Mary Help of Christians Church on Avenue A was built over an old Catholic cemetery.

The dead may not literally walk among us, but they can certainly cause headaches for developers. In 2006, work on Trump Soho was temporarily halted when human remains were discovered at the construction site, where a Baptist Church once stood. Last year, plans for a development in Queens were nixed after the property—home to a colonial-era cemetery—was landmarked. And back in 1991, the federal government was forced to significantly alter plans for its $276 million federal office tower in Lower Manhattan after uncovering the 17th and 18th-century remains of hundreds of African Americans.

Now, several preservation and community groups are pleading with developer Douglast Steiner to his abandon plans to demolish the Mary Help of Christians Church complex at 181 Avenue A (between East 11th and East 12th streets), because the buildings were built over a former Catholic Cemetery.

Known as the Old St. Patrick's Cathedral cemetery and later as the East 11th Street Cemetery, the area was an active burial yard from the early 19th to the early 20th centuries. In 1909, the Catholic Church decommissioned the graveyard and moved the bodies to Calvary Cemetery in Queens. Or rather, they moved some, but maybe not all the bodies to Queens.

"When they closed the cemetery, it's unclear if they moved all of the remains," said Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. "News accounts from the time refer to the church moving between 3,000 and 5,000 bodies, while there were some 40,000 bodies buried at the site. It could be that the reports were inaccurate, but..."

Mr. Steiner bought the development site for $41 million last fall and recently filed demolition permits for the church, the school and the rectory with the DOB. The developer is rumored to be planning a residential tower at the site with ground-floor retail. A spokesperson for Mr. Steiner said that renderings from a Ripco Realty listing spotted earlier this month by EV Grieve were not for the project, but rather another address.

Mr. Steiner himself has been rather unforthcoming about the project. Through a spokesperson, he declined to comment on the possibility of human remains at the site.

Of course, if there are remains at the site, the Catholic Church wasn't very squeamish about disturbing them when it built the church, the rectory and the school. Why should a developer be more fastidious?

Well, besides the fact that the church presumably had a priest and some holy water on hand to soothe any restless spirits, building on a burial yard isn't as easy as it used to be. Mr. Berman said that if human remains are discovered during construction, work must be stopped until the police and archeologists are called in to identify the remains and determine how work can move forward—a process under the jurisdiction of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The GVSHP and several other community groups are asking Mr. Steiner to avoid the possibility of unearthing any skeletons and to build on the adjacent church yard, which lies outside of the old cemetery border. They rallied Wednesday evening at Mary Help of Christians Church to make their request and to reveal news of the potential conflict with the not-to-so-recently deceased Villagers.

"Aside from the fact that it would be a good thing to do, there's a huge plot of land that he could build on while preserving a unique and wonderful building and creating a much more unique and valuable development site," said Mr. Berman. "It's not like we're saying, 'Don't build.'"

The plea is not an unreasonable one, nor is some kind of adaptive reuse unimaginable—churches have become luxury condos before. But it appears that preservationists and the local community—as evinced by an earlier, failed effort to block Mr. Steiner's demolition attempt with a landmark designation—are primarily concerned with the historic buildings, which would be saved if Mr. Steiner backed off so as not to dig into a potential boneyard.

"The church buildings are a testament to the Italian immigrant legacy in New York City and remain living monuments," Sara Romanoski, the Managing Director of the East Village Community Coalition, wrote in a statement. "As a community, we ask the developer to recognize the opportunity for incorporating these architecturally significant buildings into the new development."

Who will follow in Amanda Burden's (very stylish) footsteps?

With the New York City mayor's race not even past the Democratic primary, it's a bit early to be handicapping the city's next chief city planner, but where's the fun in being coy?

Crain's has taken a look at who might fill the post, which it calls "perhaps more important than any deputy mayor position at City Hall," arriving at a short list that includes names ranging from Vishaan Chakrabarti, a consummate real estate industry insider and former director of the Manhattan office of the Department of City Planning, to the more community-minded Anna Levin, a member of the City Planning Commission and the chair of Manhattan Community Board 4's Land Use Commission during most of the 2000s.

But when we spoke to Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation's Andrew Berman about who might be the city's next chief city planner, he threw cold water on the speculation.

"I think that the choice of who the chair will be, while it certainly tells you something, who the mayor is tells you more," Mr. Berman said.

