West of 6th Avenue — Special Election April 28!

District 3 City Council Candidates Discuss Preservation Issues

By Phyllis Eckhaus

Villagers west of 6th Avenue have had Erik Bottcher as their City Council Members since 2022. (East of 6th, Harvey Epstein is the new City Council Member). In February Bottcher was elected to replace Brad Hoylman-Sigal in the State Senate (a district which includes the northwest Village). A nonpartisan election to fill the vacancy is set for April 28. Early voting starts April 18.

District 3 — the City Council district encompassing all of the Village west of Sixth Ave. and extending south to Canal Street and north to 55th Street — is a hotbed of land use and preservation issues. On March 10, Village Preservation hosted an online candidates forum.

Among the four candidates — Leslie Boghosian Murphy, Lindsey Boylan, Layla Law-Gisiko, and Carl Wilson — Wilson was the only one who did not to support fully rehabilitating the shuttered West Village Dapolito Recreation Center and was the most pro-development, including support for market-rate housing. Law-Gisiko was the only candidate to oppose demolition at the Fulton and Elliot-Chelsea Houses public housing complex.

Here are some highlights of the forum discussion:

How would candidates counter the dramatic drop in landmark designations and Village Preservation’s characterization of “false claims” that landmarking obstructs needed housing construction?

• Law-Gisiko condemned the pro-development lobby’s “entirely false” narrative countering that preservation has “an immense role” in preserving and creating affordable housing. She would work with Chris Marte, the new chair of the Council’s landmarks subcommittee, “making sure we continue to designate our historic landmarks and that we fight any attempt to demolish landmark properties.
• Boylan agreed, “We need to support an increase in landmark status, particularly reaching out to underrepresented communities.” She vowed to work closely with Village Preservation and “fight the notion that there is any connection between landmark status and less affordable housing.”
• Boghosian Murphy said the trend is “troubling” and spotlighted a Village Preservation finding that recent landmark designations have extended protections to properties that are safe, not threatened. Neighborhoods “facing demolition pressures,” she observed, include “older housing stock that provides naturally occurring affordability.”
• Wilson also rejected “the false choice between housing and preservation.” He said the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) needs full funding so it can be “calendaring these things faster, and with greater transparency.”

How would candidates hold developers and property owners accountable for the destruction they have inflicted on Village landmarks?

• Calling incidents of destruction “so unacceptable,” Boghosian Murphy would “push for stronger penalties, automatic stop work orders in serious cases, and better coordination between city agencies” as well as protections for displaced tenants.
• Citing the Council’s oversight role, Wilson said, “We need to be doing everything we can to make sure that LPC and the Department of Buildings are meeting their obligations” to enforce the law. He called for “real fines” to penalize demolition by neglect.
• Law-Gisiko promised to use the office to stop demolition by neglect before property owners cause irreversible damage to landmarks. She emphasized providing support to owners of landmarked properties — such as the historic tax credit to promote building rehab.
• Boylan proposed working with Mayor Mamdani’s multiple initiatives to hold bad landlords accountable, saying, “We need to make sure that landmarks and preservation are at the table.”

Should the Dapolito Recreation Center be preserved or demolished?

• Boylan said that the “entire building, not just the mural” needs to be preserved “to the extent possible” and that she would push the Mamdani administration to do so.
• Boghosian Murphy would “fight to see the building repaired, restored, modernized, and reopened in a manner consistent with its landmark status….I would be the first one swimming in the pool.”
• Wilson, who supports the plan to build a replacement recreation center at 388 Hudson, called for retaining “the visible facade” at Dapolito and promised to fight for capital funding so that what results “can serve the community in ways that are modern.”
• Law-Gisiko said Dapolito needs to be preserved as a recreation center “inside and out” and stressed that more than $100 million in capital funding that could be used for rehabilitation has been in the city budget for years. Although Adams planned to use the money for demolition, she noted it is “not earmarked for a specific plan.”

Where do the candidates stand on the proposed tower at 388 Hudson? The plan includes a replacement recreation center and some affordable housing, albeit not clearly “permanently affordable.”

• Wilson decried the tower design as looking “like Star Trek” and promised to negotiate design changes while advocating for all the housing units to be made permanently affordable.
• Boylan emphasized permanent affordability, attention to the shadows a tower may cast, preserving Dapolito, and “listening to the community.”
• In addition to asserting that she would rework the “massing of the building,” Law-Gisiko targeted tax break programs that encourage developers to build “woefully out-of-scale” towers with “too much market rate housing” in exchange for developing relatively few units of expensive “affordable housing.” She would seek to introduce better policy to spur affordable housing.
• Boghosian Murphy would seek to reduce the height and bulk of the building and to obtain “enforceable guarantees that the housing remains permanently and deeply affordable.” She also underscored the significance of shadows and light.

