A rendering of one of the sketchy new vagrant magnets going up in Kips Bay.

Kips Bay, the East Side enclave pocked with post-war towers, has been largely protected from many of the changes that have transformed other sections of Manhattan. Neither particularly posh nor particularly gritty, nor particularly beautiful, the neighborhood is known as a good place to raise a family or fade into senescence.

But now the cloistered area is getting an unwelcome shot of vigor in the form of new micro-unit apartments. The local community board is terrified that the diminutive middle-class housing units will draw undesirable elements, bad seeds, transients.

"No matter what anyone says, we're worried that these are going to be SROs that are run as hotels," Toni Carlina, the community board's district manager, told the Wall Street Journal.

Egad!

The fear is totally unfounded—Ms. Carlina confessed as much when he admitted that they believed the apartments would be SROs "no matter what anyone says." Besides size, the micro-apartments will be no different than other studios; they'll have kitchens, bathrooms and be rented out with yearly leases. But the reaction highlights the kind of terror of the new that is prevalent in many New York neighborhoods. (The great bike share controversy is now engulfing whole corners of the city.)

But what makes the micro-apartment situation so interesting is that they're totally designed for yuppies—the kind of people whom even the biggest fuddy-duddys usually love to welcome to the neighborhood. (Families are debatably more desirable, but then, there are always those who will complain about children.)

With rents that start at $914 a month and will probably go well beyond $2,000 for the market-rate units, the micro-apartments will, it seems safe to say, be rented out exclusively to middle- and upper-middle-class tenants. To live there, residents will need to earn at least $36,560 a year  to meet the rule of thumb for New York apartments that a renter's salary should be 40 times the monthly rent.

Indeed, the relatively high costs of the apartments (40 percent of which will be "affordable" and set aside for tenants earning no more than $77,190 a year) has caused some fretting that the wee apartments won't really be affordable at all. Affordable units will go up to $1,873 a month, less than the average Manhattan studio price of $2,000 but hardly a bargain, especially considering that while brand new, they're only 250 to 370 square feet.

Nonetheless, SROs aren't the only thing that locals are worried about. They also fear loitering. And vagrants! According to the Journal: "The community board is also concerned about an eating-and-drinking establishment being allowed in the building, since she said the public plaza that it will be facing has had a problem with vagrancy in the past, and residents worry that if there is a bar or restaurant open late into the night, vagrancy will once again be an issue."

But who isn't terrified of yuppie vagrants? Always sitting out at sidewalk cafes sipping $12 glasses of prosecco, hauling around bags of groceries from Whole Foods, pausing in public plazas to check their iPads.

A Cuomo conundrum? (DCP)

Basically everybody but the Bloomberg administration and select landlords in the area wants to see the Midtown East Rezoning delayed. While there is a general consensus that creating room for bigger, more modern office buildings in the heart of the city's central business district makes sense, many planners and community groups fear the administration is rushing the plan to get it done on the mayor's watch, rather than taking the necessary time to figure out exactly what to build.

Now, the three community boards directly effected by the rezoning are calling on Governor Cuomo to intervene, and their rationale is an interesting, if desperate, one.

The Tri-Board Task Force on East Midtown, which is comprised of members of community boards 5, 6 and 8, is arguing that Hurricane Sandy has introduced great uncertainty into the city's future, particularly as far as infrastructure is concerned, and so the rezoning ought to be put off until the city figures out how to bolster itself against future disasters.

"The tragic events of the past few weeks have brought to light our city’s unique vulnerabilities in a world of climate change," states a letter the task force sent to Governor Cuomo (you can read the full text below). "Throughout the city, waterfront and low-lying areas, including Lower Manhattan and the far East and West sides of our borough, were devastated by storm surges while our transportation network ground to a halt as subway lines and tunnels were flooded. Incredibly, parts of North America’s largest central business district lost power for an extended period of time."

The irony here, of course, is that the sector of the city set to be rezoned was one of the refuges not impacted by the storm, beyond impacts to the subways and other ancillary problems caused to low-lying areas. It makes sense that planning resources might be put to better use working on emergency preparedness issues, rather than rezonings, but it also seems disingenuous to suggest that Midtown is somehow vulnerable to the next superstorm.

Then again, look at happened with the One57 crane. And who knows which ConEd plant might blow next time, leaving uptown or Midtown, rather than downtown, without power.

"We hope that in light of recent events, both the city and state will take a long, responsible, and critical look at how this East Midtown proposal, and other similar development proposals, can reflect altered circumstances, ensuring we build smarter," the letter concludes. "The current timetable does not allow for that."

Appealing to Governor Cuomo, who has taken a keen interest in how the city and state rebuilds after Sandy, is not a bad idea. But governors in general, and this one in particular, have a habit of deferring on local issues like this to the local authorities, in this case City Planning and City Hall. Still, it doesn't hurt to ask, and these are crazy times we're living in, what with Category 1 storms and 30 FAR towers buffeting the city. Anything could happen.

