practical application and my day job is architecture i'm the principal of a small historic preservation practice only work on adaptive for years i'm also the chair of landmark preservation group on the upper west side and i had no idea how important the community was in listening and getting involved with projects and richard and i as you know he wants told me he wanted to be an architect and i told him i had no interest in being a lawyer so we make a very good team it's been a very enjoyable and and incredible learning experience we've been to a working with you on many projects so things so technical why is it so important to the local community first thing that people have to get their minds around it looks like every inch of our community is already built and that's basically true but what we've discovered over the past few decades is that what's built thirty forty fifty years ago gets rebuilt and gets rebuilt bigger taller buildings conformity of the buildings to the community character the density of the buildings and what you should can be placed in the buildings  without that regulation you would have a hodgepodge of different buildings and different heights and you have manufacture uses next to residential uses leg use regulation is intended there's no one's work that way but it's intended to regularize the process and require developers to comply with certain basic rules of for well use and that's governed by what we called the  the zoning resolution which page i will talk about i think i would add to that that we don't fortunately or fortunately see all the projects that come before a board i mean before that are being built  only look at special permits and we also look at variances and we look at text amendments and we've actually had the privilege of some of the senior statesmen on the community board when i joined i was very involved in actually changing the zoning text and that is by listening to the community and as richard said working within the framework of city planning so i think it plays an important role in monitoring the growth of our city and the character because we live in a in an extraordinary district that is has an enormous amount of cultural parkland as as well historic structures and we strive to look at the balance between new and old and the renewal of our community because we do we're not against development we just want it to be appropriate to our community what have been some recent projects that  two very real objective one parky in the earlier providing very badly need to go for double housing we had to reconcile those and come to a decision about what which of those built there developer came along and hired a very well known and very accomplished are going to develop a very well thought out plan which the community board we think improved  on and the result has been that there are now four or five depending on how you count them there are large residential buildings in that area and in the school and the entire west end avenue area  somebody built two very large and out of context buildings on broadway and one hundredth and as a result of that we got together with the city planning and development the reasoning to make sure that that couldn't happen again  that whatever was built in that area conformed to the to the to what was already there we've also been involved in the use of land on columbus together with city planning and rezone that area so that developers if they wanted to could engage what we call in feel that is building one or two story structures out  to the property line which would add a certain amount of street life and retail to those avenues and we've had a few fairly successful projects as a result of that those are just some unusual because we were fixing something that had been designed as a modern movement type of district or subdistrict in our neighborhood but we were tired of looking at concrete walls and as we used to say pictures and pills and big dog faces hanging in the store fronts so that one oddly enough that text amendment needed to have one of the developers bring a project that would establish the rules for all of them to be able to do it so it bred it was funny in a way funny peculiar because that first project we ended up with the same architect coming back i'm doing variations on a theme and we realized we have to be careful what we want or wish for when we're doing text amendments we have to allow for different size retail we have to allow for colors and heights and different types of objects that might be on display  and then of course the the issue became we had a downturn in retail and suddenly we had a different type of person or use which was the fitness centers moving in that covered up all these windows that we were trying to create to live in the street so i would i would have to say that the most challenging project we've had has been the the repair to urban escape that  made too simple and we try to complicate it we fixed our mistakes for that for a compas in amsterdam and we took it another step which was to regulate the size of storefronts because we realized in doing that we were neglecting the small retailer and i think that's one of our successes it's not a big deal but i think it helps add diversity to the merchant market and it also brought together other committees that we work with transportation d c i our consumer group as well as transportation so it's it's funny that land use may seem technical but it actually touches so many aspects of routine daily life crossing the street where you shop how far you want to walk is there an awning you know and it's been i think very rewarding that that component of our work  just a couple of projects of people may be familiar with lincoln center has done a fair amount of building over the years to build apartment houses with between fifty sixty six and sixty six street  right they had to come to us not for approval but for our advice and consent and we had considerable input we think improved their project same thing with fordham university which some of our comments and efforts we should add to that in addition to looking inward to our district sometimes we're asked to look citywide in the issues and one of the biggest ones that happened fairly recently was the mandatory inclusionary housing and zoning qualities seek a way and that was really remarkable because i think that was the first time on the board that we had full voice from virtually every member of the community of our community and every sector don't you saying yes we had a lot of input and and then was it going through the hearing process with city planning i think we were i think that was the time we finally realized that it was after months of public hearings but the idea is that it's to incorporate a set aside for twenty five to thirty percent i think of affordable housing and new buildings it was to incentivize developers  discourage them which is what happened in riverside center i think where the affordable housing can be traded between sites and i moved sometimes even out of our district so i think this was that was another well it's it's disturbing because i think the general public thinks that anything that's built you can say something and it's the inverse is true only those that require variances or special permits or text amendments that may be associated with a project do we actually review and so as of right has been a what do you call the touchstone for the new super trolls because we are learning that even though we have a remarkable