RECYCLE: (no electronics)
PLUS: Free paper shredding (10am-2pm)
AND: Learn how to compost!
For more information, visit: http://uppergreenside.org/blog/2010/11/27/dec-5th-recycle-o-rama-at-the-92nd-street-greenmarket/
By Lucienne S. Bloch
Prepared for the CIVITAS Fall 2010 Newsletter
CIVITAS has joined our neighborhood partners Carnegie Hill Neighbors and Historic Park Avenue in supporting an application to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission for historic designation for Park Avenue from 79th Street to 96th Street. Park Avenue between 63rd Street and 79th received local historic designation in 1981. At present, only a few blocks of the avenue between 86th Street and 96th Street fall within the boundaries of the Carnegie Hill Historic District. In June 2010, the New York State Historic Preservation Office determined Park Avenue between 79th Street and 96th Street to be eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places, and that application is under way. A listing on the State and National Registers is more of an honorific title than a locally protective measure for historical structures, but it does add a layer of review for proposed alterations that receive state or federal funding.
Historic Designation: For and Against
Local historic designation for Park Avenue to 96th Street is long overdue, and a matter of some urgency to many people who see the all-too-obvious outcome of non-designation, as demonstrated on both eastern corners of 87th Street. One is the site of a new entirely glass-fronted building that is glaringly insensitive to the look and feel of the avenue. The other is a tower in a plaza that was completed in 1974 and is hugely out of scale with its surroundings. The publicized and unstoppable plans for that tower spurred the better-late-than-never establishment of the Park Improvement Special District in 1973. The district set standards for building height and adherence to the avenue’s predominant streetwall, although it doesn’t protect low-rise 19th and early 20th century buildings from demolition or radical face-lifting.
Some of the arguments that have been used against landmark status include: the time and expense of additional bureaucratic paperwork for building permits, and of committee review of exterior alterations that must be historically appropriate; the stringent contextual regulations for new buildings that may preclude opportunities for innovative architecture; stricter city building codes that may mandate and enforce sustainable design in construction and building maintenance, as well as eco-friendly retrofits of older buildings. These are cogent issues, but they don’t address another reasonable bottom line: the past matters, especially in a city that has only patches of its irreplaceable historic fabric still standing.
It is Time to Get the Job Done
The grounds for Park Avenue’s historic designation are visible and compelling. Apart from 19th century mansions and row houses, small flats buildings, religious and educational institutions, Lenox Hill Hospital, and the Seventh Regiment Armory, residential Park Avenue from 63rd to 96th Streets is pretty much all of a piece. Most of the apartment houses were constructed between 1913 and World War II. Different noted architects designed buildings with entrances, cornices and ornamentation in different idioms, Georgian, Italian Renaissance Revival, and Art Deco among them, but the similarity of height, 12 to 17 stories, and of building materials, stone and brick, on both sides of the broad boulevard gives Park Avenue an overall and palpable coherence. There is a sense of harmonious scale on residential Park Avenue, and a sense of place that has both historic and architectural significance. Several of the 19th century structures belong to the wide avenue’s past as a busy open rail corridor with at-grade tracks in the middle of it. Between 1871 and 1877, a tunnel was constructed for the lowered tracks from 97th Street to Grand Central Depot, bridges were built over the sunken tunnel for pedestrians and vehicles, and row houses and tenements sprang up along the still-gritty avenue. The tunnel wasn’t covered over until 1913, when the new and present Grand Central Station was completed. At that time, the median malls were landscaped with grass, trees, paths and benches, transforming the newly parklike avenue into a prime area for luxury apartment houses, and soon making it the world-famous iconic boulevard we know today.
Park Avenue between 63rd and 79th Streets has been landmarked for over a quarter of a century. It is time to finish the job by designating the entire stretch of residential Park Avenue to 96th Street. This will make it possible for future generations to enjoy its architectural quality and balance, its historic allure that evokes the early and still important connection between transportation and urban development, and its continuing presence in a constantly changing city.
