Stakeholders plan to voice their opinions Wednesday on a City Council bill that would limit the time the Landmarks Preservation Commission has to vote on a proposal. NY1's Michael Herzenberg filed the following report.
A proposal could affect what is preserved and what is demolished in large swaths of the city.
The problem, says City Council member David Greenfield, is a backlog of 95 buildings and neighborhoods awaiting action by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, like the Lady Moody-Van Sicklen House. The 18th-century farmhouse has been on the commission's agenda for more than a decade. About 80 others, like the art deco Coney Island Pumping Station, have been in limbo for up to 40 years.
Greenfield and Council member Peter Koo introduced a bill that would force the Landmarks Commission to decide within a year on landmarking a building and two years for landmarking a neighborhood.
"This agency, like every other government agency, will have something called a deadline," Greenfield said.
Peter Cooper and Boss Tweed aren't going anywhere, and their resting place, the historic Green-Wood Cemetery, has been buried on the designation list since 1981, but the bill would give the commission 18 months to decide on landmarking the cemetery and the rest of its backlog.
"We support the legislation," said Michael Slattery, senior vice president of the Real Estate Board of New York.
The Real Estate Board of New York says properties languishing on the list are harder to sell.
"That really is an untenable situation for property owners," Slattery said.
The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation worries that developers will fight designations by delaying until proposed deadlines for action expire, saying designations for landmarks like the Empire State Building and Grand Central Station might not have happened had the proposed law been in place.
"The bill gives an enormous amount of leverage to demolition-minded developers," said Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.
Greenfield contends that with a deadline, the commission would have acted, and will act, quicker.
There will be a public hearing on Wednesday. Mayor Bill de Blasio has yet to weigh in.