He cited the evolution of Amanda Burden, widely heralded as driving the relatively radical rezonings—radical, at least, for the staid post-war planning years; there hasn't been a major revision to the city's code since the 1961 overhaul—of the Bloomberg years. Under Burden, development rules for a third of the city's land were changed in one way or another.

"Amanda was a very, very different member of the City Planning Commission when she was Mark Green's commissioner"—Mr. Green appointed Ms. Burden to the commission as the city's first public advocate—"than when she was Mike Bloomberg's."

"Some would argue," Mr. Berman continued, "that the Amanda Burden who served on the City Planning Commission [under Mark Green] wouldn't even recognize [today's] Amanda Burden."

Back before she became the face of Michael Bloomberg's Big Real Estate-friendly rezonings, Ms. Burden was not so well received by the industry. “I think there’s a concern about the prejudices she may bring to the position,” one developer told The Observer back in 2002. “I don’t think she was at the top of [our] list. But I think we feel that we can work with her, since we have no choice.”

Dapper though Mr. Chakrabarti may be, don't expect New York City's next chief planner to make the cover of Women's Wear Daily.

Of the candidates identified by Crain's, Mr. Chakrabarti and Ms. Levin sit on opposite sides of the pro- and anti-development spectrum.

"Folks from the real estate industry feel that they are entitled to more or less choose who the next chair is," Mr. Berman told The Observer. He wouldn't single out any candidate, but we can't help but think he was referring to Mr. Chakrabarti, who has been an unfailing advocate for density around New York's many transit hubs.

"Mr. Chakrabarti's group at Columbia University," wrote Crain's, "is expected to release a report soon showing that the city does not have the zoning capacity for the 1 million new New Yorkers expected by 2030 and is short about 300,000 residential units. As commissioner, Mr. Chakrabarti would likely support the upzoning of neighborhoods like Long Island City and the South Bronx that are one or two subway stops away from midtown."

Mr. Levin, on the other hand, has shown herself to be much more interested in affordable housing, and less interested in increasing the size of the city's overall housing stock, often expressing that distinctly West Side antipathy towards density.

She was, for example, the lone vote against Extell's Riverside Center project, saying the project was "too big."

And Ms. Levin and Mr. Chakrabarti stood on opposite sides of an early debate over the future of Hudson Yards back in 2003.

"We feel that the amount of growth planned for the area is essential to the long-term growth needs of the City of New York," Mr. Chakrabarti, then with the Department of City Planning, told The Observer.

Ms. Levin felt differently. "The city wants to create five World Trade Centers’ worth of new development. We feel that this is just too much," she said at the time, arguing that "the city must proceed without crushing the existing neighborhood."

You'd never guess it, but Vanderbilt Hall was actually built in the 1950s.

If you thought that the war over New York University's expansion in and around the Greenwich Village was over, think again: the university's banner "NYU 2031" plan to add infill buildings to its superblock may be over (okay, well, almost over), but skirmishes continue on the periphery, and two battles that broke out over the past week showing no sign of abating.

The first battle involved the new South Village historic district, which preservationists wanted to go hand-in-hand with  the Hudson Square rezoning. Preservationists claimed that the rezoning, in addition to endowing property owners with millions of square feet of residential development rights in exchange for ensuring that nothing like the Trump SoHo would ever happen again, would imperil the unprotected historic neighborhood next door.

Now, the forces of preservation have got their wish, but a few properties were curiously left out of the proposal. And, what do you know, they happened to be owned by New York University! A coincidence, surely?

Well, omitted they are no longer: the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation's Andrew Berman declared victory on Friday, as the Landmarks Preservation Commission added the three NYU sites—the 1950s historicist Vanderbilt Hall (which you'd never know isn't actually a prewar building), the modern-but-not-huge Kekorvian Center for Near Eastern Studies and a row of four-story 19th century townhouses on the north side of West Houston Street, between MacDougal and Sullivan Streets. (Vanderbilt Hall is an especially worrisome site for anti-development forces, as NYU could build around 300,000 square feet of space on the parcel—around 50 percent more than the current four- and five-story building holds.)

The historic district has yet to pass the full Council muster, and Mr. Berman has warned that NYU's buildings could still be removed at the last minute (he noted that a few buildings, initially included in the district, were excised at the last minute from the East Village district)—but for now, the sites are slated for inclusion.

The second battle, whose outcome was determined this morning at a Board of Standards and Appeals hearing, did not have such a happy outcome for Mr. Berman and the Village's less-than-merry band of community activists.

