strong with them), and preserving some diversity in the neighborhood (more genuinely affordable housing, less Sledgehammer Ben type greedheads displacing elderly non-hedgies to build gleaming fucking condos, please)
We need more frequent Town Hall meetings to address the many issues. 2 hours won't cut it tonight, when the first 20 minutes will be devoted to introductions of the politicians.
So a friendly request to keep the introductions short.
Also - where are we with the deportation of David Schwimmer?
Also - I love this sentence: "the woo is strong with them..."
anon 11:58
you are taking away the entire reason for this town hall -
for the elected(?) official(?) representatives(?) to introduce themselves so you will remember their names come the next election - and because they are so caring you will give them money and vote for them.
it's like a science fiction movie.
if i weren't otherwise married to the other mr garcia i would want to marry glamma. in any case he/she has my vote to be the senior most elected official representing the east village. very well said indeed.
Go Glamma!!!
The ONE AND ONLY thing that can address the concerns most of you have is new legislation and effective enforcement of the current SLA laws.
1. 500 feet rule? Ha!
2. Bars by churches! We got several!
3. Resolution zone? More like "open as many bars here as you want" zone.
The CB3 carries much of the blame for approving all these bars. I'm sorry but I've been to these meetings and they say "no" at first, then all of a sudden say "yes." It makes no sense.
So until the SLA, via Cuomo or Stringer or Squadron come up with REAL legislation for NYC that protects communities with airtight zoning laws that create retail diversity, you're just going to have landlords sitting on property until a bar comes along.
PERIOD.
A poster above noted the frat/jock types being disrespectful to seniors. This weekend, I saw two elderly women, one having more trouble walking than the other, trying to make their way through a clueless group of sorority/fashion-type girls who had planted themselves in the middle of the sidewalk in front of Westville. I took a photo and meant to send it to EV Grieve. It was reprehensible. The girls barely moved to accommodate these elderly women. The people who work at Westville are nice and all, but they need to seriously police the crowd out front. Maybe they can give up a few bucks and ditch the tables on the side toward 11th street, so they can have their patrons line up there. It's one thing when I'm inconvenienced, but I hate to see the older people in the neighborhood being treated like crap.
CB3 member Ariel Palitz should be on this list. She continues to mock residents. She ignores them by playing with her cell phone, rolling her eyes and giving residents who oppose more liquor licenses dirty looks. Her behavior is very adolescent and unprofessional. She often uses inappropriate language such as douchebag and one time she told residents that if Hitler was the applicant that they should meet with him. She also votes in every applicant and gives them tips on how they can win and beat residents. She argues against residents who are in the right and continues to make a mockery out of residents and the neighborhood. It is unfair and Dominic Pisciotta Berg who is no longer CB3 Chair allowed this to go on. His endless mocking smile will not be missed. He got what he wanted which was the SPURA plan. He is a Seward Park co-op owner who wants to see everything gentrified and to have his property value go up. Glad he is gone. To the future with new Board Chair Gigi Li. I heard that she came to the last SLA meeting. Dominic almost never showed up at SLA meetings even though residents complained about abuses from CB3 SLA members. Good riddance.
There's a gazzillion or more storefronts for rent on Ave A, B and C. It seems that everyone is complaining about too many bars. Fine. But why are small business entrepreneurs staying away from opening more "day-time" businesses in the EV. The rents are comparatively cheap and the buying power of the population is growing (for various reasons...mainly demographic changes). So what's keeping them away?? You can't just blame it on the landlords jacking up the prices, cuz otherwise we wouldn't be seeing the continuous proliferation of generic delis....So what's missing here to attract entrepreneurs with more interesting "day-time" concepts?
Jack-according to our local "experts" (note I am not endorsing only repeating) the EV doesn't have enough daytime traffic to sustain daytime business because we don't have office space and/or giant high rises.
What I don't understand is then why the landlords don't price their retail spaces accordingly. Yet it seems each of them holds out for the stores with the highest potential profit- the sale of alcohol to the white, urban singles and tourists. There are no shortage of people with dreams of owning Cheers (or whatever the 2012 equivalent is) and no shortage of landlords with their hands in those dreamer's pockets. Whether the bars fail or not the landlords get a few years of very high rent and an address with a liquor license that they can sell to the next sucker.
why aren't you all saying this at town hall instead of commenting here (or as well as commenting here)
@ 6:37 AM
Because I had to work until 9:30 last night.
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