A rendering of the renovated hotel, with new windows and a penthouse. (Real Deal)

The mysterious Mr. Chetrit. (DNAinfo)

As readers of The Observer know, Joseph Chetrit might be the most secretive big-time developer in a city full of the type. The guy owns part of the Willis Tower, for God's sake, and still nobody really know who he is.  Oh, and as of not to long ago, the Chelsea Hotel, which he is thoroughly mucking about in. Well, his minions are, since Mr. Chetrit has never publicly been seen at the hotel.

But he did make an unexpected appearance at a local community board meeting last night, to defend ongoing renovations, including a penthouse he hopes to add to the landmarked hostel. According to DNAinfo, Mr. Chetrit said little during the three hour meeting, though he eventually broke in near the middle to make his case for the project.

He says the move wouldn't harm the historic structure — or the dozens of angry hotel residents also at the meeting. "Nobody's looking to hide anything," Chetrit said.  "We're working full time, very hard, to give you the best product."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Promising to reveal "a very different side to a great star," FSG announced today in a press release that they'll be publishing a collection of Marilyn Monroe's writing this fall. The book will be called Fragments.

And--not to worry--the familiar side of the great star will not be neglected: "Fragments will also contain a small collection of rarely seen photographs."

“Every time he’d go by me, he growled. Then one night he banged on my door and said, ‘If you think you’re getting any money, forget it,’” recalled Ms. Diether, 80, who moved into her basement apartment in 1958 and, thanks to rent control, still pays virtually the same rent she did when Robert Wagner was mayor.

“I started laughing, it was so ridiculous. I don’t think that’s the reaction he wanted,” she said with a sly smile.

Ms. Diether’s laugh is a rolling chortle that punctuates nearly every story she tells, and illustrates the kind of airy joie de vivre she has brought to the mundane, often-bitter battlefield that is local land use.

For the last half-century, Ms. Diether has been a kind, but constant, thorn in the side of landlords and developers–ever since she joined Save the Village as chair of the tenants committee in 1959, agitating alongside such luminaries as Ruth Wittenberg and Jane Jacobs. She was appointed to Community Board 2 in 1964—“to keep me quiet,” she suspects—and she remains Manhattan’s longest-serving community board member.

Over a noon breakfast at the Waverly Restaurant in late June, Ms. Diether picked through a packet of her own press clippings. She drained three cups of coffee, and she laughed about five decades of fights—won and lost—against a litany of landlords (hers and others), countless community board members, and urban planners from Robert Moses to current City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, who Ms. Diether hopes will come around to her current crusade: downzoning the Bowery’s east side. (Ms. Diether has already drafted the zoning proposal and hopes to submit it to Ms. Burden this month.)

“Oh, she knows me well,” Ms. Diether said with an impish grin. “I even sent her a birthday card.” At that, she threw her head back and laughed.

“I NEVER QUITE UNDERSTOOD why other people are so afraid of fighting, but maybe that’s because of my grandmother,” Ms. Diether said.

After her grandmother immigrated to the United States from Finland—dodging a husband whom she didn’t like—an American customs officer asked whether she was, or ever had been, a Communist. Ms. Diether’s grandmother, who had survived the Soviet invasion of her home country, promptly hit the man.

She changed her name and raised three daughters in Massachusetts, one of whom eventually settled in Queens with Ms. Diether’s father, a cabinet maker and Mayflower descendant. The family moved to Massachusetts when Ms. Diether was in her early 20s, but she couldn’t be reconciled to small-town life. “If you went out with a guy more than three times, you were obviously getting engaged. And if you came home after 2 in the morning, everybody said, ‘Oh, you came home late last night.’”

That was too much prying for a woman who still dresses up to go out, still puts on red lipstick, and still confesses to being a “party girl.”

“Oh, man! She likes to party!” said Sean Sweeney, Ms. Diether’s co-chair on CB2’s landmarks committee and himself a bit of a land-use legend. “I like to party and get drunk, but Doris will out-party me. For 80 years old, she can out-party kids who are 30.”

So it was only fitting that when she moved back to New York from Massachusetts in her mid-20s, Ms. Diether moved into the Hotel Albert, a famed Village flophouse on the corner of University Place and 11th Street, where her staid father once came to visit.

“He asked for my room number and the guy gave him my room number without even asking who he was, and he got to the elevator and he was propositioned by one of the women in front of the elevator to do it for a bottle of liquor,” Ms. Diether said. “And then he got in the elevator and there were two gay guys in the elevator making out, and this was at 6:30 or 7 o’clock in the morning.”

It was a quintessential Village life back then, working and acting and painting and going to parties. She married her husband, Jack Diether, a music critic and Gustav Mahler scholar, in 1958 at Judson Memorial Church, and moved into his basement apartment, where she still lives among shelves of dusty books, and where she keeps the three-volume zoning code close at hand.