After renting in 726-730 Broadway for years, NYU finally acquired the building in 2008, and just today won the right to use it as classroom space.

In 2008, New York University paid $210 million for the old Amalgamated Life Insurance Company building at 726-730 Broadway, on the eastern Noho side of the street. With a block-through siting and massive 32,000-square foot floor plates, the university thinks it would make a good classroom and research space—"primarily for science and scientific research," according to the university, which it would like to keep close to its existing facilities.

Only one problem: when the area now referred to as Soho and Noho were rezoned in the 1970s, dorms and classrooms were explicitly prohibited.

So NYU applied for a zoning variance—one that was granted this morning. NYU will now be able to use the building for classrooms and research space, and not just offices.

Mr. Berman, unsurprisingly, opposed the granting of the variance, not least because he feels that the university misled the public during the fight over NYU 2031, when it implied that it was putting all its cards on the table, and would not seek further changes in the near future.

As he told The Observer today, "This basically dismantles the firewall that Noho and Soho have had against NYU’s expansion into their neighborhoods, which are located close to the university’s 'core' and could easily be overwhelmed by NYU expansion."

"You can guess what the future will then hold for these neighborhoods" if the variance is approved, he intoned back in January.

The incursion is a relatively minor one—the building is on Broadway, on the edge of the neighborhood now known as Noho, and aside from mechanical equipment on the roof, involves no new construction. Still, it remains to be seen what sort of precedent it will set. The relatively opaque and unaccountable Board of Standards and Appeals is no longer the exception-granting machine that it was during the Giuliani years, with the Bloomberg administration preferring broader formal zoning changes and city reviews to BSA one-off variances. With the BSA largely limited to adjudicating disputes about the use of existing structures, we'd be surprised if the decision on 730 Broadway led to a sea change in policy.

But we'd be even more surprised if this is the last we hear from lower Manhattan's most epic development battle. La lutte continue!

The Trump SoHo: a modern "apartment hotel" with a condo twist.

The Trump SoHo, the lone protrusion in an otherwise mid-rise Hudson Square, is one of the most controversial buildings in lower Manhattan—so controversial, in fact, that it helped inspire the neighborhood's recently-passed rezoning. Built in an industrial and commercial zone, the tower styles itself as a "condo hotel" under a loophole worked out by the Bloomberg administration. While marketed as a condo building, buyers are technically not allowed to stay in their rooms for more than 120 days out of the year, or for more than 29 days out of any 36-day period.

But, as Andrew Berman at the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation pointed out to The Observer, these restrictions are basically unenforceable (the Department of Buildings's press office didn't know offhand if anyone's ever gotten in trouble for violating these provisions, or if they're even responsible for enforcement), and now Mr. Berman has noticed something strange: the city's own tax lot data codes the property as "mixed residential and commercial buildings"—apparently a contravention of the zoning code.

Whatever way you look at it, Trump SoHo's slippery zoning maneuver has an interesting historical parallel in Manhattan's grand prewar "apartment hotels."

According to the Tenement House Act of 1867, residential buildings were subject to certain constraints on height and lot coverage—constraints that large apartment buildings routinely violated. Some developers got out of these requirements by building co-operative buildings, without rental units, but others wanted to retain the revenue and control that came with rentals, while at the same time building larger structures than the tenement laws allowed.

And thus was born the "apartment hotel."

"The developers of high-rise apartment buildings," wrote Richard Plunz in A History of Housing in New York City, "tried to avoid the jurisdiction of the laws by calling their building 'apartment-hotels,' as hotels were clearly outside of tenement legislation"—essentially the prewar rental version of what Trump did with his SoHo condo tower.

The Ansonia never would have been allowed to be built if it hadn't lied about its hospitality. (Photo courtesy Flickr/wallyg.)

From the Ansonia on the Upper West Side to the Ritz Tower and the Sherry-Netherland on Park Avenue, some of Manhattan's most illustrious buildings were constructed using this legal sleight of hand.

"The apartment hotel," wrote New York Times's columnist Christopher Gray back in 1992, "was a widespread fiction of the period," and "tenants in fact usually set up full kitchens in the serving pantries." (One of the reasons that apartment hotels were allowed to be built more densely than their fully residential counterparts was that there would be no cooking—a fire hazard in those days—in the units.)

