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November 26, 2008
An Opaque and Lengthy Road to Landmark Status
The New York Times
by Robin Pogrebin
An in-depth examination of New York City's dysfunctional Landmarks Preservation Commission of course omits mention of the LPC's failure to act to save the Ward Bakery building, which was only recently reduced to rubble by The Times's development partner, Atlantic Yards mastermind Bruce Ratner.
Ruling on a lawsuit filed in March against the landmarks commission’s top officials by a preservationist coalition, the judge called the agency’s inaction “arbitrary and capricious” and ordered it to start making timely decisions on every designation request. To allow such proposals “to languish is to defeat the very purpose of the L.P.C. and invite the loss of irreplaceable landmarks,” the judge, Marilyn Shafer, wrote.
The city says it will appeal. Still, the ruling was a significant victory for preservationists and politicians across the city who have long accused the commission of lacking the responsiveness and accountability that citizens expect from a watchdog of the city’s architectural history.
A six-month examination of the commission’s operations by The New York Times reveals an overtaxed agency that has taken years to act on some proposed designations, even as soaring development pressures put historic buildings at risk. Its decision-making is often opaque, and its record-keeping on landmark-designation requests is so spotty that staff members are uncertain how many it rejects in a given year.
NoLandGrab: Here's a shocker — the LPC's chairman, who turned down a 20% budget increase approved by the City Council last year, has no background in architecture, urban planning or historic preservation.
Posted by eric at November 26, 2008 12:59 PM