Tim Milk The developer of 35 Cooper Square met with preservationists this afternoon and listened to arguments for maintaining the historic site.

In a room filled with about 20 people at the Neighborhood Preservation Center, Arun Bhatia, the developer of 35 Cooper Square, mostly quietly sat and listened today to requests made by preservationists to keep the building standing.

At the meeting, which began at 4:30 p.m. and lasted an hour, Mr. Bhatia arrived with a team of four people, including his spokeswoman, Jane Crotty, his lawyer and historic preservation architect Richard Southwick. Also at the meeting were Andrew Berman of The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, David Mulkins of the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, Kent Barwick of the Municipal Art Society of New York and a former Landmarks Preservation Commission chairman, Carolyn Ratcliffe of the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative, and representatives for City Councilwoman Rosie Mendez and State Senator Tom Duane.

“We appreciate they met with us and that we started a dialogue about exploring possibilities. We hope the conversation is going to continue,” said Mr. Berman. Asked what Mr. Bhatia said regarding demolition, Mr. Berman replied: “They didn’t give much detail in terms of exactly what their plans are at this point, which hopefully is a good thing that there are some possibilities. He was there to hear what we had to say. He heard it, and we’re going to wait and see what their response is.”
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Ian Duncan Luis Rivera and Maritza Lopez outside their Puerto Rican restaurant on Loisaida Avenue. For the first time in 30 years, the area east of Avenue B is less than half Hispanic.

The 2010 Census offers a portrait of an East Village that is more populous and less diverse. For the first time since the 1980’s, the area east of Avenue B is less than half Hispanic and the number of white residents in the area has surged.

The total population of the East Village now stands at 73,676, according to the figures, up 5.7 percent over the decade. White people now make up more than half of the population of the neighborhood, while Hispanics make up less than one quarter. The number of blacks in the neighborhood dipped by 5 percent.

East of Avenue B — the census splits records down that street — the trend is even more dramatic. The Hispanic population there fell by a little more than 10 percent, while the white population in that part of the neighborhood jumped almost 38 percent.

Claudio Remeseira, founder and director of the Hispanic New York Project at Columbia University, said the trend illustrates a number of changes taking place to the neighborhood, including gentrification, the upward mobility of some Puerto Ricans, and the decision of others to leave the city entirely.

“We are used to talking about poverty,” Mr. Remeseira added, “we tend to forget there is also upward mobility of Puerto Ricans and Domicans.”
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Colin Moynihan The New York City Department of Buildings posted a full stop work order outside 35 Cooper Square. Below: A close-up of the roof of the building. A violation notice from city officials cited the roof, which “has been partially stripped to sheathing and in some cases joists.”

Tim Milk

The New York City Department of Buildings posted a full stop work order on a plywood wall that developers recently put up the front of 35 Cooper Square, a nearly 200-year-old federal-style building near the corner of East Sixth Street.

The stop work order is dated Feb. 14, the same day that a demolition permit for the building was granted to a developer, Arun Bhatia, and others who own the property. Mr. Bhatia could not immediately be reached for comment.

Neighborhood residents, elected officials and conservation advocates had held rallies and circulated petitions in an attempt to convince the Landmarks Preservation Commission to protect the three-story building, which is the oldest structure on Cooper Square. But the commission recently declined to make the building a landmark, saying that its historic façade had been altered. A spokeswoman for Mr. Bhatia has said that he has no firm plans for the building or the site.

Accompanying the stop work order were two notices of violation that were issued in Mr. Bhatia’s name because, they said, a work permit had not been posted in area visible to the public and because of what one form termed a “failure to protect public and property affected by construction operations.”

That form went on to offer additional details, saying that 35 Cooper Square’s roof “has been partially stripped to sheathing and in some cases joists” and is accessible by way of a second floor bar in the Cooper Square Hotel, a recently built high rise.

On Tuesday evening several passersby paused to gaze at the stop work order and other documents. Among them was Cynthia Pringle, an arts administrator from Greenpoint who works near Cooper Square.

Ms. Pringle, 29, said that she hoped the stop work order would prevent the demolition of the old building.

“This is the last of its kind around here,” she said. “This is history.”

Claire Glass City officials today approved a plan to demolish the historic site at 35 Cooper Square. Below: About 100 people held a demonstration last month to protest planned demolition at the site.

Suzanne Rozdeba

Scaffolding has gone up, workers are busy on the roof and an application for full demolition was filed and approved today for 35 Cooper Square. Yet the new owners of the nearly 200-year-old federal-style building that preservation groups are trying desperately to keep standing told The Local three times in the past 10 days that the firm as yet had no concrete plans for the property.

Beyond erecting the scaffolding, removing the asbestos, and blocking the windows with wood as a “safety” precaution, there are no definite plans for construction, Jane Crotty told The Local today, speaking for developer Arun Bhatia, one of the new owners. Mr. Bhatia is a partner at Cooper and 6th Property LLC, which owns the building. “I don’t have any word on that,” she said.