She entered public life in 1959 with a rather blunt speech lambasting Robert Moses’ proposal to end free Shakespeare in the Park. She was then recruited to join Save the Village, which eventually divided the neighborhood into geographic areas headed by herself, Jane Jacobs, Ruth Wittenberg and Shirley Hayes.

“The Village always had these incredible women,” said Kent Barwick, a past president of the Municipal Art Society and former chair of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. “They had style, they had brains, they had a sense of humor, and they knew what they were talking about.”

Ms. Diether’s specialty became zoning. When Save the Village decided in 1960 to draft an alternate plan to the city’s overhaul of the zoning code, she joined a team of architects that included Robert Jacobs, Jane’s husband.

“Since I had some spare time occasionally, they would send me out as sort of a gopher. And I just picked up the zoning. I’d go around the different blocks and they’d say, ‘That’s an R6, that shouldn’t be zoned an R6,’” Ms. Diether said.

Forty-nine years later, she’s the one to spot problems. “It gets me very annoyed, because I can walk around three or four blocks and find at least six violations, and the Buildings Department doesn’t do anything about them.” Her knowledge has made her a resource for other local groups—sometimes paid, sometimes unpaid—and in the 1980s, she began teaching a class on zoning at the Municipal Art Society, which later grew into an accredited, five-part course at CUNY. “I try to keep it funny.”

“All of [the Village activists] would agree—whether alive or in their grave,” Mr. Barwick said, “that no one was more instrumental in decoding New York City’s draconian zoning codes, and making sure community groups weren’t fighting with one hand behind their back, than Doris Diether.”

But the Village activists of her day also had a flair for the dramatic. Ms. Diether keeps three notebooks filled with her press clippings, and one of the first photos shows her holding the reins of a hefty sow in front of Governor Rockefeller’s mansion, protesting the “piggish” greed of relaxed rent-control laws. (She remains a Rockefeller Republican, and later went to work for the Rockefellers; she still receives an annual invitation to their Christmas party, along with a small pension.)

During the fight over the city’s new zoning in the 1960s, Save the Village bused supporters to the hearings on the Loconik, a sightseeing train designed by Salvador Dali that was owned by the Hotel Albert. Later, supporters rode to the hearings in a 1920s automobile wearing black, wide-brimmed derby hats to demonstrate that the city’s zoning was “old hat.”

“If you don’t go public, you’re going to lose,” Ms. Diether told the reclusive poet E. E. Cummings when he was worried about being squeezed from his Patchin Place apartment. Eventually, he did go public, and the publicity forced the mayor to personally assure Mr. Cummings that he would never be evicted.

When Mr. Barwick chaired the Landmarks Commission, Ruth Wittenberg gave a rousing speech from her wheelchair, berating the city and imploring the chairman to protect some piece of history. Then she turned to him and—unseen to the crowd—winked. “They understood that, in part, it was a game,” Mr. Barwick said.

Perhaps that explains one of Ms. Diether’s more surprising pastimes. When she is not drafting a zoning proposal, or teaching her zoning class, or opposing a zoning variance on the community board, she enjoys having a glass of wine and watching a bit of professional wrestling.

THERE ARE THOSE FOR which Ms. Diether’s opposition has been neither fun, nor a game.

In the early 1960s, Ms. Diether was helping a group of older Italian women with a troublesome landlord in Little Italy, when she discovered the owner had lied about refurbishing the building’s roof, which would have entitled him to raise their rent and potentially force them out. Ms. Diether scoured the local papers and found that, on the day he claimed to have done the work, a hurricane had swept through the city.

“Some of the Italians took umbrage with the fact they were being threatened,” she said. “He got roughed up pretty good in a barbershop over in Brooklyn.”

Ms. Diether said one of her own landlords went to jail for fraud, after she sent to the state attorney general’s office housing records that showed he was listing the same loan on several co-op conversion applications.

“That’s why I like Doris; she’s tough” said Mr. Sweeney, who often takes Ms. Diether on “dates” to the opera or the ballet. “It’s one thing for men to break someone’s legs, but she’ll do it in like a feminine way.”

But for a woman who has fought so aggressively, and so continuously, from the same basement bunker for 51 years, Ms. Diether has a rather startling number of friends. She sends out 600 Christmas cards annually, and 150 people braved a January snowstorm to celebrate her 80th birthday.

“I still consider Doris a friend, and I still get a Christmas card from Doris,” said Richard Landman, who served with her on CB2 before he went to work in real estate for New York University, which Ms. Diether has often opposed.

“But we fought!” Ms. Diether said when asked about her friendship with Mr. Landman. “It’s not a personal fight. I’m fighting about an issue.”

It helps that Ms. Diether likes to socialize. “She’s a party animal. And proud of it,” said Susanne Schropp, a friend who helped organize her birthday party. The two met when Ms. Schropp needed help with a landlord problem, and she went on to take Ms. Diether’s zoning class. “Doris is just so adorable. She’s a really wonderful person.”