document that became the model for many cities across america for zoning regulation as richard said high bulk density  setbacks suddenly we're faced with a new architecture that soars higher broader and differently than we ever imagined that for some reason is not being reviewed in the public realm and it's creating havoc with what we thought was the norm you know used to think if you bought a building next to a church nothing would be would stand in the way of a new building because who's going to mess with a church or transferred if you're a start building so suddenly we're in the realm of all these changes to our environment which are considered as a right because there is no mechanism i think for the public to two way yet and it's very to come to community boards for input because they will get floor area of bonus that is to say and maybe i should back up and describe how that works in new york the basic tool for regulating the size of buildings is what is called the floor area ratio and it's very simple you take the area of the lot that is if there's a hundred by hundred lot you have thousand square foot area and you multiply it by a multiplier which can range from two to ten and in some areas sixteen or seventeen sure if you know in our ten residential ten if they are there is it somebody used the entire lot which is really not possible they could build a ten story building for me maybe developers in the early in the seventy's and eighty's came to us to do for four additional floor area and they were willing to trade with us for aesthetic improvements that the board felt  were were important such as i can't remember specific buildings but i can remember the first building that was built after that tool was taken away and it was it became i won't tell you the name of the building but  i was you know i as an hour taked that does research on historic buildings i've found myself having to wrestle with what is a super tall you know you think of the empire state building our world trade center area midtown manhattan but in fact i spoke to somebody at the skyscraper museum and they said a super tall is actually its own class and it's should be over anywhere from over nine hundred thirty feet to some people say a live one hundred or twelve hundred feet and it's been made possible by new techniques in pumping concrete which are quicker and then erecting steel it's a lot cheaper and they can actually start at the bottom of the building and then a few floors away start hanging the cladding once the concrete is sad so they became super in other words and unusual as well as very tall and very quickly i think that has caught everyone by surprise even our city agencies the buildings department and city planning had no idea that these buildings could be formed on smaller lots are remember we used to make a big deal over slender buildings on narrow a lot so a sliver law and these have just mushroom across the city and one can understand why the problem though is that they are not community friendly they do not relate to the context of neighborhoods so are there some buildings that are just under  from one community boards that we do the first one that came to our attention was two hundred amsterdam and that when i believe it's about seven hundred seventy five feet and that one was created by an unusual lot condition that was subject to  zoning challenge which was sadly not accepted but it set the stage for different shapes buildings a building setbacks and apartment sizes that we had never thought of before that the increase in that new architecture with coupled with the technology created other mechanisms where the developers could insert mechanisms to grow their buildings even taller by not including space that would be typically designated for residential but for mechanical spaces and we suddenly had floors that were no longer ten foot on average for residential that were growing to sixteen feet and then mechanical voids anywhere from i think one hundred sixty one i believe is another building on the east side where it's almost in excess of two hundred feet and it grows the building they're allowed to exist because the buildings department has no minimum requirement or maximum it is just to accommodate the equipment so even though they knew quitman might be eight feet tall they can go in spaces that are over one hundred feet or and that's changing our skyline rather dramatically and that's only one of the i think our bureau president calls them loop holes now where they're invisible when you plan it and you see it filed until you get the zoning declaration and you can then see how the building currently formulated regulates the bulk of the the density of a building but not the height and the bulk except in certain confined areas so we talked about if they are as long as the multiple of square feet of the it up a lot times the number of floors produces a combined floor area under the allowed if they are it's legal and the zoning resolution is blind to what page describe which of these void spaces it's blind to and some of these buildings they have sixteen twenty foot high ceilings for apartments particularly on the higher floors it's a sixteen story a sixteen foot floor in a building quite large is exactly the in march the borough president i think understands the issue is sympathetic but we've started to circulate this to other community boards which are experiencing similar unwanted construction and we hope before long to be able to meet with city planning and present our views and some of our or ideas for a  the problem i talked earlier about as of right versus special permit buildings and the fact that we had we had the special permit process many many years ago which is her tail it ma out we can deal easily with the loopholes that we know about the void spaces or the two hundred feet void spaces in the purchase of those by the way you show that people can buy apartments nine hundred feet above the street and those apartments are much more valuable than an apartment that's only six and the book the street i don't know why but seems to be the case can i add just a few things here that impact what richard and i both feel is the context and that is the impact not only to our district but the shadows that are cast i remember when the time warner center went up people protested by opening umbrellas in the area and to simulate shadow and now we're concerned about sustainability we don't know how much this how much of a draw of water and energy are going to be brought into these buildings we don't know how people are going  to service the buildings in the event of an emergency they're challenging a lot of things that we take for granted in construction that need to be reviewed and they've they've kind of turned everyone's attention including our council member alan rosenthal has been terrific and her fight against two hundred amsterdam and i know she's going to be participating in this project on sixty six straight  them is twenty five story building this has been great working with you both on this time so mean that we are going to be hearing a lot more about super tall sam about some land use issues that are going to come up over the next  for coming today and taking your time to talk to us about land use and some of the issues that face committee board seven going forward committee board seven thanks you for listening to us and we hope you'll turn into our next show and we hope you'll come to our community board meetings and be part of the community