On Monday night, Community Board 2 voted nearly unanimously to roundly reject Mayor de Blasio’s proposed SoHo/NoHo Upzoning plan. The thoughtful and highly detailed 11-page resolution outlined how the plan would fail to achieve its purported goals of making the neighborhood more affordable, protect artists and arts groups, retain the historic character of the neighborhood, and help local businesses, often citing studies and analysis by Village Preservation. This followed weeks of well-attended but often contentious public hearings in which city officials presented false and misleading information and slandered community groups that opposed the plan, but affordable housing, tenant, Chinatown, preservation, arts and environmental groups presented a united front against the plan.

See coverage in the New York Post, NY1, WCBS-NY Radio (also here), The Village Sun, Bowery Boogie, Crain’s New York Business, The Real Deal, and West Village Patch. Watch Village Preservation Executive Director Andrew Berman’s testimony here.

Thank you to everyone who showed up at hearings and sent letters to make this possible!  We very much need you to keep going as this public review process continues to even more critical stages.

From here the plan goes to Borough President Gale Brewer to issue her recommendation (which is nonbinding, like the Community Board vote). She must decide by August 26, and has committed to holding a public hearing sometime before then (date TBD). After that it will go to the City Planning Commission (controlled by the Mayor), which appears poised to hold its hearing at the earliest and least accessible possible date, continuing its tradition of contempt for public input, now looking likely to be September 2 (please hold that date and September 1 on your calendar). From there it will go to the City Council, where its fate will largely be decided by local City Councilmembers Chin and Rivera and Speaker Johnson.

TO HELP: