Write a Letter Re: ULURP Lower Concourse
WRITE TO YOUR COUNCIL MEMBER/S and The Mayor today!
This letter pertains to the Lower Concourse Rezoning Public Review process now underway.
(viewed at: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/lower_concourse/lower_concourse4.shtml)
Through the South Bronx Initiative, a Mayoral effort to identify community priorities and create a coordinated economic development strategy for the South Bronx, the Lower Concourse rezoning proposal Public Review will continue through the environmental review and ULURP process.
The City Planning Commission, as environmental lead agency, issued a Notice of Completion for a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the proposal, on January 30, 2009.
The proposal began formal public review on February 2, 2009 with the Department of City Planning’s certification of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) application (C 090303 ZMX) and referral of the related zoning text amendment (N 090302 ZRX).
While we are encouraged that the Harlem River and this area are getting much needed attention, we must highlight in particular one aspect that needs to be included before you should support this.
One, waterfront access.
The proposed inclusion of a vision for parkland and waterfront access is a small step to rectify historical inequities. But, with the location of the CSX railway along the Western border of the Bronx, any park space that is blocked by the raised rail in the Harlem River is not really “waterfront” space. The proposed space below 149th Street suffers from this rail barrier. In addition, the proposed park space there is contingent on highway development and building development, which would likely not occur until some time in the unknown future.
RECOMMENDATION:
The proposed zoning footprint should be expanded south to include the Park Avenue location that the community has been advocating for use as a park space for over ten years. As it stands the proposed map stops mere feet from including this obvious and natural site for a community park, waterfront with water access.
This existing green-space is ready to use as a park already and would serve the Lower Grand Concourse area and beyond, without delaying a much needed resources until the distant future. This is an ideal opportunity to map this location as parkland for the existing community and for residents and businesses to come.
Thank you for your time and attention. We look forward to your response and to support your advocacy to leverage the Public Review process to gain substantial benefits for our community.
If you want this type of stuff to be considered we are all best off if we can find someone to run for City Council in this district. The current City Council member has proven her total inability to understand these issues and if you write her a letter about it, I doubt she will “get it”. She proved with Yankee Stadium that she is not interested in expanding community parkland. We’ve got two stadiums now and no park. Why isn’t she making noise about this? I doubt she will care about this issue.
As for the Mayor’s office - they presented this rezoning scheme to Community Board 4 back when I was on the Board. (Most of the rezoning is in another Board but a portion was in CB4 so we got a presentation). They weren’t too interested in hearing our comments - we only got 15 minutes to ask questions. The Mayor’s office is going to do what they are going to do. But the real way to shake things up is to get some community-minded folks running for local office. If Maria del Caremen Arroyo keeps getting a free pass to serve as the City Council Member for this area, expect the problems to continue. She voted for term limit extensions, so we could be stuck with her for another 8 years unless she gets challenged.
Comment by Lukas Herbert on March 11, 2009 at 11:03 am