If you use the SBS line on First and Second Avenue, we want to know about your SBS experience. Please complete this 5-10 minute survey with your feedback. If you don’t have an answer to every question, please make your best guess. Your anonymous feedback will be provided to the MTA New York City Transit and NYC Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) to help them work out the kinks.
Visit http://bit.ly/SurveySBS to fill out an electronic survey
Please forward this survey to your neighbors who use the M15 SBS line.
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August 3, 2010
Hon. Robert Tierney
New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission
One Centre Street
New York, NY 10007
Dear Chair Tierney,
CIVITAS supports the nomination of Park Avenue between 79th and 96th Street to be designated a New York City historic district
Park Avenue is one of the world’s most famous thoroughfares and is well regarded for its central median, lined by stately apartment buildings, low-rise nineteenth century buildings and houses of worship. Yet almost half of the avenue on the Upper East Side is not protected by New York City landmark status. Except for a few blocks of Park Avenue located in the Carnegie Hill Historic District, most of this corridor between 79th and 96th Street does not fall within a New York City historic district.
Park Avenue is best known as a twentieth century streetscape as it rose to prominence in the 1910s and 1920s. Yet it has a significant nineteenth century layer as well, including several buildings that pre-date “Park Avenue” itself and were constructed when this thoroughfare was known as Fourth Avenue, before the railroad tracks were covered. The avenue’s predominant scale – 12-17 story apartment buildings that follow a uniform street wall—is mostly protected under the Special Park Improvement zoning district. But this offers no protection to the nineteenth century layer, which is increasingly threatened. At least two of these structures have been demolished in recent years.
The architectural character of Park Avenue is not just about scale. The architects who designed many of the proposed district’s greatest buildings—George and Edward Blum, Rosario Candela, J.E.R. Carpenter, and others—followed a relatively uniform bulk in designing the luxury apartment houses. Much of the designers’ individual expression is articulated through architectural details, such as windows, decorative medallions and door surrounds. The structures present a wonderfully eclectic face to the avenue, evoking Renaissance Revival, Art Deco and Georgian references. Designation of Park Avenue as a New York City historic district will protect those details for future generations to enjoy.
As part of our support, CIVITAS raises the following issues for consideration by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.
First is the historical condition of the Park Avenue median. When the railroad tracks were covered in the 1880s and the landscaped median was created in the 1910s, it was a wide park with seating and meandering paths located in the middle of the avenue. Over the course of the twentieth century, the median has been whittled down to its current width, a “park” meant to be looked at but not entered and enjoyed. As the current movement in New York City continues to reclaim green space and public space in previously overlooked spaces, we would like to see additional thought given to restoring Park Avenue to its historical plan and configuration with a public park in its center. Designation on as a New York City landmark district should call special attention to the avenue’s original plan and not act as an impediment to possible restoration of the median.
Further, there is much discussion on the local and national level devoted to incorporating energy efficient components into historic structures. Preserving the “embedded energy” expended in constructing the historic buildings on Park Avenue represents the greenest a pproach there is, but we would like to see continued dialogue between the preservation and environmental communities to support eco-friendly upgrades that respect the aesthetics and historic integrity of Park Avenue’s buildings.
We encourage the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to move quickly in designating the Park Avenue corridor between 79th and 96th Street.
Sincerely,
Hunter F. Armstrong
Executive Director
Cc.
