A flash of hope has appeared for Park West Village residents among the shadows of steel beams and construction cranes that mark a community threatened by fragmentation.
Residents of the Upper West Side development between 97th and 100th Streets along Columbus Avenue crowded into Second Presbyterian Church to strike back against the continued construction of Columbus Village, a commercial undertaking that locals say could permanently alter PWV’s landscape. It was the first official meeting of Westsiders for Public Participation, a group established to increase community involvement in the raising—and the prevention—of the commercial structures at Columbus Village.
The meeting was hosted by Paul Bunten, a resident of 372 Central Park West—one of seven original buildings that make up the Park West Village residential development. Bunten is the catalyst behind the lawsuit against the New York City Department of Buildings, which he claims has overstepped its administrative obligations. The DOB is “allowing the [Columbus Village] developer to proceed under a cloak of secrecy and causing harm to the community,” Jack Lester, the attorney representing Bunten, was quoted as saying in a press release.
The gathering comes just days after DOB Commissioner Patricia Lancaster’s resignation on Tuesday. Lester said that Lancaster—who spent much of her six years at the DOB overhauling the agency—was the department’s sacrificial lamb. “Don’t think for a minute that the commissioner leaving is going to change anything in that department,” he said.
At the meeting Lester recounted how city officials, like Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, are working to compel the DOB to review the Columbus Village development. In two letters sent to the DOB, one in July 2007—which received no response—and one in February of this year, Stringer listed his concerns about the development. Among the specific zoning violations are environmental damage and the fact that the proposed Whole Foods market to be built in the new commercial area is not a permissible local retail establishment. But the DOB, Lester claims, has conveyed only a lack of action. “The DOB did nothing, which seems to be what they’re good at,” he said.
Though the DOB reacted little to Stringer’s complaints, it responded promptly after Bunten filed his lawsuit on April 11, saying it would issue a decision on development in the next few days. Having not heard a decision by Wednesday of this week, Lester announced that Justice Milton Tingling would preside over the suit in a hearing scheduled for May 7.
Residents were thrilled to hear that finally the DOB would be instigated to act, yet they expressed anxiety about what would happen in the meantime. “How do we effect the process? How do we effect what seems like an inevitability going up around us?” one resident in attendance asked. Another resident echoed these concerns asking: “When do we get to the point where it doesn’t matter anymore?”
Lester said that even though the construction could persist until the environmental impact is irreversible, he has asked for an injunction—which would halt the construction and save the developer’s money and the community’s time. “We are where we are now—we can’t go back in time,” Lester said.
Some residents fear that time is already running out.
Dora Jacobs, secretary of the PWV tenants association, worried that construction could take a toll on residents’ health. Jacobs recently contracted cancer—an ailment she said her doctors doubted she would have developed if the construction hadn’t begun.
Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito (D-Manhattan Valley and East Harlem) has asked City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to hold a public hearing to address issues with DOB zoning and development review procedures. Lester said he is confident that PWV will be discussed.
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