We are very pleased to report that on Friday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) notified us and Boldyn Networks, the company seeking to site 32-ft.-tall metallic 5G towers near 100 Horatio Street and 100 Jane Street in the West Village, that they have denied Boldyn’s appeal of the ruling made by the New York State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) finding that the proposed towers would have an adverse effect on historic resources at these locations, and therefore could not move forward. Village Preservation was a consulting party in this process, and had lobbied hard against the approval here. We worked closely with fellow consulting party Save Gansevoort, allied citywide historic preservation organizations, and local elected officials to oppose the towers at these locations.

The FCC has directed Boldyn to “submit a plan to the SHPO designed to avoid, minimize, or mitigate the adverse effects of these proposed towers … If avoiding adverse effects is not possible, we direct Boldyn to negotiate a Memorandum of Agreement with the SHPO to mitigate the adverse effects.” So while the battle here is not over, nor is it elsewhere such towers are proposed, this is a significant victory. As you may recall, we have already helped get several other towers blocked based on this historic preservation review process and the negative impacts we and others identified the towers would have — a process that Boldyn and government officials had completely ignored doing until we, Save Gansevoort, fellow preservation organizations, and elected officials got them to undertake it.

We will continue to closely monitor this process as it moves forward, as well as other plans for siting these towers in our neighborhoods. You can find out about more recent developments here — click on “Letters and Docs.”