Hon. Carolyn Maloney, U.S. Congresswoman
Hon. Scott M. Stringer, Manhattan Borough President
Hon. Liz Krueger, NYS Senator
Hon. Jonathan Bing, NYS Assemblymember
Hon. Daniel R. Garodnick, NYC Councilmember
Manhattan Community Board 8
Michele Birnbaum, Historic Park Avenue
Lo van der valk, Carnegie Hill Neighbors
In an effort to improve air quality on the Upper East Side and East Harlem, CIVITAS launched an initiative to educate building owners, managers and residents about the air quality dangers of burning “dirty” fuel oil No. 4 and No. 6, and the benefits of converting to either No. 2 fuel oil, natural gas, or steam. Recent studies have documented how burning No. 4 and No. 6 heating oil adversely impacts New York’s air quality, contributing more to soot air pollution than all the combined cars and trucks on city roads. Although buildings burning No. 4 and No. 6 heating oil are scattered throughout the five boroughs, the Upper East Side is home to the highest concentration of sludge burning (No. 4 and No. 6) buildings. Burning “dirty” heating oil releases soot, heavy metals (such as nickel) and other particulate matter into the air. The Upper East Side has earned the troubling distinction of having the worst air quality in New York City.
To proactively address these concerns, CIVITAS organized “Clearing the Air on the Upper East Side,” a panel discussion targeted to co-op board officers and building managers. During his opening remarks, Hunter Armstrong, CIVITAS Executive Director, outlined a specific two-fold framework for the discussion: to present relevant and timely information; and to enable those who want to convert from No. 4 or No. 6 to meet and discuss the experiences of those who have already converted. The evening’s panelists included: Isabelle Silverman, Attorney, Environmental Defense Fund; Lewis M. Kwit, President, Energy Investment Systems, Inc.; Sean Wade, Certified Multi-Family Building Operator and Analyst; and Kizzy Charles-Guzman, Policy Advisor on Air Quality, Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability.
Panelist Isabelle Silverman led the discussion as she displayed a vial in each hand. One vial contained No. 2 heating oil, an amber, almost transparent oil. In contrast, the other vial contained No. 6 heating oil, or “residual fuel.” The No. 6 heating oil was dark, dense and seemingly impenetrable and comprised of the dregs of the refining process. Silverman, referring to the recent EDF report and the New York City Community Air Survey, noted that 1% of New York City’s buildings produce approximately 85% of the city’s heating oil soot air pollution. In particular, the Upper East Side 10021 zip code contains the most buildings burning “dirty” heating oil, No. 4 or No. 6. These “dirty” buildings contribute to unhealthy air quality by producing “air pollutants such as particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, and sulfur oxides.”
As Silverman stated, the recent EDF report on the issue outlines the strategy including: policy recommendations to the city for banning heating oil, guidance for converting buildings to cleaner fuels and guidelines for proper maintenance and efficiency measures to help reduce heating fuel expenses.
With extensive experience converting boilers from No. 4 and No. 6 heating oil, Lewis M. Kwit addressed the practical issues and cost of boiler conversions. He discussed the importance of obtaining a building-wide energy audit which must include roofs, windows, lighting, electrical services, and elevators. When considering a boiler conversion Kwit recommends starting with hiring an energy consultant. To take advantage of price fluctuations, he advises utilizing a dual boiler system capable of burning No. 2 heating oil and natural gas. He notes that natural gas is domestically produced, lower in cost (at this time), has a lower carbon footprint and also has lower levels of pollutants.
“Energy, we all need it. We use it. You can never eliminate it,” Sean Wade said as he began his presentation. Wade expertly walked through a detailed step-by-step cost analysis of various fuels, including electricity, natural gas and No. 2 and No. 6 heating oil. He used BTUs (a method of measuring heat) as a benchmark to average out and compare each energy options. He debunked the widely-held rationale that using No. 6 heating oil was less costly. Wade provided analysis showing that No. 6 heating oil was not cheaper to burn and required on-going maintenance. Additionally, burning No. 6 produced more carbon dioxide than natural gas or No. 2. Wade noted that many Upper East Side buildings are cooled using cooling towers which burn more No. 6 oil during the summer than the winter. Not only is No. 6 burned for heating, more is burned for cooling. He encouraged everyone to “insulate it tight, ventilate right” noting that fifty percent of energy is wasted within the distribution process.