By the 1920s, though, the situation had become untenable. One apartment hotel at 37th Street and Lexington Avenue was taken to court by the city when, according to a Times write-up in 1926, "in the service pantries of more than half of the twenty apartments [the building inspector] found electric stoves, sinks, refrigerators and other cooking equipment, as well as foods."

The developer of the Park Central Hotel Apartments argued for tolerance, telling the Times: "We are building monuments to the City of New York, and the taxes on these properties will be enormous. Each of these apartment hotels is a social community in itself, so that while we are increasing property values we are also developing something that is even finer—community spirit."

In 1929, the loophole was finally closed, and "apartment hotels" were brought into the regulatory fold with the passage of the Multiple Dwellings Law.

Nearly a century later and with the explicit backing of city planners, Donald Trump, unlike early 20th century apartment hotel builders, had no need to appeal to New Yorkers' civic mindedness. "I want to thank all the protesters outside," he quipped as the building rose in 2007, "for making this project so successful."

Rezoned!

This afternoon, the City Council voted to approve the Hudson Square rezoning. The rezoning—a plan five years in the making that allows for the creation of a denser, mixed-use district with significantly more residential and retail development—is now in effect. Bordered by Tribeca and Soho, there's little doubt what the rezoning will mean for Hudson Square's future. Behold New York's next hot neighborhood.

Full Council approval was largely a formality after the Council's land use and zoning and franchise committees voted to approve the plan last week, but it was significant: the last step in a lengthy approval process that will transform a neighborhood currently characterized by old printing plants and quiet sidewalks.

The rezoning process—initiated by Trinity Real Estate and the largest privately-initiated rezoning in the city—was largely uncontroversial. Nonetheless, Trinity had more to gain from the rezoning than any other developer, given that the church owns roughly 40 percent of the neighborhood, an area that is bounded by Houston and Canal streets to the north and south, Sixth Avenue and Washington Street to east and west.

But even the proposal's detractors admitted that the existing zoning was problematic and needed to be overhauled—it barred residential development but not hotel/condo towers (like the much-maligned Trump Soho). Moreover, the neighborhood has, in recent years, drawn a number of tech and media companies to its loft-like commercial spaces, increasing demand for dining and nightlife options.

Nonetheless, the Trinity plan was altered considerably since it was first proposed. As a condition of City Council approval, the land use committee negotiated changes to increase affordable housing (the rezoning is expected to bring between 2,000 and 3,000 new apartment units to the area) and open space funding. The Council also garnered an agreement with the Landmarks Preservation Commission to vote on the northern section of the South Village Historic District by the end of the year—an area that many (including the city's own impact report) say will be adversely affected by spillover development from a newly-rezoned Hudson Square.

The City Planning Commission and Borough President Scott Stringer also made additional changes to the original plan—adding a 444-seat elementary school, reducing the height of the buildings down from 320 feet to 290 feet and requiring special permits for any hotels with more than 100 rooms.

Last week, Community Board 2 chair David Gruber told The Observer that the modified plan was “a win all around." He singled out the landmarking of part of the South Village Historic District, the $5.6 million in open space funds that will go to fix the roof at Pier 40 and more affordable housing as changes that the community was particularly pleased with.

Meanwhile, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which has been a rare critic of the plan because of its potential impact on the South Village, faulted the council for not securing landmark hearings for the entire district and for allowing buildings to rise as high as they did.

“The commitment to vote upon landmarking part of the South Village before the end of the year reduces substantially but by no means eliminates the negative impact this rezoning, as approved, will have,” executive director Andrew Berman wrote in a statement.

Still, the rezoning plan that passed today was rare in its widespread popularity. It was also, to no one's surprise, very popular with Trinity.

"The rezoning has benefitted from the ideas and close participation of the community board, the oversight of the City Planning Commission and the contributions of the Borough President, " Trinity Real Estate president Jason Pizer wrote in a statement. "The result is a winning combination for the neighborhood and the city. Trinity has a long history in Hudson Square and, especially recently, has seen it evolve and grow as a home for many creative companies so important to the city's economy."

Mr. Pizer added that Trinity felt that the rezoning would, as had been intended, "strengthen this vital and dynamic area while preserving its special character."

kvelsey@observer.com

What will it mean for development in the South Village? (Trinity Real Estate)

There is no doubt that the Hudson Square rezoning, if and when it is approved, will reshape what is arguably the last remaining swath of downtown Manhattan's formerly industrial landscape. Preservationists, however, are not concerned with the fate of the neighborhood's old printing plants, but rather, that of the quaint district that borders Hudson Square to the northeast.

