Community Board 2’s Landmarks Committee will hold its required public hearing next Monday, February 9 at 5:30 pm on an application to construct a 19-story residential building at 375 Lafayette Street (at Great Jones Street) on the site of a parking lot in the NoHo Historic District Extension. The application has been described as “as of right” under the 2021 SoHo/NoHo rezoning, which we and others strongly opposed, and which allowed a vastly increased scale of development in the area. The application claims that the building will contain the required 25% “affordable” housing, which (in this case) means those units must be affordable and restricted to those with incomes that are on average roughly the median for NYC, but well above the median for NYC renters. View the application here, and get more information about the application here. 

Any member of the public can attend and testify at the hearing to inform the committee’s resolution. The full Community Board will then issue an advisory opinion on the design. The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) will then hold a public hearing to review the proposed design and approve, modify, or reject the application. The LPC and the Community Board can only consider issues of aesthetics and design as they relate to the surrounding historic district. If the proposed building conforms to the zoning, it requires no other discretionary approvals. 

Village Preservation has closely monitored the outcomes of the SoHo/NoHo rezoning, highlighting how much the results have differed from promises and predictions made when it was proposed.