Kizzy Charles-Guzman observed that the City bears the burden of poor air quality. “Every kid, elderly person, every vulnerable population, in the City shoulders” this problem imposed on us by 1% of NYC buildings. The Mayor’s Office of Sustainability has embarked on a comprehensive energy strategy that includes utilizing biodiesel, lowering the sulfur level of No. 4 heating oil, gradually phasing out No. 4 and No. 6 fuel oil and increasing use of No. 2 heating oil. NYC Housing Authority buildings have converted to No. 2 and report fuel savings and efficiency gains.
Addressing the problem will take a multi-year effort and coordinated approach of community-based organizations like CIVITAS, legislators and homeowners. We look forward to working with neighborhood partners to educate the community and with elected officials to push for additional strong legislation.
Photo by Isabelle Silverman, Environmental Defense Fund
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Do you live in a
dirty building?
Almost 8,000 buildings in New York City burn No. 4 or No. 6 heating oil. To read EDF’s report The Bottom of the Barrel: How the Dirtiest Heating Oil Pollutes Our Air and Harms Our Health, and see if your building is on the “dirty buildings” list, visit: www.dirtybuildings.org.
For additional resources and details from the July 21 forum visit the “Clearing the Air on the Upper East Side” event page: www.civitasnyc.org/live/heatingoil.
A radically improved form of bus service is scheduled for the notoriously slow M15 route (down Second Avenue and up First Avenue) as soon as Fall 2010. For CIVITAS, a strong advocate of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) for a decade, it has been a long time coming. The M15 is the city’s busiest route with 57,000 riders every weekday and also one of the slowest, averaging below 10 miles per hour.
The goal of BRT is to cut travel time for long distance riders by a combination of four techniques.
1) Distinct branding: MTA has designated its BRT routes as Select Bus Service (SBS). Buses – the standard articulated model – will be painted in a distinctive pattern with flashing lights that are easy to spot at a distance. They will replace the LIMITED bus.
2) Wide spacing of bus stops: This will result in slightly fewer than the LIMITED now makes.
Electronics Recycling Day
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
11am-7pm
Church of the Heavenly Rest (90th Street and Fifth Avenue)
Items accepted include: cell phones, computers, laptops, copiers, fax machines, iPods and PDAs, modems, monitors, keyboards, computer mice, printers, stereo and radio equipment, telephones and telephone equipment, televisions, typewriters, speakers, digital cameras, VCRs, DVD players.
Special thanks to Carnegie Hill Neighbors for sponsoring this event.
CIVITAS is a proud supporter with our neighborhood partners:
The Brick Presbyterian Church, Church of the Heavenly Rest, Carnegie Hill/Yorkville CSA, Grass-roots
For more information, visit the Lower East Side Ecology Center’s website: www.lesecologycenter.org or call 212-477-4022
The Second Avenue subway, finally under construction on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, is of course a vast underground project. The $4.45 billion first phase, now scheduled to be completed in 2018, will extend from 96th Street to 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue.
But the project will also include construction above ground — not just station entrances but also a half-dozen boxy buildings on corners along Second Avenue that the transit agency acquired through condemnation. These so-called ancillary buildings, ranging in height from five to eight stories, will house ventilation equipment. They are also intended to disperse smoke and allow for evacuation from subway tunnels in the event of an emergency.
To the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York, the proposed buildings, designed by DMJM+Harris and Arup, part of the team that designed the Jet Blue Terminal at Kennedy International Airport, are “handsome in proportion and detail, while simple and straightforward in design.”
But to some real estate specialists, the structures represent a missed opportunity or an unwelcome industrial intrusion into a residential neighborhood, or both. Richard Bass, the chief planning and development specialist for Herrick, Feinstein, a law firm based in Midtown Manhattan, said that at three of the sites — on 97th Street, 72nd Street and 69th Street — the M.T.A. could have worked with private developers to incorporate the ancillary buildings into residential towers.
Mr. Bass represented a co-op on 69th Street in negotiations with the M.T.A. over the adjacent ancillary building. He is not involved in a lawsuit the co-op filed against the Federal Transit Administration and the M.T.A.