The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation claims that development and demolition plans in the as-yet unlandmarked South Village—a chunk of Soho bounded by West 4th to the north, Sixth Avenue to the west, West Broadway to the east and Watts Street to the South—have been speeding up as the rezoning moves through the approval process.

Now they want the city council to withhold approval for the rezoning until the South Village is declared a historic district—a move that would effectively halt Trinity's plans for Hudson Square as the application wends its way through the Landmarks Preservation Commission, where it has formally been under consideration since 2006. A public hearing and vote are still required for Landmarks approval.

"One of these things can be delayed without harm and the other cannot," said GVSHP executive director Andrew Berman.

Mr. Berman cited the creation of the West Chelsea historic district during the West Chelsea rezoning as an example of the city council wielding similar power.

"Speaker [Christine] Quinn has considerable leverage. The question is, 'does she want to use it?' In the past, she's demanded concessions that cost the city millions of dollars," said Mr. Berman, pointing to public schools and funding for affordable housing. The implication being that a vote on a landmarks proposal shouldn’t be hard by comparison

But it's unclear if Ms. Quinn, who has advocated for the South Village Historic District and others in the past would, or even could, mandate the creation of a historic district as a condition of the rezoning.

In response to a question of whether such a step was conceivable, city council spokesman Justin Goodman said that Ms. Quinn did not wish to comment on an under-review application, but that “as with all ULURP applications that come before the Council, Speaker Quinn looks forward to reviewing the proposal and to working to ensure that an open dialogue with all interested parties is maintained."

We couldn't help but wonder, even if Ms. Quinn could stop the rezoning, would a mayoral candidate eager to be seen favorably by the real estate community take steps to stall a popular, largely uncontroversial rezoning because of a landmarking delay in an adjacent neighborhood?

Regardless of the city council's ability, or desire to, mandate landmarking, Hudson Square's spillover development remains a presents a real problem for vulnerable South Village. If the Hudson Square rezoning hasn't already spurred development in the adjoining neighborhoods, it no doubt will. Development in Manhattan is less a delicate dance than a domino effect, a question not of if, but when.

Moreover, the South Village is already wedged between two historic districts (the Soho Cast Iron and the Greenwich Village), which is making it an increasingly popular place for developers to plunk the residential high-rises and hotels that are forbidden on the low-rise streets nearby. While Hudson Square would't have the same restrictions as the Cast Iron district or Greenwich Village, its redevelopment into a happening neighborhood will make South Village that much more attractive.

The GVSHP has amassed a list of non-contextual developments in the proposed historic district which have, like the Hudson Square rezoning, been in the works for some time. Among them is the Children's Aid Society at 209 Sullivan Street—a three-story building that will be demolished and replaced with a 7-story building but could, GVSHP warns, be replaced with a 16-story building under current zoning regulations if the developer so desired (he doesn't). The empty lot at 180 Sixth Avenue, where owners filed plans with the DOB to a build a 14-story residential high-rise this fall, is another area of concern.

Mr. Berman pointed out that he wasn't the only one who believed Hudson Square would spur high-rise development in the South Village: the city's own environmental impact study said that the proposed historic district would suffer a "significant adverse impact from the rezoning."

Whether Hudson Square is already influencing South Village development, or if both the push to rezone Hudson Square and South Village projects are the result of larger economic trends is debatable. But the question of whether it will in the future is significantly less ambiguous.

kvelsey@observer.com

Still standing: the Alice Austen house on Staten Island (the Historic House Trust).

Their floors may creak, their plaster may crumble and their halls may be filled with daunting drafts, but New York's old houses have proved their mettle through many a storm. Hurricane Sandy was no exception. The city's historic mansions appear to have come through the hurricane basically unscathed, preservationists told The Observer, although at least one Lower Manhattan Landmark remains unaccounted for.

"We've been very lucky, none of our 23 houses sustained damage," said Frank Vagnone, the executive director of the Historic House Trust. "And many of them were right in the path of the storm. The Alice Austen House, in particular. It's right on the Verrazano Narrows."

The Alice Austen house did narrowly escape damage from a fallen tree, whose branches scraped the home's exterior, but neither it, nor the artifacts and collections in any of the Trust's homes were damaged.

"These buildings can sustain a lot of battering," he said. "The Conference House in Tottenville [Staten Island] is a stone building with thick wooden shutters. It's been there since before the Revolution."

