A Note from Senior Editor Arthur Schwartz: In May the City Council approved a rezoning for a parcel on West Street, just to the north of Houston Street, which will allow all sorts of tax breaks for two building, one with 175 “affordable” rental units, and one with 130 condos. Back in 2018, when the air rights for Pier 40 were transferred, with City Council permission, to the St. John’s Terminal site, on the south side of Houston, in return for a $100 million payment to shore up Pier 40, I was a supporter. I wrote about it in WestView because there was a promise to build over 500 apartments, one-third of which were going to go to seniors, at deeply affordable rents, and because it was going to include a reasonably priced supermarket and other local services. This was a plan touted by the City Council Speaker Corey Johnson as a win-win. But there was a loophole, which Johnson didn’t warn us about, and when the owners sold to Google, no housing was developed on the St. John’s site. Frankly, no matter how beautiful the Google site is, and the fact that they asked for no tax breaks (unlike Amazon), this was one of the greatest zoning-real estate sellouts in Greenwich Village history. Jane Jacobs is turning in her grave!