Ms. Diether has become such a local legend that her birthday party engendered—fittingly perhaps—a political fight. Council Speaker Christine Quinn apparently refused to let a political rival, Councilman Tony Avella, join the proclamation honoring Ms. Diether, a spat that became public when Mr. Avella’s side of the email exchange was leaked to the press.

For her part, Ms. Diether avoids email and the Internet. She got a computer about 10 years ago, but never took it out of the box. She continues to type her zoning resolutions and her community board minutes on a typewriter, to the chagrin of some who work with her.

“I wish she did have a computer and access to the Internet,” Ms. Schropp said. “To have a tool like that available, it would just be a nightmare to everybody she’s opposing.”

rpillifant@observer.com

Under the current system. community boards can submit development initiatives called 197a plans that “have no legal force whatsoever;" are often overlooked; and limit residents’ influence over the future shape of their neighborhood, according to Mr. Avella.

“The bill would allow each community, through the mechanism of the community board, to meet and develop a 197a plan... that would in effect become the planning document for the neighborhood,” Mr. Avella told The Observer Monday.

“Every neighborhood would put together its own plan that would go into the community document, the borough document, and the city document… It gives real power to every neighborhood so every citizen has a say in what happens.”

Mr. Avella said future construction projects would be bound by the 197a document or be required to submit an application to build outside regulations. He has been working since 2002 with the planning center task force led Eva Baron at the Municipal Arts Society to create a citywide, community-based planning framework modeled after similar programs in Seattle and Rochester, NY.

The legislation stems from a 2001 campaign to raise awareness about local city planning initiatives among the new crop of lawmakers on the City Council.

Since the proposed law is still being written up, Ms. Baron would not say whether each community board would be required to draft its own 197a plan or the extent to which the local plan would be the basis for land use and zoning regulations.

“It would make sure [community boards] get funding and ensure an automatic connection between 197a plan and city planning,” Ms. Baron said. As members of the communinity, she said developers will also contribute to 197a's.

Ms. Baron told Brownstoner last week that the bill will also make sure the community board plans take the interests of the entire community into account.

The legislation has the potential to stop “any rezoning that goes through that wasn’t done at request of the community,” said Mr. Avella.

“The Columbia expansion is one example that was passed by the City Council in opposition to a 197a plan,” he said of rezoning plans that might have turned out differently. “Under this legislation it wouldn’t have gone through because it conflicts with the community board plan.”

The Department of Environmental Protection, along with the Department of Design and Construction, is currently scoping out sites for the location of Shaft 33B, the latest infrastructure project for the long-awaited Water Tunnel No. 3, the 50-year, $6 billion project to update the city’s water system. But residents in the East 50’s are alarmed that the excavation, tentatively planned for the northwest corner of First Avenue and 59th Street, will disrupt their lives for the years it takes to complete the project.

Community Board 6, in response to these worries, passed a resolution last Wednesday that objected to the selection of any location for Shaft 33B by the D.E.P. “without a consolidated presentation of both the proposed location of 33B and the complete routing plans of the associated water mains … and full community participation in the decision of the routing of those mains.”

At a public hearing on Dec. 5 at the High School of Art and Design, nearly a thousand people packed the auditorium to oppose the D.E.P. plan, and the board’s resolution is another salvo in the ongoing contretemps that threatens to disrupt the project. At the heart of the matter isn’t so much the location of the shaft (although some people are opposed to that), but rather the location of the water mains that will connect the shaft to Water Tunnel No. 3 under Third Avenue.

The D.E.P. is responsible for the location, design and construction of both the water tunnel and Shaft 33B, but the D.D.C. is responsible for the water mains that will connect the two—and that’s where the problems begin. Once the D.E.P. makes a decision where the shaft will be excavated, then the D.D.C. will decide where the water mains should run. And in Manhattan, ripping up the streets to install those water mains will have an enormously detrimental impact on the neighborhood involved, project opponents say.

“We’re opposed to it because they will not tell us the water-main route,” said Linda Saputelli, the chair of the East 50’s Neighborhood Coalition. According to Ms. Saputelli, the site for the water shaft shouldn’t be finalized until the D.D.C. makes public exactly where the water mains will run, how long the construction will last and how the neighborhood will be affected. Ms. Saputelli said that if work on Shaft 33B is approved, the water-mains component of the project will be a fait accompli, without any public oversight of a project that could adversely affect the neighborhood for years to come.

State Assemblyman Jonathan Bing has been working with the East 50’s Neighborhood Coalition to demand answers from the D.E.P. and the D.D.C. “Right now, the big issue is trying to make sure the entire project—both the water shaft and the water main—are viewed as one project,” Mr. Bing told The Observer.

According to the D.E.P., excavation of Shaft 33B could begin as early as the spring of next year and would continue until 2010. Construction of the water mains would begin concurrently and continue after the shaft is completed, finishing up sometime in 2011.

The D.E.P. has released a draft version of the environmental-impact statement for Shaft 33B, and comments were accepted until Dec. 22. The department will now finalize the environmental-impact statement, and responses to comments will be incorporated into the final document.