On each of the corners cited by Mr. Bass, the developers could have sought development rights, known as air rights, from smaller adjacent residential buildings, Mr. Bass said. He said taller apartment buildings would have been more in character with a residential neighborhood and would have helped fill a need for moderately priced housing. In addition, the M.T.A. could have had the developers share in the cost of the subway structures, Mr. Bass said.
“It seems that the M.T.A. missed an opportunity to play in the real estate game in a way that would have been a win-win-win,” Mr. Bass said. “This could have provided the M.T.A. with a more cost-effective facility, a more urbanistically appropriate structure for the surrounding community, and an opportunity to create more housing in partnership with developers.”
Citing the pending lawsuit filed by the 69th Street co-op, M.T.A. officials were unwilling to be interviewed. But they did agree to answer written questions by e-mail. They said they would not release cost estimates for the ancillary buildings until they had hired the contractors. Nor would they say how much they had paid for the building sites.
Kevin Ortiz, an M.T.A. spokesman, said by e-mail that the agency had worked with developers on both the 97th Street site, where the Century Lumber Corporation once stood, and on 72nd Street, the longtime home of Falk Drug and Surgical Supplies. Plans for 72nd Street, where the site measures 75 feet by 75 feet, were scuttled because “in order for a development to work, additional property would have had to be acquired, which we couldn’t justify as a transportation use,” he said.
On 97th Street, “M.T.A. Real Estate worked very long and hard to make it work, but in the end the developer lost interest,” he said.
In a subsequent e-mail, Aaron Donovan, another M.T.A. spokesman, said the developers that the agency had consulted owned the sites. Mr. Donovan said the agency had not issued requests for proposals from developers “because we didn’t own the properties,” which were acquired through eminent domain.
According to the M.T.A., only the 97th Street site, which measures 100 feet by 125 feet, is large enough to accommodate a residential development. The M.T.A. also would not say why it did not consult a second developer for that site.
Several developers, architects and engineers took issue with the M.T.A. and said the agency should have sought to work with private developers. “It does sound like a missed opportunity,” said Douglas Durst, who developed the Bank of America building at One Bryant Park. The 69th Street site, at 50 feet by 80 feet, “is a little tight,” he said, “but the others are the perfect size for residential.”
Some real estate specialists said the transit agency could have found a model in an agreement struck in connection with the extension of the No. 7 subway line on the far West Side of Manhattan.
On a large site at 26th Street and 11th Avenue owned by the Moinian Group, the M.T.A. plans to build a seven-story ancillary structure for that line. The building was designed so Moinian Group could eventually build a residential tower that would incorporate the M.T.A. building, said Oskar Brecher, director of development for Moinian.
“It was a very complicated process that required a great deal of time,” Mr. Brecher said. “The midwife was the Hudson Yards Development Corporation,” he added, referring to the city agency overseeing the development of the area.
Around the country, public officials have worked with the private sector to encourage development along new mass transit lines to increase ridership. Of course, no one thinks the Second Avenue subway will lack riders.
But transit-oriented developments can also be used to defray construction costs. Julia Vitullo-Martin, director of the Center for Urban Innovation at the Regional Plan Association, said the M.T.A. typically had not engaged in strategic thinking when it came to its real estate. “The M.T.A. does not think of its real estate as either an investment opportunity or a development opportunity,” she said.
For Civitas, a civic group representing the Upper East Side and East Harlem, the critical issue is how the buildings, to be made of terra cotta tile, glass and granite, will affect street life along Second Avenue. The local community board has yet to take a formal position on the ancillary buildings.
“Certainly, the design of these structures could be improved,” said Hunter Armstrong, the executive director. “Having large blank industrial buildings inserted into a lively streetscape will diminish the activity and appeal of Second Avenue,” he said. Civitas persuaded the M.T.A. to include retail spaces in two of the sites — 360 square feet at 69th Street and 240 square feet at 72nd Street.
