FRIENDS of the Upper East Side Historic Districts and Carnegie Hill Neighbors’ fight against 180 East 88th Street continues. Next Tuesday, October 30th, the Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA) will hold a second public hearing to address our joint community challenge of the Department of Buildings’ (DOB) approval of a 10 foot by 22 foot portion carved out of the property’s lot in order to evade the City’s zoning requirements meant to regulate building’s height and form. Read our statement from the July 17, 2018 public hearing at the BSA  HERE.

If this reckless tactic is upheld by the BSA, the very standards of contextual zoning could come under threat by developers hoping to abandon predictable forms in pursuit of higher profits -all at the cost of the livability and architectural integrity of residential neighborhoods. Such a departure from the standards of the Zoning Resolution would yield innumerable consequences for pedestrians, residents, and neighbors, and would undermine the zoning regulations that have been in place for decades.

180 East 88th Street has utilized numerous other tactics, including excessive floor to ceiling heights and an unnecessary intra-building void, that undermine the predictability of development in New York, nullify zoning provisions that were designed to promote livability and thoughtful urban design, and similarly threaten our residential neighborhoods.FRIENDS, along with other advocacy groups and elected officials, continue to fight for common-sense zoning reform and amendments to the zoning resolution to curtail the use of loopholes.