It was one of many historic waterfront properties that withstood the storm surge: Gracie Mansion is unharmed and ready to house the next mayor if he or she is so inclined. The Bartow-Pell Mansion did not succumb to the waters of Pelham Bay and on Tuesday morning Trinity Church took to its website to assure parishioners and preservationists that there were "no reports of significant damage to Trinity Church, St. Paul's Chapel, Hudson Square properties, St. Margaret's House, Trinity Preschool, or Charlotte's Place." Meanwhile, the basement of the Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Seton in Lower Manhattan was flooded with at least three feet of water, but the structure's first floor does not appear to be breached. (The Shrine also had one of its doors torn off).

The South Street Seaport museum was flooded, with water rising five feet high on the building's first floor, the Museum of the City of New York reported, but all museum artifacts and docked ships weathered the storm's wrath. These included a car float, a barge, the Pioneer's dock and historic vessels the Ambrose, the Wavertree, the W.O. Decker and the Peking, which starred in the film Around Cape Horn documenting her 1929 passage around the southern tip of South America in hurricane conditions.

Arlene Simon, the President of Landmark West, the preservation organization that watches over the stretch of Manhattan between 59th Street to 110th Streets, the River to the Park, said that there was no real damage but tree damage, and even that wasn't bad.

"Much of the architecture on the Upper West Side is incredibly sound architecture from the 1800s. I live in a building that was built in 1903 and if you didn't listen to the radio or read the paper, you wouldn't have even known about the hurricane," said Ms. Simon.

Simeon Bankoff, the executive director of the Historic Districts Council said that he had yet to hear of any flooded interiors, waterlogged museum collections or otherwise compromised structures. He added that it was encouraging to hear news trickle in that many of the city's lower-lying, waterfront landmarks like the Eldridge Street Synagogue and the Alice Austin House were unharmed.

"Old buildings were built pretty sturdy," he said, noting that he had yet to hear the fate of the Battery Maritime Building or the bungalows in Far Rockaway that Historic Districts has been trying to save.

"I do expect the bungalows got bashed pretty good," he said, adding "no news doesn't necessarily mean good news when there is limited phone service and power outages."

The West Village, while waterlogged, without power and missing its Halloween parade, does not appear to have lost any of its historic charm, Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation reported as he walked through Village this afternoon, scouring the neighborhood structures for signs of damage."

"Although it's the emptiest and the quietest I've ever seen it," he added.

The Merchant House Museum on East 4th Street appeared to be intact as well, although the 19th Century home, rumored to be haunted, did cancel its candlelight ghost tours. It would appear that on this Halloween, the only ones roaming the house's pristinely preserved halls will be the ghosts.

kvelsey@observer.com

During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Soho rowhouse sheltered a number of prominent gay rights activists, among them Bruce Voeller (who was a leader in the fight against AIDS), Arnie Kantrowitz and Jim Owles, who was the president of the Gay Activists Alliance at the time he lived there, an influential organization that emerged in the aftermath of the Stonewall Riots. Until the spring, it belonged to another notable New Yorker, Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz.

But on a rainy morning last week, the building was surrounded by neither city officials nor map-clutching tourists, but by a demolition crew tasked with tearing it down to make way for a seven-story luxury condo.

The crew started its work a few weeks after the Landmarks Commission denied preservationists' most recent plea to landmark and thereby save the building, its eligibility for the National and State historic registers notwithstanding. A banner fastened to the fresh plywood of the construction site announced the new loft-style residences from Canadian developer Nordica Soho, to be wedged into a double lot on the corners of Spring and Thompson streets, a part of the city that is defined as much today by the vast quantities of cash flowing into its real estate as it is by its historic architecture and cobblestones.

"What they did was homophobic, and as Jim Owles was my partner for many years, not only do I consider it an act against the movement, but I take it personally," Allen Roskoff, the president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, told The Observer.

While Mr. Roskoff admitted that it never would have occurred to him to seek landmark designation for the building—"I'm not a preservation person"—he argued the commission should look for opportunities to landmark the community's history. "I think if you had a landmarks commission that is sympathetic to the gay community, they would have supported it," said Mr. Roskoff.

For gay rights activists and preservationists who view 186 Spring Street's historic significance as indisputable, the city's failure to designate it, or any other building, a landmark based solely on its place in the LGBT rights struggle is at best an oversight and at worst a slight. The landmarks commission counters that it already has preserved many important gay rights landmarks, albeit as part of a larger historic districts.

