Too big, too fast? (DCP)

Easy does it. That is the message from Councilman Dan Garodnick, echoing concerns of two Midtown community boards, that the Bloomberg administration is moving too fast in its plans to rezone Midtown East to allow for taller skyscrapers.

The Councilman, who represents the eastern flank of Manhattan, applauded the plan in a letter [PDF] to Planning Commish Amanda Burden last week shared with The Observer, but he worries to plan is so complex, it needs more time to be considered. The Department of City Planning argues there is enough time to get the job done before the Bloomberg administration is out in a year and a half.

"It's certainly important to ensure that our Midtown core remains competitive with cities around the world," Mr. Garodnick told The Observer. "At the same time, we need to approach this rezoning proposal deliberately. I understand that the mayor's term has less than 500 days remaining, but that should not be the prime factor in driving the time frame for such an important proposal."

Primarily, Mr. Garodnick wants the scoping session, when the framework is solidified, pushed back six months to March. In the letter, he also criticized plans to release an initial framework in the coming weeks, "before Labor Day—when many New Yorkers are totally disengaged from the political process." The plan was to have the massive rezoning—both in space and scope—enter public review by the first quarter of next year, but pushing back scoping would likely push that into the summer or fall. The rezoning would almost certainly be approved by the next administration as a result.

There is some concern this could scuttle the plan, but Mr. Garodnick sees it as a way to foster a stronger one. "Indeed, there is no harm in having this proposal be initiated by the Bloomberg administration and finalized by the next mayor, whoever it may be, and for it be a shared legacy," Mr. Garodnick wrote. He argues that because the plan will be implemented until 2017, there is no need to rush the rezoning.

In a July 20 letter to the department, Community Board 5 mounted a similar case:

Given the enormous complexity and high stakes for this rezoning, we ask that the Department slow down its timetable so that the community can fully consider and respond to your plans and so that the Department can take the community's concerns and wishes into account, allowing time for town hall meetings, public hearings, and other forums. As a point of comparison, by its own account, the Department spent about five years to develop the plan for Hudson Yards, and just recently, the same amount of time to rezone a stretch of the Upper West Side. Closer to East Midtown, DOT and the Grand Central Partnership have spent nearly three years thus far to develop the plan for the Pershing Square pedestrian plaza. Certainly a project with the magnitude of East Midtown at least merits similar timetables.

There are those who believe the city is dragging its feet, however, namely Post real estate columnist Steve Cuozzo. He took to the tab's editorial pages today to slam the Midtown East plan from the other side. He said the city should not wait until 2017 to let developers build bigger. But his main issue is with a neighborhood improvement fund developers would finance by buying air rights: "The city wants the dough to remedy such horrible 'pedestrian realm challenges' as 'narrow sidewalks and bottlenecks in subway stations.' Hello, slush fund?"

Coming to a Midtown intersection near you. (NYC DOT)

“I think this is a very important opportunity for this community to back this avenue, which was given to the developers decades ago,” Nancy Goshow said last Thursday night, during a meeting of Community Board 5. “The developers have gotten all the benefits for too long, and it is time we as a community take back these spaces and really push them to be improved and made as nice as possible.”

Ms. Goshow was one of a majority of board members who declared her support for what has come to be known as 6½th Avenue, a Department of Transportation proposal to link a series of arcades and public plazas running from 51st to 57th streets between Sixth and Seventh avenues. The spaces were created through a special zoning district in the 1980s and early '90s, and are made up of Zuccotti-like privately owned public space, or POPS. In exchange for building the spaces, developers got the opportunity to build bigger buildings.

Last year, the community board, at the suggestion of Friends of POPS, a pro-POPS civic group, asked the Department of Transportation to study ways it might connect these spaces. They are already a popular pedestrian thoroughfare, especially during lunch time and at rush hour, providing a less hectic alternative to the avenues on either side. The board wanted to make the spaces even more inviting.

The department returned in late March with the idea of installing raised crosswalks and stop signs, which the board’s transportation subcommittee supported. A vote was expected last month but delayed while the department continued to study traffic impacts. On Thursday, the department presented these findings, which it said would in no way slow down travel times, and the boarded voted in favor of the plan 2-to-1.

"This is an innovative project, and it's one we asked for, so I think this is a pretty exciting moment for the board," transportation committee chair Raju Mann said.

For those who still doubted the plan, even they admitted it was more general skepticism and intuition than anything else driving their concerns. "These findings defy logic," board member Ron Dwenger said. "I don't see how this will not cause congestion, but we'll see." The department argues that drivers will simply experience two shorter stops rather than one long one at the corner. "Odds are you'd be waiting for a red light, not missing a green," Mr. Mann said.

Slideshow: Take a stroll along 6½th Avenue >>

Joel Maxman, a member of the transportation committee, felt that the department did the plan in reverse, coming up with a traffic proposal, then studying it, rather than studying traffic patterns and coming up with a solution to them. "This was totally backwards," he said. "I'm still probably going to support this, but we have some real issues of process at the DOT."

Kate McDonough countered the usual steamrolling Department of Transportation narrative, though, saying that no city agency took a more grassroots approach to its projects. "In my experience, working with DOT has been one of the most rewarding experiences of being on the community board." She and other board members commended the department for taking an idea from the community and implementing it, rather than coming up with its own proposals and imposing them from above.

Ms. McDonough did sound a note of caution, echoed by many on the board. "The idea is great, but the execution has to be monitored," she said. The department has promised to keep an eye on traffic patterns and present its findings to the board in the fall. Should any issues in the plan, from difficulty with deliveries to traffic delays, present themselves, the department has promised to work on solutions to address the problems.

Another issue the board is working on is partnering with the Department of City Planning, which regulates POPS, to improve access and standards along the route. Currently, there are a few illegal sidewalk cafes and other installations in violation of the zoning, which the board wants removed. Also, the open hours for the paths are not currently consistent—some are open 24 hours a day, others shutter as early as 7 p.m. "We hope to make it so everything is open around the same times, and of the same quality," Mr. Mann said.

Now that it has secured the board's support, the Department of Transportation expects to install the crosswalks during the latter half of June, an effort that should only take a few hours per intersection.

"It was fun to work on a project that came up from the community, to chew on it, come back, and get their huge support," Josh Benson, the department's director of bicycling and pedestrian programs said after the board's vote. "It was a nice process, and one that will make the city a little nicer as a result."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

There had been some concerns about whether or not traffic impacts on the corridor had been sufficiently addressed and what the best means to mitigate traffic at pedestrian crossings might be. “It’s not going to be quite so simple at the full board, and they wanted to take a step back and make sure they had all the answers,” one community board member told The Observer. As we previously reported, the board’s transportation committee approved the 6½th Avenue plan unanimously.

A presentation and full board vote is expected at next month’s board meeting, on May 10. It is not yet clear whether that would slow down plans to install the crosswalks this coming July.

Among the issues being considered is whether to replace the proposed stop signs on 51st Street with traffic lights. This may sound like a disaster for drivers, but it is actually considered an improvement over a stop sign. The crossings at 51st and 52nd streets are the busiest along the entire corridor, and there are concerns that with a stop sign pedestrians might stream through the intersection during lunch or rush hour, preventing cars from ever passing.

A traffic light would instead create designated times for both walkers and drivers, creating a smoother flow of traffic and better conditions for both vehicles and pedestrians.

For those who still fear a traffic jam nightmare, look no further than 57th Street, where mid-block traffic lights have already been installed between Fifth and Sixth avenues and Sixth and Seventh avenues. This has not only improved pedestrian safety but also reduced traffic times because drivers are contending with fewer jaywalkers. And since New York traffic is a game of hurry-up-and-wait, what is another stop light?

That is why the department continues to reject calls for yield signs at the crosswalks. While some board members have expressed concern about the need for late night traffic to have to come to a full stop at the intersections, the department believes that is the only way for the crosswalks to work to keep pedestrians safe.