Ms. Saputelli told The Observer that she is currently contacting elected officials with her group’s concerns to force the D.E.P. and the D.D.C. to open up their selection process for water-main routes. A lawsuit to stop the project is possible, Ms. Saputelli said, if the city continues with the project without community input.

And she has support. “If the D.E.P. does not adequately provide information to the community about why this site has been chosen and why other sites weren’t chosen—and, more specifically, how the water shaft is going to be connected to the main water tunnel—certainly I would support efforts to gather that information, up to and including a lawsuit,” Assemblyman Bing said.

Calls to the D.D.C. were referred to the D.E.P. Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the D.E.P., said: “We’ve been very open to the with the community and Community Board 6. We’re not concealing any information from them …. We’ve done more outreach on this site than any other shaft site related to Water Tunnel No. 3.”

Downtown Barhoppers Beware

In its ongoing battle to curb bar noise and the proliferation of nightclubs within its district, Community Board 3, on Dec. 20, passed a resolution supporting Assemblywoman Deborah Glick’s Dec. 12 letter to Governor George Pataki requesting that the recently vacated commissioner’s position in the State Liquor Authority be filled by a New York City resident.

In November 2005, S.L.A. chairman Edward F. Kelly announced his retirement after a decade with the authority, shortly after State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer began an investigation into pricing practices in the state liquor industry. A week before, Mr. Pataki had announced the creation of a chief executive post with the S.L.A. to run its day-to-day operations.

A spokesperson for the Governor wouldn’t comment on the selection of the new commissioner, saying only that “the Governor always looks for the most qualified and capable individuals when making appointments.” Joshua Toas, a former Assistant Secretary of State and Assistant Counsel to the Governor (and frequent contributor to Mr. Pataki’s campaign fund), was appointed to the chief executive position of the S.L.A. shortly after it was created.

Critics of the S.L.A. have long said that the authority ignores community input when granting new liquor licenses in New York City, especially in the bar-saturated neighborhoods of the East and West Village and Chelsea. The three neighborhoods have the greatest number of liquor licenses in the city (3,055, 1,866 and 944, respectively), according to a 2005 report prepared by the office of then–City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz.

Because the commissioners of the S.L.A. all live outside the city, critics contend that the S.L.A. is unaware of the acute noise problems and disruption to the community that this proliferation of bars causes. Lately, Board 3 conducted a public hearing to discuss the feasibility of converting Avenue B into a one-way street. Proponents contend that the change would ameliorate traffic noise on the busy weekend nights, but others are concerned that it would irrevocably alter the character of the neighborhood. Other groups have called for a complete moratorium on new liquor licenses for certain neighborhoods in the city.

“We are looking for greater sensitivity from the S.L.A. regarding the impact of granting the large number of licenses in a concentrated area,” Ms. Glick told The Observer. “I think that commissioners that infrequently visit the city—who may not come into some of the downtown areas—they may not have a full understanding of how many people live in the area, and in what proximity to these establishments they live.”

The Department of Environmental Protection, along with the Department of Design and Construction, is currently scoping out sites for the location of Shaft 33B, the latest infrastructure project for the long-awaited Water Tunnel No. 3, the 50-year, $6 billion project to update the city’s water system. But residents in the East 50’s are alarmed that the excavation, tentatively planned for the northwest corner of First Avenue and 59th Street, will disrupt their lives for the years it takes to complete the project.

Community Board 6, in response to these worries, passed a resolution last Wednesday that objected to the selection of any location for Shaft 33B by the D.E.P. “without a consolidated presentation of both the proposed location of 33B and the complete routing plans of the associated water mains … and full community participation in the decision of the routing of those mains.”

At a public hearing on Dec. 5 at the High School of Art and Design, nearly a thousand people packed the auditorium to oppose the D.E.P. plan, and the board’s resolution is another salvo in the ongoing contretemps that threatens to disrupt the project. At the heart of the matter isn’t so much the location of the shaft (although some people are opposed to that), but rather the location of the water mains that will connect the shaft to Water Tunnel No. 3 under Third Avenue.

The D.E.P. is responsible for the location, design and construction of both the water tunnel and Shaft 33B, but the D.D.C. is responsible for the water mains that will connect the two—and that’s where the problems begin. Once the D.E.P. makes a decision where the shaft will be excavated, then the D.D.C. will decide where the water mains should run. And in Manhattan, ripping up the streets to install those water mains will have an enormously detrimental impact on the neighborhood involved, project opponents say.

“We’re opposed to it because they will not tell us the water-main route,” said Linda Saputelli, the chair of the East 50’s Neighborhood Coalition. According to Ms. Saputelli, the site for the water shaft shouldn’t be finalized until the D.D.C. makes public exactly where the water mains will run, how long the construction will last and how the neighborhood will be affected. Ms. Saputelli said that if work on Shaft 33B is approved, the water-mains component of the project will be a fait accompli, without any public oversight of a project that could adversely affect the neighborhood for years to come.

