Village Preservation has been fighting plans for a 538 ft. tall super luxury tower planned for 5 West 13th Street which would include about 30 huge, enormously expensive condominium units and no affordable housing. The developer filed plans for the building claiming that the new “City of Yes” zoning rules (which Village Preservation adamantly opposed) allow the development. Working with neighbors and an expert zoning consultant, we filed a challenge to the plans based upon, among other items, explicit assurance made by the city’s Department of City Planning during the “City of Yes” public review process that a tower like the one being planned here would not be possible under the new rules at this location, and instead the new rules would encourage a lower, squatter building that would be more likely to include affordable housing.

Months after filing the challenge, we just heard back from the city’s Department of Buildings rejecting our claim, and saying that the proposed super luxury tower does in fact conform to new “City of Yes” zoning regulations. This means one of two things: 1) the City lied to the public during approval process for “City of Yes” about what it would do, which they have consistently done with other rezoning proposals, or 2) the language of the zoning text was sloppily written and does not reflect the true intentions of the rezoning, and now must be corrected through a process called an “administrative correction,” which has been used hundreds of times to fix language in “City of Yes.” Read our letter to Mayor Mamdani’s new chair of the City Planning Commission pointing out this inconsistency and urging her to correct the text to reflect its supposed stated intentions immediately, so that it may still apply to this development. We are reaching out to elected officials and the community board urging them to do the same. 

If the City does not make these corrections to the zoning text, it not only means that they lied about what “City of Yes” would do. It means that the new rules actually incentivize bigger, taller, super luxury condo developments with no affordable housing throughout our neighborhoods. 

TO HELP: