By Lucienne S. Bloch
CIVITAS board members and volunteers with Paul Newman during the 1985 filming of No More Tall Stories. Watch the video at www.civitasnyc.org/multimedia
CIVITAS is celebrating its 30th year of working to maintain and improve the livability and character of residential neighborhoods in a constantly changing city. CIVITAS began in 1981 as a small group of concerned citizens, led by August Heckscher, that mounted a vigorous protest against the massive apartment-building complex rising on Third Avenue and 92nd Street. CIVITAS has continued to proactively promote smart, neighborhood-sensitive development in scale with its immediate surroundings. Over the years, CIVITAS has kept a sharp eye on zoning and land use, proposed and in-progress development, affordable housing opportunities, urban planning and public policy, transportation and traffic, community facilities and institutions, infrastructure, environmental problems, pedestrian amenities, trees and recreational space, streetscapes, and historic preservation, all fundamental to the quality of life in big-city neighborhoods. CIVITAS repeatedly advocated for those essentials in its specific area of concern on Manhattan’s east side from 59th Street to 142nd Street, but its influence as an early and effective grassroots community-based organization stretched into the larger metropolis and to other cities.
A key to CIVITAS’ effectiveness has been its working Board of Directors, who have always contributed their time and professional expertise to help the organization achieve its varied initiatives. CIVITAS hired its first Executive Director in 2008, after the death of Trayco Belopopsky, the Office Administrator for over 20 years. In 1985, founding member Marcia Fowle organized a task force of volunteers to scrub the grimy walls of the 96th Street subway station, which encouraged the station manager to keep it clean. Making a difference with soap and water was comparatively simple. Getting a developer to remove the top 12 already-built and illegal floors of 108 East 96th Street was much more complex, and famously successful. Hearing Genie Rice, founding board president, describe the legal twists and turns of that battle is positively dizzying.
Like several of CIVITAS’ other successes, that daunting five-year effort originated in a planning study that CIVITAS commissioned, published and circulated. In 1984, a survey and mapping of the East 96th Street corridor was conducted by a professional planning consultant with the assistance of early CIVITAS Directors Jo Ahern Bressler. Jeanne McAnaney, Cora Shelton and Jim Tripp. During the survey, the illegal height of 108 East 96th Street, then under construction, was discovered and publicly identified by CIVITAS. In 1991, CIVITAS published The ABC of Zoning, a witty explanation of the city’s complex zoning terminology and regulations. The booklet was sent to hundreds of organizations and individuals as far afield as Tokyo, Moscow, and Kenya, and is now available online. Working closely with professional urban planers, local community boards, municipal officials, architects, student interns and its board members, CIVITAS published studies of street activity on Madison Avenue from 94th Street to 125th Street (1993), a study of opportunities and issues on East 125th Street (1995), a report on community facilities’ expansions (1997), an East Harlem rezoning plan (2000), and a detailed proposal to build a pedestrian bridge across the East River from 116th Street to Randall’s Island (2006). Many of CIVITAS’ recommendations led to important changes, such as the city’s rezoning in 2003 of a large area of East Harlem that is now protected from out-of-scale midblock development, and is a model for contextual zoning in other neighborhoods.
Win some, lose others, as too-visibly demonstrated by the huge Memorial Sloan-Kettering tower on East 68th Street and the still-rising Mount Sinai-sponsored midblock apartment tower on East 102nd Street. CIVITAS keeps fighting the good fight, and is currently engaged in getting another big area in East Harlem rezoned. It is also spearheading an effort by a coalition of neighborhood groups to enlarge and beautify the East River Esplanade between 60th and 125th Streets.
The past is prologue. A new generation of CIVITAS board members is focusing on what will be a transformed and denser east side when the long-awaited Second Avenue subway is completed. Phase 1 service is tentatively scheduled for 2016. That new mass transportation spine, along with the newly-operational Select Bus Service on First and Second Avenues, will spark residential, commercial and institutional growth on the entire east side of Manhattan. Zoning has to be rigorously examined, and altered, to provide light, air, and pedestrian-friendly streets. More public amenities, such as green space, schools, libraries, community facilities, and playgrounds will be needed, as well as better infrastructure. All of this presents an enormous challenge that can’t be tackled after the built fact. Now is the time to work on making a more populous east side livable, to ensure that its still-extant historic fabric is preserved, and to enhance its civic allure. CIVITAS is already on the job.
