Latest news with #ChristopherMarte
New York Times
23-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Elizabeth Street Garden Saved as Adams Kills Plan for Housing on Site
An acre-wide garden in Lower Manhattan that has over the last decade become a flashpoint in citywide debates over open space and housing development will be preserved under a new agreement that the Adams administration announced on Monday. Under its terms, the city will abandon a longtime plan to build an affordable housing complex for older New Yorkers on the site, the Elizabeth Street Garden. The first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, said the administration has instead struck a deal with Councilman Christopher Marte, a Manhattan Democrat, to support rezonings at three different sites in his district that could create more than 600 affordable housing units. The announcement marked a significant victory for defenders of the space, which over the years came to include a roster of celebrities and notable downtown figures, like Patti Smith and Robert De Niro. 'This is a win-win,' Mr. Mastro said. At the same time, it left supporters of the original plan furious that the administration could perform such a dramatic about-face after years of planning and legal fights and the pressing urgency of a protracted housing crisis. 'Amidst a severe housing and affordability crisis, Mayor Adams, First Deputy Mayor Mastro, and their administration have betrayed New Yorkers who are in desperate need of affordable homes,' Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker, said in a statement.
CBS News
23-06-2025
- Business
- CBS News
NYC's Elizabeth Street Garden will be saved in a deal that includes 620 affordable housing units, sources say
New York City's beloved Elizabeth Street Garden will be saved after a yearslong battle to preserve it, sources tell CBS News New York's political reporter Marcia Kramer. The garden was set to close this spring and be replaced with affordable housing for seniors, despite lawsuits and pleas from the community to preserve the park. Sources say Mayor Eric Adams has signed an agreement with Councilmember Christopher Marte, who represents the garden's district in Manhattan, to move forward with a plan that preserves the garden for the public and relocates the affordable housing nearby. Under the deal, the city will allow the garden to remain open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily and, in exchange, Marte will support rezoning three other sites for even more affordable housing than had been initially planned. The mayor says this plan will lead to more than 620 new affordable homes, as opposed to the original 123 that would have been built at the garden site. "The best way to tackle our city's housing crisis is to build as much affordable housing as we can. The agreement announced today will help us meet that mission by creating more than five times the affordable housing originally planned while preserving a beloved local public space and expanding access to it," Adams said in a prepared statement. "This is what smart, responsible leadership looks like: bringing people together to reach common sense solutions that create more housing and protect green space." "This incredible win-win for our community shows exactly why we should never give up," said Marte. "Since the beginning of this fight almost a decade ago, we've been saying that we can save community gardens and build new affordable housing. And with this historic agreement with Mayor Eric Adams, this will be the largest influx of new, permanently affordable housing in Lower Manhattan in decades." contributed to this report.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
NYC Council regulates tourist helicopters following fatal crash and noise concerns
NEW YORK (PIX11) — Two weeks removed from that fatal chopper crash that claimed the lives of six people, the New York City Council is taking aim at tourist helicopters. On Thursday, the City Council passed legislation designed to make them quieter and safer — while conceding they would ideally like to do more. More Local News If signed into law, the city would ban non-essential tourist and commercial helicopter flights that don't meet the strictest of FAA noise standards. 'The most outdated, loudest and dirtiest helicopters will no longer be allowed to fly out of our downtown Manhattan heliport or East 34th Street heliport,' said New York City Council member Amanda Farías. The hope is that regulating helicopters in this way not only would improve noise concerns particularly for Manhattanites, but also improve safety because only more modern, clean, safe helicopters can meet these noise standards. More: Latest News from Around the Tri-State However, the new law, which would go into effect in 2029, would not regulate the many tourism flights that originate from the Garden State. So the City Council is engaging with legislative partners across the river and formally calling on the New York State Legislature to completely block non-essential flights from launching in Manhattan and to impose a so-called noise tax on choppers buzzing over Manhattan. Moreover, the City Council would ideally like the FAA to ban tourist flights over New York City altogether but concede that's unlikely to happen anytime soon. 'We do need our federal colleagues to take action, but if we don't take action in the City Council, they won't have the incentive or pressure to take that next step,' said New York City Council member Christopher Marte. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
14-03-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Could This Be the End of the Party in Dimes Square?
On Wednesday, the New York City Council convened to vote on matters of critical importance: organic waste collection, blockchain technology, the upcoming mayoral race and 18 red bistro chairs that dot the corner of Canal and Ludlow Streets. Like hundreds of restaurateurs across the city, Jon Neidich, an owner of Le Dive, applied for a permit last year for sidewalk seating outside of his buzzy wine bar on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Under ordinary circumstances, his application would have been approved or rejected by the Department of Transportation, and never even considered by the City Council. Instead, Christopher Marte, a Council member who represents the area, brought it before the full Council for a vote — an unusual move given support from Le Dive's community board. The Council rejected it. 'Le Dive has demonstrated a continuous disregard for sidewalk cafe regulation,' Mr. Marte said during a committee meeting before the vote, 'and at this time cannot be trusted to be a good steward of this program and must be held accountable.' These kind of permits are being debated across the city. But there's something about one quarter-mile stretch of Canal Street. This expanse between Chinatown and the Lower East Side has become known as 'Dimes Square,' a destination for hip, young New Yorkers. During the pandemic, fast and loose enforcement of sidewalk and street dining solidified Dimes Square as a subculture and a micro-neighborhood, even briefly appearing on Google Maps. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