---

SPONSORED

 

---

Where do the candidates stand on the city’s Gansevoort Square proposal? It calls for a 600-foot tower, with an unspecified amount of super-luxury housing, to be built on public land.

• Law-Gisiko believes in “public land for public good” and opposes for-profit ventures on public land. She proclaimed, “It is about time that we stop believing that the only way to support affordable housing is through this [public-private] cross-subsidization,” contending this tactic backfires by inflating housing prices.
• Wilson called the Gansevoort Square tower “too tall” and suggested that with a new mayoral administration there’s a new opportunity to advocate for “100% affordable” housing on site.
• Boylan agreed with Wilson on the opportunity to negotiate with City Hall and said she would seek 100% “deeply affordable” housing on site.
• Boghosian Murphy described the proposal as rushed, without adequate community input, and with insufficient public benefit. She said she would start by asking the city for a master plan of the full Gansevoort Square site.

Where do the candidates stand on upzoning? The city contends this promotes affordable housing, allowing the city potentially to add affordability requirements to new construction, and by increasing supply. The city alleges that any increase in supply, even luxury housing, will make housing more affordable.

• Boylan noted her past opposition to “City of Yes” and the SoHo-NoHo rezoning plan, noting by contrast, she had supported mayoral ballot initiatives 2-4, believing that they “should give us more opportunities to free up affordable housing projects.”
• Wilson described upzonings as a “tool to help combat our affordability and housing crisis” suggesting that they could especially provide leverage for change outside Manhattan, with districts “operating with suburban-style housing.”
• Boghosian Murphy described upzonings without affordable housing mandates as a “giant missed opportunity,” perhaps “well-meaning” but now “susceptible to greedy developers.”
• Law-Gisiko condemned the “neo-liberal view that housing trickles down and that supply is going to solve the affordability crisis” as a trap. “It doesn’t work,” she said, pointing to Hudson Yards as dense and exorbitantly expensive, even with units designated “affordable housing.” She decried “trickle down” policy as having a “perverse effect” by increasing the value of underlying land, thus undermining affordability.

What past Village council member might they compare themselves to, with regard to preservation and development issues?

• Boylan, instead, pointed to Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal “because of his deep experience in both planning issues and preservation.” As to past council members, she said, “No disrespect, but I’m charting a new way.”
• Boghosian Murphy also hesitated to compare her perspective to a past council member, saying she thinks she would do a better job negotiating on the community’s behalf by, for example, securing mandatory community benefit agreements from developers.
• Law-Gisiko cited former Council Member Tom Duane as her role model, someone with “a strong commitment to residents having a seat at the table” who helped secure the “community-driven” community-board-sponsored plan for Chelsea in 1996, striking a “balance between affordable housing, historic preservation, and the creation and protection of parks.”
• Wilson said he would more proactively promote preservation than his predecessors, especially with regard to landmarking Hell’s Kitchen sites, such as the Paddy’s Market proposal.

What are the candidates’ positions over plans to demolish and redevelop, with private developers, the NYCHA projects at the Fulton and Elliot-Chelsea sites?

• Boghosian Murphy asserted that the controversy is wrongly framed as “demo or no demo” (demolition) and that the issues are more nuanced. She characterized the potential control of public housing by a for-profit developer as a “very slippery slope.”
• Law-Gisiko would “entirely embrace the ‘no demolition’ narrative because it is the right narrative,” that tenants wanted and advocated for. “Demolition [and] the concentration of public housing tenants into six buildings, creating ‘poor buildings’ as opposed to ‘poor doors,’ an entirely segregated development, is a very bad idea. I strongly support Section 9 (federally funded public) housing…it has to be front and center in these conversations.”
• Wilson argued that “Section 9 is not a stable funding source at the federal level. That’s part of why we’re in this problem…this multi-billion dollar deficit at NYCHA.” He looked forward to being able to advocate improvements via the upcoming land use negotiation, including an upgrade to PS 33, using brick and stone so that it “looks like Chelsea.”
• Boylan condemned the widespread “mistrust” and “fear” generated by the redevelopment plan and suggested the only way forward was a “re-vote” by NYCHA tenants, overseen by an independent entity. She characterized reliance on Section 9 funding as a “disingenuous” position that would prevent repairs because the funding is not forthcoming.

---

The video recording of the forum and detailed candidate questionnaires are accessible via Village Preservation’s website and its YouTube channel.