State Assemblyman Jonathan Bing has been working with the East 50’s Neighborhood Coalition to demand answers from the D.E.P. and the D.D.C. “Right now, the big issue is trying to make sure the entire project—both the water shaft and the water main—are viewed as one project,” Mr. Bing told The Observer.

According to the D.E.P., excavation of Shaft 33B could begin as early as the spring of next year and would continue until 2010. Construction of the water mains would begin concurrently and continue after the shaft is completed, finishing up sometime in 2011.

The D.E.P. has released a draft version of the environmental-impact statement for Shaft 33B, and comments were accepted until Dec. 22. The department will now finalize the environmental-impact statement, and responses to comments will be incorporated into the final document.

Ms. Saputelli told The Observer that she is currently contacting elected officials with her group’s concerns to force the D.E.P. and the D.D.C. to open up their selection process for water-main routes. A lawsuit to stop the project is possible, Ms. Saputelli said, if the city continues with the project without community input.

And she has support. “If the D.E.P. does not adequately provide information to the community about why this site has been chosen and why other sites weren’t chosen—and, more specifically, how the water shaft is going to be connected to the main water tunnel—certainly I would support efforts to gather that information, up to and including a lawsuit,” Assemblyman Bing said.

Calls to the D.D.C. were referred to the D.E.P. Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the D.E.P., said: “We’ve been very open to the with the community and Community Board 6. We’re not concealing any information from them …. We’ve done more outreach on this site than any other shaft site related to Water Tunnel No. 3.”

Downtown Barhoppers Beware

In its ongoing battle to curb bar noise and the proliferation of nightclubs within its district, Community Board 3, on Dec. 20, passed a resolution supporting Assemblywoman Deborah Glick’s Dec. 12 letter to Governor George Pataki requesting that the recently vacated commissioner’s position in the State Liquor Authority be filled by a New York City resident.

In November 2005, S.L.A. chairman Edward F. Kelly announced his retirement after a decade with the authority, shortly after State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer began an investigation into pricing practices in the state liquor industry. A week before, Mr. Pataki had announced the creation of a chief executive post with the S.L.A. to run its day-to-day operations.

A spokesperson for the Governor wouldn’t comment on the selection of the new commissioner, saying only that “the Governor always looks for the most qualified and capable individuals when making appointments.” Joshua Toas, a former Assistant Secretary of State and Assistant Counsel to the Governor (and frequent contributor to Mr. Pataki’s campaign fund), was appointed to the chief executive position of the S.L.A. shortly after it was created.

Critics of the S.L.A. have long said that the authority ignores community input when granting new liquor licenses in New York City, especially in the bar-saturated neighborhoods of the East and West Village and Chelsea. The three neighborhoods have the greatest number of liquor licenses in the city (3,055, 1,866 and 944, respectively), according to a 2005 report prepared by the office of then–City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz.

Because the commissioners of the S.L.A. all live outside the city, critics contend that the S.L.A. is unaware of the acute noise problems and disruption to the community that this proliferation of bars causes. Lately, Board 3 conducted a public hearing to discuss the feasibility of converting Avenue B into a one-way street. Proponents contend that the change would ameliorate traffic noise on the busy weekend nights, but others are concerned that it would irrevocably alter the character of the neighborhood. Other groups have called for a complete moratorium on new liquor licenses for certain neighborhoods in the city.

“We are looking for greater sensitivity from the S.L.A. regarding the impact of granting the large number of licenses in a concentrated area,” Ms. Glick told The Observer. “I think that commissioners that infrequently visit the city—who may not come into some of the downtown areas—they may not have a full understanding of how many people live in the area, and in what proximity to these establishments they live.”

The Department of Environmental Protection, along with the Department of Design and Construction, is currently scoping out sites for the location of Shaft 33B, the latest infrastructure project for the long-awaited Water Tunnel No. 3, the 50-year, $6 billion project to update the city’s water system. But residents in the East 50’s are alarmed that the excavation, tentatively planned for the northwest corner of First Avenue and 59th Street, will disrupt their lives for the years it takes to complete the project.

Community Board 6, in response to these worries, passed a resolution last Wednesday that objected to the selection of any location for Shaft 33B by the D.E.P. “without a consolidated presentation of both the proposed location of 33B and the complete routing plans of the associated water mains … and full community participation in the decision of the routing of those mains.”

At a public hearing on Dec. 5 at the High School of Art and Design, nearly a thousand people packed the auditorium to oppose the D.E.P. plan, and the board’s resolution is another salvo in the ongoing contretemps that threatens to disrupt the project. At the heart of the matter isn’t so much the location of the shaft (although some people are opposed to that), but rather the location of the water mains that will connect the shaft to Water Tunnel No. 3 under Third Avenue.

The D.E.P. is responsible for the location, design and construction of both the water tunnel and Shaft 33B, but the D.D.C. is responsible for the water mains that will connect the two—and that’s where the problems begin. Once the D.E.P. makes a decision where the shaft will be excavated, then the D.D.C. will decide where the water mains should run. And in Manhattan, ripping up the streets to install those water mains will have an enormously detrimental impact on the neighborhood involved, project opponents say.