As for the application for full demolition, Ms. Crotty said, “They’re pursuing their rights to develop the property. The application was filed today.” She confirmed asbestos removal began this past weekend, and is continuing today. “The removal will probably take a couple of days, if not a week.” In conversations on Feb. 4 and Feb. 11, Ms. Crotty had also said there were no definite plans for the site.

Over the last several weeks advocacy groups and elected officials have fought to preserve the site. The Bowery Alliance of Neighbors had gathered more than 1,000 signatures for a petition to designate the spot a historic landmark. Now, it would appear, those efforts have been dealt a significant setback.

Upon hearing news of the approval of the application for full demolition, David Mulkins, chair of the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, said, “This city needs to do something very quick to preserve and protect this street before all of this historic character, all evidence of it, is gone. It does break your heart, and it also breaks your spirit.”
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Kim Davis.

It’s understandable, to me anyway, that East Village residents are concerned about NYU’s ambitious expansion plans and how they will affect the architecture and ambience of a treasured neighborhood. After all, it was the East Village which was landed with the enormous Founder’s Hall dormitory on East 12th Street, and although NYU might consider University Hall on East 14th Street part of the Union Square neighborhood, it supplies a steady stream of student revelers to the avenues running downtown from that location and into the heart of the East Village.

Even so, I read Rob Hollander’s post today on Save the Lower East Side with some puzzlement. “East Villagers ought to be alarmed by NYU’s decision not to build on its own campus,” he writes.

That’s something which might well give rise to concern, but as The Local recently reported – and even the The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation agrees – that’s not the decision which has been made at all. As the preservation group put it, “NYU is insisting that they will move ahead with seeking permission to build on the adjacent non-landmarked supermarket site instead.” In other words, the university is at this time pressing ahead with its original core plan.

Nobody can deny that the East Village may have plenty to worry about further down the road if the core plan does fail, but that hasn’t yet happened. So far, we are still chasing shadows. One irony which Rob Hollander’s post does highlight is that success in opposing the university’s plans for the Washington Square campus is indeed likely to have repercussions for other neighborhoods.

Kim Davis is the community editor of The Local East Village.

Spencer Magloff Preservationists had sought landmark designations for these two buildings at 326 and 328 East Fourth Street.

On the same day that two preservation groups held a news conference urging the Landmarks Preservation Commission to reconsider refusing to designate a pair of 170-year old buildings at 326 and 328 East Fourth Street as historic landmarks, the Department of Buildings awarded permits for both buildings to developer Terrence Lowenberg.

“This is truly outrageous,” said Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, who learned from The Local that the permits had been issued.

“It’s tragic that the Landmarks Preservation Commission sat on their hands for more than three months and allowed this to happen,” said Mr. Berman, whose group led the landmark designation effort. “A wonderful piece of the city’s history will likely be destroyed due to the city’s inaction.”
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Tania Barnes Under the proposed legislation, this 26-story NYU dorm on East 12th Street would be too tall by half.

In the latest turf battle, it looks like the preservationists are winning.

City Council is set to vote today – and expected to approve — a measure that will cap building heights at 120 feet or roughly 12 stories on the eight blocks between Third and Fourth Avenues and 13th and Ninth Streets. That’s a pretty major shift: under current regulations, the area has practically no height restrictions. (For a case in point, look no further than the NYU dorm on East 12th Street, at 26 stories.)

Originally, the Department of City Planning considered the area, with its wide avenues, better able to accommodate tall buildings, and therefore chose to leave it out of the rezoning plans that affected the rest of the East Village in 2008. That rezoning capped buildings at 75 feet along the streets, 85 feet along avenues, and 120 feet along Houston Street.

But in September, city planning officials changed their tune, agreeing to support building caps for Third and Fourth Avenues. It’s not altogether clear what prompted the change of heart. A spokeswoman for the Department of City Planning would not elaborate on the motives for the reversal. But the support of Councilwoman Rosie Mendez and the continuous campaigns of groups like the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation have undoubtedly played a role.

For preservationists, the failure to include this region in the 2008 rezoning was always an omission and so they don’t necessarily view the pending legislation as a win. Rather, they see it as merely getting the area up to the zoning standards that apply elsewhere. In an interview with The Local, Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation called the new legislation “a compromise of a compromise.” The preservation group, he said, had hoped the building cap would be set at 85 feet, 35 feet less than what was ultimately agreed upon.

The new zoning laws will also theoretically raise the allowable height of residential buildings in the area by increasing what’s called their floor-to-area ratio. Still, Berman says the preservation group is happy with the change: “The advantage of that is if there’s going to be new development, it will be more residential. Right now, new development is all dorms and hotels.”

What do you think about the proposal to limit building heights in the East Village?