As one transportation source put it to The Observer, “Yield signs? Are you kidding? New Yorkers view yield signs as green lights. They’re blind to them. It would never work.”

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

“We’re basically building a new pedestrian avenue in the heart of Midtown, one of the densest, busiest places on Earth,” Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said during an interview last week.

Call it 6½th  Avenue.

As Midtown began to creep West toward Times Square in the 1970s, a quirk in the zoning between Sixth and Seventh Avenues led to a string of towers in the middle of the block, all with public plazas, atria or arcades running through them. Everyday, thousands of people traverse this secret boulevard stretching from 51st Street to 57th Street, according to Department of Transportation data. They wind their way between parked cars, oncoming traffic and other obstructions, all in the hopes of shaving a few minutes off their walk and maybe avoiding the crowded avenues on either side.

Now, in an effort to create safer connections between these spaces while encouraging their use and also unclogging the avenues along the way, the Department of Transportation is creating a series of traffic interventions to link up these disparate shortcuts. The result should be somewhere between the Brooklyn Heights Promenade (though the Brooklyn Bridge may be more apt, given the crowds) and the Winter Garden at the World Financial Center. It should be a nice place to pass through, but also possibly to stop for a coffee or lunch, without fear of being mowed down on the way back to the office.

“We’ve been working very hard on the spaces between buildings and now we’re working very hard on the spaces within buildings,” Ms. Sadik-Khan said. “We’re reprogramming underutilized road space while enhancing pedestrian spaces we already have and encouraging their use.”

Update: Community Board 5 Transportation Committee Unanimously Approves 6½th Avenue. >>

The plan calls for creating new pedestrian crossings between these public spaces, which generally are directly across the street from one another. Stop signs will be installed in front of new raised crosswalks. Warning markings—BUMP, STOP, chevrons and stripes—will all alert drivers to the new intersection while curbed cuts and painted street space will make crossing easier and prohibit parking. The goal, as with so many Sadik-Khan-era projects, is improved pedestrian circulation and traffic “calming.” The plan is currently parking neutral.

A tiny piece of the plans was implemented last fall, when a crosswalk was installed in the middle of 57th Street, with a traffic light instead of a stop sign. Commissioner Sadik-Khan said the results have been positive, with fewer illegal crossings and a reduction in accidents.

If it seems strange that all these public passageways should line up, that is how it was always meant to be. These spaces are a legacy of the same era that brought us Zuccotti Park. Privately Owned Public Spaces, or POPS, as they are often called, have been much in the news lately, thanks to Occupy Wall Street. The spaces in Midtown are at once similar and different. While none are as big as Zuccotti, they were all built to add precious square footage to the towers to which they are connected.

Sometimes this meant little more than opening up the lobby to the public, while other times developers would build soaring open air arcades. The stretch contains one of the greatest POPS in the city, the UBS Gallery at 1285 Sixth, the southern anchor of 6½th  Avenue, which houses works from the Smithsonian and not only runs north-south but also east-west. These spaces were not only created through POPS bonuses but also The Special Midtown District, codified in 1982 but in the works for almost a decade, that actively encourage developers to have their POPS line up with those of their neighbors. Without this provision, 6½th  Avenue would have been almost impossible to create.

Even so, the city might not have developed its plan were it not for a ragtag band of planners, architects and urban obsessive known as the Friends of Privately Owned Public Spaces. The group seeks to promote POPS, encouraging awareness of the nearly 550 POPS in the city while pursuing landlords seen to be privatizing or otherwise violating their POPS—the wrong chairs, signs or hours, for example.

“It’s amazing that we have this vast wealth of public resources that is all too often ignored,” said Brian Nesin, founder and executive director of Friends of POPS. “This is the perfect opportunity to bring life to these POPS.”