“We’re opposed to it because they will not tell us the water-main route,” said Linda Saputelli, the chair of the East 50’s Neighborhood Coalition. According to Ms. Saputelli, the site for the water shaft shouldn’t be finalized until the D.D.C. makes public exactly where the water mains will run, how long the construction will last and how the neighborhood will be affected. Ms. Saputelli said that if work on Shaft 33B is approved, the water-mains component of the project will be a fait accompli, without any public oversight of a project that could adversely affect the neighborhood for years to come.

State Assemblyman Jonathan Bing has been working with the East 50’s Neighborhood Coalition to demand answers from the D.E.P. and the D.D.C. “Right now, the big issue is trying to make sure the entire project—both the water shaft and the water main—are viewed as one project,” Mr. Bing told The Observer.

According to the D.E.P., excavation of Shaft 33B could begin as early as the spring of next year and would continue until 2010. Construction of the water mains would begin concurrently and continue after the shaft is completed, finishing up sometime in 2011.

The D.E.P. has released a draft version of the environmental-impact statement for Shaft 33B, and comments were accepted until Dec. 22. The department will now finalize the environmental-impact statement, and responses to comments will be incorporated into the final document.

Ms. Saputelli told The Observer that she is currently contacting elected officials with her group’s concerns to force the D.E.P. and the D.D.C. to open up their selection process for water-main routes. A lawsuit to stop the project is possible, Ms. Saputelli said, if the city continues with the project without community input.

And she has support. “If the D.E.P. does not adequately provide information to the community about why this site has been chosen and why other sites weren’t chosen—and, more specifically, how the water shaft is going to be connected to the main water tunnel—certainly I would support efforts to gather that information, up to and including a lawsuit,” Assemblyman Bing said.

Calls to the D.D.C. were referred to the D.E.P. Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the D.E.P., said: “We’ve been very open to the with the community and Community Board 6. We’re not concealing any information from them …. We’ve done more outreach on this site than any other shaft site related to Water Tunnel No. 3.”

Downtown Barhoppers Beware

In its ongoing battle to curb bar noise and the proliferation of nightclubs within its district, Community Board 3, on Dec. 20, passed a resolution supporting Assemblywoman Deborah Glick’s Dec. 12 letter to Governor George Pataki requesting that the recently vacated commissioner’s position in the State Liquor Authority be filled by a New York City resident.

In November 2005, S.L.A. chairman Edward F. Kelly announced his retirement after a decade with the authority, shortly after State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer began an investigation into pricing practices in the state liquor industry. A week before, Mr. Pataki had announced the creation of a chief executive post with the S.L.A. to run its day-to-day operations.

A spokesperson for the Governor wouldn’t comment on the selection of the new commissioner, saying only that “the Governor always looks for the most qualified and capable individuals when making appointments.” Joshua Toas, a former Assistant Secretary of State and Assistant Counsel to the Governor (and frequent contributor to Mr. Pataki’s campaign fund), was appointed to the chief executive position of the S.L.A. shortly after it was created.

Critics of the S.L.A. have long said that the authority ignores community input when granting new liquor licenses in New York City, especially in the bar-saturated neighborhoods of the East and West Village and Chelsea. The three neighborhoods have the greatest number of liquor licenses in the city (3,055, 1,866 and 944, respectively), according to a 2005 report prepared by the office of then–City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz.

Because the commissioners of the S.L.A. all live outside the city, critics contend that the S.L.A. is unaware of the acute noise problems and disruption to the community that this proliferation of bars causes. Lately, Board 3 conducted a public hearing to discuss the feasibility of converting Avenue B into a one-way street. Proponents contend that the change would ameliorate traffic noise on the busy weekend nights, but others are concerned that it would irrevocably alter the character of the neighborhood. Other groups have called for a complete moratorium on new liquor licenses for certain neighborhoods in the city.

“We are looking for greater sensitivity from the S.L.A. regarding the impact of granting the large number of licenses in a concentrated area,” Ms. Glick told The Observer. “I think that commissioners that infrequently visit the city—who may not come into some of the downtown areas—they may not have a full understanding of how many people live in the area, and in what proximity to these establishments they live.”

The Department of Environmental Protection, along with the Department of Design and Construction, is currently scoping out sites for the location of Shaft 33B, the latest infrastructure project for the long-awaited Water Tunnel No. 3, the 50-year, $6 billion project to update the city’s water system. But residents in the East 50’s are alarmed that the excavation, tentatively planned for the northwest corner of First Avenue and 59th Street, will disrupt their lives for the years it takes to complete the project.

Community Board 6, in response to these worries, passed a resolution last Wednesday that objected to the selection of any location for Shaft 33B by the D.E.P. “without a consolidated presentation of both the proposed location of 33B and the complete routing plans of the associated water mains … and full community participation in the decision of the routing of those mains.”

