City Speaker Joins Opposition To Landmark Public Hearing Cuts

NEW YORK CITY — City officials are calling on the Landmarks Preservation Commission not to approve public hearings cuts that caused a public outcry, but that the agency's leaders say need to happen.

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson joined preservation activists from Brooklyn and Manhattan Thursday to urge the commission against passing proposed amendments to Landmarks Preservation Commission rules that would limit which work applications get a public hearing.

“The participation of the public adds value to our civic processes,” Johnson wrote in a letter addressed to LPC chair Meenakshi Srinivasan. “Reducing public input and diminishing the discretion of the Commission is not the appropriate solution to a workload problem.”

Johnson’s letter — which was co-signed by Land Use Committee chair Rafael Salamanca and Landmarks, Public Siting & Martime Uses Subcommittee chair Adrienne Adams — asks the commission not to change the approval process for facades, signs, rooftop, backyard and sidewalk addition applications, as proposed.

The city council members also promised to help LPC officials find city funding to handle those applications, but LPC Chief Counsel Mark Silberman argues the problem isn’t money, it’s time.

“We have a volunteer commission and they meet three full days a month,” Silberman told Patch. “We can’t really ask them to give more.”

Silberman said the proposed rule changes will improve transparency by allowing the commission more time to consider big projects at public hearings while staff members okay applications that would have gotten the nod anyway.

“It will streamline the application review and permitting process for everyday work on designated properties," he said, "and set clear criteria that will ensure predictability and transparency for approval of various work types."

But opponent Andrew Berman — executive director of the Greenwich Village Society For Historic Preservation, the advocacy group leading the charge against the proposal — worries that an in-house approval system will make it easier for applicants to manipulate data and build additions that are unwanted in the neighborhood.

“That’s a pretty wild accusation, ” Silberman responded, noting that only about 3 to 6 percent of applications currently get a hearing. “The idea that this rule change is encouraging false information, I just don’t see the basis."

LPC will present the new proposal — which also calls for updating and consolidating older rules to make them more “user friendly” — at a public hearing on March 27, 9:30 a.m., at the Landmark Preservation Commission hearing room at 1 Centre St.

At that time, New Yorkers will be granted three minutes to voice their support for, or opposition to, the new proposal.

Photo courtesy of Spencer Platt/Getty Images News