Elisabeth de Bourbon, the commission’s spokeswoman, pointed to the Stonewall Inn, which is located within the boundaries of the Greenwich Village Historic District as a good example of gay rights history being preserved through other means. In fact, the district predates Stonewall. "With Stonewall, we decided that it was already protected," said Ms. de Bourbon. "The primary goal of designation is to protect the bricks and mortar that embody the cultural significance. For us designation is not an honorific, it's a regulatory mechanism that allows the city to protect its historic resources."

Nor has the commission ever approved any applications to landmark individual buildings within existing historic districts.

In rejecting 186 Spring, the commission asserts  that the real monument to the Gay Activist Alliance has already been preserved and that 186 Spring Street's role in the movement was peripheral rather than central. In its letter outlining its reasons for rejecting the house's application for landmark status, the commission notes that its research indicated that Jim Owles and Arnie Kantrowitz lived in the house for only about a year in the early 1970s, when the Gay Activist Alliance was headquarted in The Firehouse at 99 Wooster Street (which is located within the Soho Cast Iron Historic District, and thus protected).

And although Bruce Voeller lived in the home for a decade, the commission contests that his role in the movement's history is not influential enough to warrant landmarking his onetime house: "a review of histories suggests that Dr. Voeller was a later and more of a 'transitional figure'... between the radical post-Stonewall period and a more mainstream professional activism."

Not that such explanations pass muster with all leaders of the gay community, particularly in light of the fact that the city has yet to landmark a building because of its role in gay and lesbian history. The commission also rejected an application to landmark the Pyramid Club at 101 Avenue A, which played a central role in 1980s drag culture, although the building will be included in the soon-to-be created East Village Historic District, giving it a protected status.

Is this a matter of the city practicing ignorance or preservationists and activists ignoring all that has already been saved?

"I think the recognition is important," said Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. "I think it’s important for the commission to say this is an important part of our city’s history, this is an important part of our city’s culture."

The LGBT community has not, however, taken up the cause as vigorously as the preservationists.

Andy Humm, a journalist, activist and the co-host of Gay USA said that while the demolition of 186 Spring Street is a shame, the gay community has been focused on bigger, more important battles than protecting historic sites.

"You can give us some of the blame in the community I suppose,” he said. “Have we been focused on this? I don’t think we have. But look, we’re a movement that has been more about the future... and frankly, we have this huge homeless LGBT community that doesn’t even have basic housing."

kvelsey@observer.com

--a portion of Allen Roskoff's quote has been altered for clarity. "I consider it an act against me personally" has been changed to "I take it personally."

Do the setback! (Studios Architecture)

The earlier 10th Avenue addition, sans setback. (Studios Architecture)

Much of the debate around the expansion of the Chelsea Market has centered around not the former Nasbisco factory turned popular shopping center (and subsequent tourist attraction), but the old railroad trestle next to it.

Part of the justification for expanding the market by 25 percent was that, in addition to providing construction jobs and new office space for the city's booming tech sector, the developer of the project, Jamestown Properties, would pay about $19 million to the High Line, to help fund ongoing maintenance. But there was also great community outcry over the fact that much of the new addition would be built on the 10th Avenue side of Chelsea Market, directly overhanging the High Line.

Earlier today, the City Planning Commission unanimously approved the project's expansion, and addressed a few of these concerns. The 10th Avenue addition will now be set back from the High Line, stepping back like a wedding cake as it rises, providing more air and light over the elevated park.

But the agreement was not a total victory for the Friends of the High Line, who are desperate for funds to keep the expensive park in shape. As a salve to community concerns about affordable housing, roughly one-third of the $19 million Jamestown had promised to the park will go instead into an affordable housing fund, which can be spent on projects in the neighborhood.

"We are gratified by the City Planning Commission's thoughtful and balanced approach in consideration and approval of Jamestown's application to expand the Chelsea Market," Michael Phillips, Jamestown's COO and project manager on the expansion, said in a statement. "With the leadership of Commission Chair Amanda Burden, the commission has modified the application to allow for some of the funds generated through a zoning bonus to be used for affordable housing, an approach that follows the road map set forth by the community board."

The board tentatively approved the project earlier this summer, raising questions about its size and a lack of affordable housing. They also fought against the possible inclusion of a hotel in an expansion planned over Budakkan on the Ninth Avenue side of the project, a concern echoed by Borough President Scott Stringer when he voted against the Chelsea Market expansion in July. He also lobbied for the project to be moved away from the High Line, though he preferred moving all of it to Ninth Avenue.