At a public hearing on Dec. 5 at the High School of Art and Design, nearly a thousand people packed the auditorium to oppose the D.E.P. plan, and the board’s resolution is another salvo in the ongoing contretemps that threatens to disrupt the project. At the heart of the matter isn’t so much the location of the shaft (although some people are opposed to that), but rather the location of the water mains that will connect the shaft to Water Tunnel No. 3 under Third Avenue.

The D.E.P. is responsible for the location, design and construction of both the water tunnel and Shaft 33B, but the D.D.C. is responsible for the water mains that will connect the two—and that’s where the problems begin. Once the D.E.P. makes a decision where the shaft will be excavated, then the D.D.C. will decide where the water mains should run. And in Manhattan, ripping up the streets to install those water mains will have an enormously detrimental impact on the neighborhood involved, project opponents say.

“We’re opposed to it because they will not tell us the water-main route,” said Linda Saputelli, the chair of the East 50’s Neighborhood Coalition. According to Ms. Saputelli, the site for the water shaft shouldn’t be finalized until the D.D.C. makes public exactly where the water mains will run, how long the construction will last and how the neighborhood will be affected. Ms. Saputelli said that if work on Shaft 33B is approved, the water-mains component of the project will be a fait accompli, without any public oversight of a project that could adversely affect the neighborhood for years to come.

State Assemblyman Jonathan Bing has been working with the East 50’s Neighborhood Coalition to demand answers from the D.E.P. and the D.D.C. “Right now, the big issue is trying to make sure the entire project—both the water shaft and the water main—are viewed as one project,” Mr. Bing told The Observer.

According to the D.E.P., excavation of Shaft 33B could begin as early as the spring of next year and would continue until 2010. Construction of the water mains would begin concurrently and continue after the shaft is completed, finishing up sometime in 2011.

The D.E.P. has released a draft version of the environmental-impact statement for Shaft 33B, and comments were accepted until Dec. 22. The department will now finalize the environmental-impact statement, and responses to comments will be incorporated into the final document.

Ms. Saputelli told The Observer that she is currently contacting elected officials with her group’s concerns to force the D.E.P. and the D.D.C. to open up their selection process for water-main routes. A lawsuit to stop the project is possible, Ms. Saputelli said, if the city continues with the project without community input.

And she has support. “If the D.E.P. does not adequately provide information to the community about why this site has been chosen and why other sites weren’t chosen—and, more specifically, how the water shaft is going to be connected to the main water tunnel—certainly I would support efforts to gather that information, up to and including a lawsuit,” Assemblyman Bing said.

Calls to the D.D.C. were referred to the D.E.P. Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the D.E.P., said: “We’ve been very open to the with the community and Community Board 6. We’re not concealing any information from them …. We’ve done more outreach on this site than any other shaft site related to Water Tunnel No. 3.”

Downtown Barhoppers Beware

In its ongoing battle to curb bar noise and the proliferation of nightclubs within its district, Community Board 3, on Dec. 20, passed a resolution supporting Assemblywoman Deborah Glick’s Dec. 12 letter to Governor George Pataki requesting that the recently vacated commissioner’s position in the State Liquor Authority be filled by a New York City resident.

In November 2005, S.L.A. chairman Edward F. Kelly announced his retirement after a decade with the authority, shortly after State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer began an investigation into pricing practices in the state liquor industry. A week before, Mr. Pataki had announced the creation of a chief executive post with the S.L.A. to run its day-to-day operations.

A spokesperson for the Governor wouldn’t comment on the selection of the new commissioner, saying only that “the Governor always looks for the most qualified and capable individuals when making appointments.” Joshua Toas, a former Assistant Secretary of State and Assistant Counsel to the Governor (and frequent contributor to Mr. Pataki’s campaign fund), was appointed to the chief executive position of the S.L.A. shortly after it was created.

Critics of the S.L.A. have long said that the authority ignores community input when granting new liquor licenses in New York City, especially in the bar-saturated neighborhoods of the East and West Village and Chelsea. The three neighborhoods have the greatest number of liquor licenses in the city (3,055, 1,866 and 944, respectively), according to a 2005 report prepared by the office of then–City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz.

Because the commissioners of the S.L.A. all live outside the city, critics contend that the S.L.A. is unaware of the acute noise problems and disruption to the community that this proliferation of bars causes. Lately, Board 3 conducted a public hearing to discuss the feasibility of converting Avenue B into a one-way street. Proponents contend that the change would ameliorate traffic noise on the busy weekend nights, but others are concerned that it would irrevocably alter the character of the neighborhood. Other groups have called for a complete moratorium on new liquor licenses for certain neighborhoods in the city.

“We are looking for greater sensitivity from the S.L.A. regarding the impact of granting the large number of licenses in a concentrated area,” Ms. Glick told The Observer. “I think that commissioners that infrequently visit the city—who may not come into some of the downtown areas—they may not have a full understanding of how many people live in the area, and in what proximity to these establishments they live.”