In the Shadows

By Lynn Pacifico

The city that never sleeps is asleep while residents lose agency over what happens to their neighborhood. With changes in building requirements from The City Of Yes (TCOY), which does not promote affordability, it is clear that administrative actions do not improve quality of life. We’re watching the destruction of our historic village, allowing special interests to steal our land and subvert our resources, dismantling what took generations to build. Now they want to force us into the shadows.

We’ve relinquished responsibility to the community boards which have authority to represent us without accountability. Here there are less obvious but no less destructive conflicts of interest. In my opinion, our community boards and parks are driven by league sports interests. One ex-league president orchestrated the sports takeover of parks in park-starved downtown through lobbying elected officials and community board appointments and control.

I alerted our elected officials about this conflict of interest but city officials, who accept campaign funding, did nothing. How many in positions of power are being paid?

While the percentage of our ball-playing population is very low, all three West Village fields, Pier 40, Gansevoort, and JJ Walker, are fenced for ball sports leaving the rest of us with no field. The excuse for this land grab is the addition of the Hudson River Park which has accomplished much with little land as far as activities, science labs, and gardens. But in reality, the park is a promenade with a narrow lawn along a six lane highway. One doesn’t relax to the sound of birds there as nature’s sounds are drowned out by traffic and the breezes don’t carry nature’s perfume but vehicle exhaust.

JJ Walker was our neighborhood multi-use field but now we are fined for using it. Now, the adult players on our field come from places where there are plenty of parkland and fields and we are left without a basic human need to benefit from its grounding life-giving energies.

In his upcoming book, Indoor Epidemic, John La Puma, M.D. illustrates that staying indoors ages us. His prescription is intentionally modest. Seven percent of your time should be spent outdoors. That’s about 100 minutes a day or two to five intentional hours per week. He wrote, “The evidence spans sleep research, metabolic health, mental health, and cardiovascular disease.”

With no nature downtown, the Elizabeth St. Garden and 388 Hudson were promised to us for parkland but officials pitted one neighborhood against the other saying only one could be saved while deals were made in the dark to develop both.

If plastic grass and asphalt are green or there are a couple of bushes, officials can call any spot a park or “green space.” The southern portion of 388 Hudson is slated to be a seating area. However, tall buildings surrounding it and a new building on the lot’s northern half will complete a cavern around this seating area, keeping out sunlight. We need real nature, not a small shadowed asphalt and plastic corner.

The Village is one of the oldest developed areas in the country and the West Village has been in hyper development for the last 50 years. We are already tight for space and have the fewest parks in the city. With all the new development we need more parkland, not less.

Community Board 2 (CB2) Parks Committee should be finding more parkland, not facilitating the loss of the last open spot in the neighborhood. Yet they betrayed us and lobbied instead to build on it. With CB2 doing nothing, the NYC Parks Department, instead of restoring the much loved Tony Dapolito Rec Center with the millions set aside for its repair, let it sit five years. This “demolition from neglect” left many children who used the pool with nothing. Now, despite public opposition, the Parks Department wants to tear it down.

CB2 Parks advocated to build affordable housing, with no guarantee of affordable permanence, but a rec center at 388 Hudson. The current design has 30 floors, with seniors living on higher floors. That is a fire trap. If the grid goes down ─ with Hurricane Sandy it took ten days to restore power to everyone ─ how would EMS get seniors down 30 flights on a stretcher? Who would get food up to everyone? A tower that high will cover JJ Walker in shadow and kill thousands of birds yearly.

These development decisions, made by people with agendas divorced from the greater good of the community, are irreversible. This used to be a low-rise village but now we have concrete canyons. It used to be quiet here but now with the increased population, the sidewalks are busy and crowded.

Acting locally: The actions below are necessities for making our neighborhood healthier, more equitable and ecological, toward saving the spirit of our village.

Ecology: The Gansevoort Peninsula has a huge fake grass field which negatively impacts everything including birds, Monarch butterflies and insects which have greatly diminished or disappeared. If this continues we will too. This is the only place in this district where it is possible to create a natural area, including an enclosed children’s nature play area. Local trees, bushes and grasses support ecosystems, and sustain life. Remove the plastic grass which destroys the earth’s microbiome and devote the Gansevoort Peninsular to nature.

Parks: Each New York City district needs a multi-use field to be used as community specific needs determine. Pier 40 has multiple fields and indoor spaces for league sports so give JJ Walker back to our community.

Affordable Housing: Where possible, do conversion in this neighborhood, once an industrial area with characterful printing industry and storage buildings,

Tony Dapolito Recreation Center: This site could be repaired and incorporated into a new building, preserving it and building above instead of 388 Hudson. This would save our promised parkland. Make the building shorter so seniors are not isolated on higher floors.

Beyond individual biases and a few power seekers, I believe that most people on the community board are sincere but they must go along with league sports. Residents need to attend or Zoom CB2 meetings, especially Parks Committee meetings. Do not vote for anyone who voted for TCOY or is connected to league sports. Unless you are in real estate or play league sports, they do not have your interest at heart.

Different neighborhoods have their own special energy, which is why people dream of visiting and living here. But our neighborhoods are losing the character that makes them unique, none more so than the Village which will become just another high-rise, characterless neighborhood if we keep sleeping.

We need to stop the destruction of our Village. No one is coming to save it, not our elected officials nor the community board. It is up to us. Either we wake up or we lose.

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Lynn Pacifico is a fourth generation New Yorker who loves dogs, nature and New York City.