The Ninth Avenue addition, which had once been taller and included a hotel. (Studios Architecture)

As part of the agreement to win approval from the commission, Jamestown agreed to remove a hotel from its plans. It also reduced the height of the Ninth Avenue addition. That piece will now rise to 135 feet, even with the neighboring roofline of the market, rather than to a height of 160 feet.

As for the setbacks on 10th Avenue, they begin at the top of the market where the new addition is pushed back 15 feet, followed by another 10 feet when the new section reaches 185 feet, with a few more setbacks from there up to a final height of 230 feet. That is shorter than the neighboring Caledonia condo building though still taller than a number of the neighboring industrial buildings.

Altogether, the modifications reduce the expansion's overall size from 325,000 new square feet to roughly 285,000 square feet. The market currently contains about 1.2 million square feet of office and retail space.

"With these modifications, I believe this will be a great addition to the West Chelsea neighborhood," Commissioner Burden said before the commission voted unanimously to approve the project. "The additional office space will serve what has become a destination for creative and technology industries, and this new development will provide critical amenities to the High Line."

Despite the funding cut, Friends of the High Line also applauded the project's approval. "The City Planning Commission made a number of thoughtful changes to various aspects of the plan," Friends co-founder Robert Hammond said in an email. "We are pleased with the way the plan is moving forward, and we will continue to work with the community."

While polling has found general support for the expansion in the city, some locals still oppose the addition. "It's fiddling with the margins," said Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. "When you look at how much West Chelsea has been upzoned in the past 10 years, more than any other community, when you add to that an upzoning of one of New York City's most beloved landmarks, it just adds insult to injury."

He said the affordable housing contributions are "a sham" because, like a kitty set aside from the 2005 rezoning of the neighborhood, into which these new funds will also be deposited, none of the money has so far been spent. Though that is more a problem for the city than Jamestown.

He vowed to continue fighting the expansion at the City Council, where it will be taken up in the next two months ahead of its likely approval. The project lies in Council Speaker Christine Quinn's district, who has found herself stuck between addressing the concerns of her neighborhood base in Chelsea and the demands of the real estate industry, who appear to favor her as their candidate in next year's mayoral elections. How she threads the needle on this project will be interesting to see.

Those towers? Not quite so big. (NYU)

Now the NYU plan is perfect, at least in the eyes of planning potentate Amanda Burden and the rest of the rest of the City Planning Commission. About an hour ago, the commission conditionally  and near unanimously approved NYU's contentious expansion plans for its two superblocks just south of Washington Square Park.

The commission is requiring the university to modify its 2 million square foot expansion in a number of meaningful ways, though the outlines of the new mini campus remain largely intact. There was one dissenting vote for the modified plan, from Commissioner Michelle de La Uz, who is the appointee of Public Advocate Bill de Blasio.

The biggest thing to go is a hotel in the so-called zipper building, which will replace the Coles athletic center at the corner of Mercer and Houston streets. Locals, including a few hotels, were worried about pick-ups, drop-offs and general transience coming to the corner.

The university had argued it needed the space to host guest faculty and conference visitors, but it was willing to give up the rooms, though not the space--the zipper building will still rise to 26 stories, an issue that still rankles many expansion opponents. Some observers believed the hotel was simply included as the sort of component that could easily be eliminated without harming the overall plan while still providing the appearance of compromise.

"They still get the building they want," Greenwich Village for Historic Preservation executive director Andrew Berman told The Observer after the vote.

The two boomerang-shaped towers within Washington Square Village will be reduced in height, so that they do not rise higher than their 1950s neighbors, but the bulk of the building has not been reduced, meaning shorter, fatter buildings. This could further wall off the interior open space, which has been a major concern for the community, who see the university as privatizing this open space. There will, however, be an oversight committee created to try and ensure open access to this open space.

The final change was the elimination of a commercial overlay that stretched for nine blocks around the site, up to the buildings just east of Washington Square Park. A little known feature of the rezoning application, it would have allowed some of the older buildings to have new ground-floor retail built within. Two residential buildings within the area, that have since been bought by NYU, vehemently opposed this part of the plan, and it was eliminated to accommodate their concerns.

But at the end of the day, there are still four very big buildings coming to the Village in the future.