It was Friends of POPS that first came up with the idea of connecting these spaces, which the group dubbed Holly White Way, in honor of the influential planner and public spaces advocate who championed the creation and regulation of POPS. Friends of POPS even held a parade through Holly White Way last fall. This was partly a public awareness campaign, partly a celebration of how far the group’s plan had come. The year before, it had partnered with the 54th Street Block Association in trying to make the pedestrian thoroughfare a reality.

The plan was then presented to Community Board 5, which liked the possibility and thus asked DOT to study the feasibility of such a plan, sending a formal request last May. The idea was embraced wholeheartedly by the commissioner and her staff, and tonight they will present their plan to the board’s Transportation Committee. It could be voted on within a week or two an implemented as soon as July.

“I’ve got to give DOT a lot of credit,” Mr. Nesin said. “Most city agencies wouldn’t take an idea presented to them from the public and really, really run with it like this.”

But with Occupy Wall Street taking hold of the city once again after its wintry hibernation, it would seem landlords would be loath to encourage anyone occupying their buildings, even for the simplest and most lawful reasons, like walking to work, stopping for lunch or grabbing a quick smooch from a companion. Not that landlords should have much choice in the matter, as they have already reaped the lucrative benefits of these POPS for decades now. Some built 10, even 20 stories extra atop their towers, earning millions of dollars in rent in the process.

And yet so far none of them seem to be terribly concerned. One official at the Real Estate Board of New York, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the plan since it had not officially been released, said that only one landlord had approached the industry group about the project, and then only to express some minor concerns about loading docks.

According to Commissioner Sadik-Khan, the city had conferred with every building owner and, she said, “the response has been good to neutral.”

That does not mean the project will pass unopposed. While the community board is eager to see what potential these blocks hold, there is still concerns about specifics and implementation. Beyond issues of loading and unloading—on-street parking is not much of a concern, since almost no one lives in this part of town—the board is most worried about increasing vehicular congestion.

Some of these streets, like 53rd Street, are designated through streets, where the DOT tries to funnel crosstown traffic to keep others clear and keep vehicles moving. There are also concerns that stop signs, or even yield signs, could create havoc, particular during lunch or at the end of the work day, when the office rats come streaming out of their dens and into the crosswalks. On the flip side, late at night, when the streets are quiet, will this simply slow down cabs and other cars unnecessarily. The question is, just how disruptive is one extra stop sign?

“These spaces are already here, so we should be doing what we can to improve them,” one member of the community board’s transportation committee told The Observer. “But what are the details? Will it make streets better or worse, more cluttered or less?”

There is also a certain amount of resistance on the board to anything Commissioner Sadik-Khan might propose, given the amount of tinkering she has already done within the district. This includes everything from the re-engineering of Times Square and Broadway to traffic-light cameras and the coming bike share program.

“Change is uncomfortable, especially when you don’t know what the end result will be,” the board member said. “There are some people who may oppose this no matter the merits.”

Should the plan proceed, Friends of POPS views it as a test case for what is possible across the city. Just find the right community group or community board, come up with the right plan, and suddenly a new public park or promenade appears as if out of nowhere. “We want to empower New Yorkers to take ownership of these spaces, especially when the landlords don’t really take care of them,” Mr. Nesin said.

And when they are ready, Ms. Sadik-Khan will be more than happy to help. “Different communities have different jigsaw puzzles that you have to solve,” she said. “This one had the right pieces come into place to create a great new pedestrian right of way.”

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Last night, Manhattan’s full Community Board 5 voted overwhelmingly (21-1, according to the board’s office) to deny the transfer of air rights from two landmarked buildings to the site for Jean Nouvel’s planned 75-story midtown hotel/residential/Museum of Modern Art skyscraper (the community board’s vote is only advisory).

The Landmarks Preservation Commission has the official say on the air rights transfers needed for the building, and then the process needs to go through the city’s lengthy public approval process, over which the City Council and the Bloomberg administration get the final say.

Today, I noticed an online petition, linked on the Wired New York skyscraper forum (which usually seems to attract a tall building-loving crowd that salivates whenever a rendering is posted for anything over 60 stories), urging the community board to drop its objections.

From the petition: