Mayor Ignoring Residents in East Harlem Rezoning Plan, Boro Prez Says
(DNAINFO) Gustavo Solis | August 25, 2017 — The mayor is ignoring El Barrio residents’ input on rezoning the neighborhood, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer charged Wednesday afternoon.
“Despite our clear recommendations, the administration is not taking the community’s plan seriously,” said Brewer during a public hearing on East Harlem’s proposed rezoning.
After a two-year process in which residents and local business owners came up with recommendations of what they’d like to see in the rezoning, city officials came up with their own plan that doesn’t include those recommendations, Brewer told the City Planning Commission.
Nearly 100 speakers signed up to talk during a five-hour meeting at 1 Centre St. Wednesday. To maintain some semblance of balance, commissioners took turns listening to five people in favor of the plan and five people against the plan.
The East Harlem Neighborhood plan, the one people worked on for two years, recommended rezoning a wide part of the neighborhood and allowing for slightly taller buildings, but the city’s plan concentrates the rezoning to key parts of the neighborhood and allows for building Midtown-sized buildings along Park and Third avenues.
According to the U.S. Census, median household income in East Harlem is $30,972 but the lowest level of affordability under Mandatory Inclusionary Housing is an average of $31,000 for a family of three.
Most people who spoke in favor of the plan were commissioners and deputy commissioners from city agencies like the Administration for Children’s Services, the Small Business Services, Housing Preservation and Development and the Human Resources Administration that work closely with the mayor’s office.