Mr. Ortiz said the M.T.A. chose this style so that the public would recognize the buildings as industrial. He said the structures were not intended to be “starchitecture” but would be “respectful of their immediate surroundings.” The building materials “need to be robust,” he said, “as they will receive only very minimal maintenance attention.”
The M.T.A. did not always intend to make the buildings look industrial. In the final environmental impact statement, completed in 2004, it said they “could be designed to appear like a neighborhood row house in height, scale, materials and colors.”
The M.T.A.’s decision to build industrial rather than brownstonelike buildings was cited in a federal lawsuit filed in January against the Federal Transit Administration and the M.T.A. by a cooperative apartment building, 233 East 69th Street. Residents say that, as now conceived, the auxiliary building would be so close to their building that 32 windows facing east would be blocked. They also contend that the building “would be totally out of harmony” with the neighborhood.
At a conference on April 14, the M.T.A. argued that its building would blend in with the surroundings, but Judge William H. Pauley III of Federal District Court in Manhattan disagreed. “You’re asking me to suspend my common sense,” he said.
The M.T.A. had no comment on the lawsuit, which is still in its early stages.
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East Harlem and discuss how public policy and community activism have
shaped the neighborhood.
Stay tuned for openhousenewyork event listings in Time Out New York next month
and at www.ohny.org.
Their push may have come at a fortuitous moment, given widespread concern about the Gulf oil spill, Global Warming and the city’s current heat-wave, the last of which was on full display July 21.
Isabelle Silverman of the Environmental Defense Fund kicked off the proceedings with familiar images of billowing black smoke. She explained that this kind of smoke—most common to “fancy, Park Avenue” buildings—was responsible for the city’s high asthma rate, “twice the national average.”
She added that, despite all the focus elsewhere, heating oil “puts out 50% more pollution” than cars and trucks combined. She invited audience members to check out EDF’s interactive website, www.dirtybuildings.com, shows which buildings burn No. 6 oil.
Lewis Kwit of Energy Investment Systems and a building resident manager Sean Wade continued the discussion, with presentations tailored more to the economic benefits of converting to No. 2 oil or Natural Gas.
Kwit said that Natural Gas prices are 20-30 cents lower than No. 6 oil “and projected to stay that way.” He claimed that the heating cost of the average No. 6 oil-burning building had shot up precipitously over the last 10 years, and that building managers would continue to pay a higher price
Wade used case studies to present the economic benefits of the switch. He said using No. 2 oil had cut oil consumption in one of his former buildings by around 40% and, like the others, presented No. 2 oil and Natural Gas use as an unequivocal no-brainer.
Mayor Bloomberg’s Policy Advisor on Air Quality Kizzy Charles-Guzman concluded the presentation by touting the Mayor’s work on the issue. Leading off the discussion by joking that she’s “not an intern, just short,” Guzman stood tall against the No. 6-oil burning buildings that are responsible for the city's residual oil consumption.
Charles-Guzman also discussed Intro 194, a bill before the City Council. According to a testimony submitted by City Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Caswell Holloway, the bill “caps the allowable sulfur content in No. 4 fuel” and “would effectively” lead No. 6 oil to “no longer be used.”
Yet for all the reasons their push makes sense now, there’s still a sense in which getting buildings to change their heating oil comes at a bad time.
As soon as the Q&A session began, a property manager shot up and explained that buildings’ finances were already stretched thin by the recession. “We’re already overburdened…how can you ask [the] board to undertake a cost and keep a modicum of control over finances,” he asked.
This sentiment was echoed by Joe, a man I spoke with before the conference began, who neglected to give his last name. Joe, a handyman for a Park Avenue building, said that he’s “interested” in potentially making the switch, but that “the cost is the main thing.”
Still, against the low hum of the air-conditioning, Kwit in particular pushed back at the notion that the switch constituted a financial sacrifice. He assailed the notion that the switch would even necessarily cause a short-term dip into a building’s pockets, saying, “you can still start in the black.”
Jeff Stein, Cornell ’13, is a CIVITAS intern and writes for the Cornell Sun
