In honor of Earth Day, MAS has released a study that details a suggested framework for analyzing climate change, and enables New York State to evaluate and address the potential climate change impact of different actions in land-use, energy and industrial transportation, and other issues. In order to fight climate change, it is critical that we reduce green house gases (GHG). Just last week, the Environmental Protection Agency formally declared six green house gasses to be pollutants that endanger public health and welfare. 

The MAS study concludes that the state has the ability to require far-reaching environmental review that can substantially advance efforts to reduce GHG. Meaningful environmental review can greatly assist governmental agencies and the public in understanding the climate change consequences of an action, while helping to address the resulting impacts. 

“Climate change is a global challenge and New Yorkers have the responsibility to aggressively reduce GHG emissions and prepare for the changes in air temperature, sea level, and precipitation, and the massive implications of those changes, to human and natural environments,” said Vin Cipolla, President of the Municipal Art Society. “New York is making great strides to reduce the state’s GHG emissions, but more solutions can and should be pursued to drastically reduce its contribution to global climate change.”  Continue Reading>>

The Third Church of Christ, Scientist, at 583 Park Avenue, located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, won a legal victory against the City that is of great concern to the Municipal Art Society (click here to read a New York Times report).

With a dwindling membership and a need for funds to repair their building, the Church (designed by architects Delano and Aldrich and constructed in 1923) sought to introduce an income-generating use into their building. The church signed a lease with the catering organization Rose Group Park Avenue, who used the church space to host parties and events that could seat 800 people. Nearby residents fought the catering use because of associated noise and traffic in the residential area. The DOB, which had issued a pre-consideration determination permitting catered events at the church, on which the congregation relied, eventually sent a final determination that did not allow for the use. The DOB rightly determined that the large catering hall was not an “accessory use” to the church and thus in violation of the area’s residential zoning. Continue Reading>>

The impact of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) is being felt throughout the country as municipalities must reconsider their planning for, and zoning of, religious institutions under the threat of RLUIPA litigation. The Act’s contentious origins aside, RLUIPA is now a well established law with tremendous implications and MAS has organized a continuing legal education (CLE) program to discuss the federal statute’s constitutionality and its influence on local governments next Wednesday, October 23.

The program will introduce the statute, reviewing its constitutional grounds and operative language, and then take a closer look at the impact of the statute generally and locally. Continue Reading>>

On March 25, the New York State Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that an East Village developer could not build a 19 story dormitory without a commitment from an educational institution. The decision dealt a major blow to unscrupulous developers and signaled a major step forward in the protection of a New York City-designated landmark school building.

MAS filed an amicus brief in support of the Department of Building’s requirement that a developer show a connection with an educational institution sufficient to persuade it that the building, when built, really would be a dormitory. In 2001, developer Gregg Singer proposed a tower on the site of P.S. 64, a landmark school building on E. 9th St. and Ave. B designed by the city’s most prolific school architect, C.B.J. Snyder, and constructed in 1904. From the late 1970s until it was sold by the city in 1998, the East Village community utilized the unique design of P.S. 64 for a community facility and arts space known as Charas/El Bohio. Continue Reading>>

An article in today’s Brownstoner reports that a new law seeking to extend the influence of 197-a plans to give them actual legislative weight is likely to be introduced before the City Council this summer. According to Brownstoner, the legislation, to be introduced by Queens Council Member Tony Avella, is a direct by-product of the long-standing MAS Campaign for Community-Based Planning.

MAS Planning Center Director Eve Baron said, “This is our vision for the future of the neighborhood based on need and aspiration.” Council Member Avella agreed saying, “This’ll be a way to have planning happen from the bottom up, rather than the top down.”

To read the article in full, click here.

Have you noticed that advertising on sidewalk construction sheds, hawking everything from beer to banks to cell phones, has started to disappear? Advertising signs on sidewalk sheds have always been illegal, and now the city’s Department of Buildings (DOB) is cracking down on these brazen violations of the law. Continue Reading>>

Is New York losing important aspects of its urbanity? Does the proliferation of security bollards impede pedestrian use of sidewalks? Have Constitutional rights to free speech and protection from searches suffered as public spaces and facilities are restricted, closed, or made accessible only on condition of acquiescence to inspections of person and belongings? Does the redesign of the Freedom Tower — with its 200-foot concrete base, now covered in prismatic glass and set back 25 feet from Vesey and Fulton Streets and 90 feet from West Street — indicate a trend toward isolationist and non-street-friendly architecture? Continue Reading>>

Far too often, the city’s newsracks serve more as garbage bins and hosts for graffiti than as providers of publications. Despite the passage of a law meant to regulate the design and placement of newsracks, dilapidated models clutter our sidewalks. You can help curb this blight, and help the Municipal Art Society and its partners in the New York City Newsrack Safety Committee demonstrate to City Hall that its current regulation of newsracks isn’t working. Continue Reading>>

After many years of citizens’ complaints about newsracks blighting our sidewalks and blocking pedestrian curb cuts, bus stops, access to fire hydrants and more, the New York City Council passed Local Law 23, which regulates the placement and maintenance of newsracks on city sidewalks. Last April, the City’s Department of Transportation started to enforce this law. Now an industry-supported bill (Intro. 363) seeks to undermine the enforcement of Local Law 23.

During the years of struggle to get Local Law 23 passed, the publishing industry first promised it would police itself, then negotiated and renegotiated to reach a bill it finally decided was soft enough to live with. Now the industry finds itself inconvenienced by the City’s efforts to enforce the very law it agreed to. Continue Reading>>

A new bill (proposition 14B) was voted out of the Transportation Committee of the City Council on Thursday August 8, 2002. On the following Thursday the full council voted to adopt the bill, which will now wait 180 days for the Mayor’s signature and will be sent to the Department of Transportation for rules to be adopted.

Once the bill is enacted, the City will have the ability to get rid of newsracks that do not follow the guidelines outlined in this new bill. The Municipal Art Society is preparing a brochure that will clearly outline what is and what is now allowed under the new regulations. Please visit this website in the coming months to download a copy of the brochure, or email Vanessa Gruen for more information.