Land Use

And Maloney isn’t the only outspoken ally of the park, as Borough President Gale Brewer, City Councilmember Ben Kallos, State Senator Liz Krueger, and Assemblymembers Dan Quart and Rebecca Seawright have also joined the call for de-privatization.

For Kallos, it was his first time in the Queensboro Oval because, he said, Sutton East’s tennis bubbles made the space inaccessible for a majority of the year.

In crunching the numbers, the councilmember compared the $80 to $225 per hour costs of playing at Sutton East Tennis Club to the city permits that have tennis fees of just $200 a year (though the Parks Department has noted the availability of free and reduced programming at the facility).

“This space is on an order of magnitude more expensive by 15 times than a comparable space run by the Parks Department,” Kallos said. “Worse yet, this is what the space looks like when they gave it back… an empty lot with dirt.”

The Council bill, backed by members Ben Kallos and Donovan Richards, would require the Department of City Planning to create a map of the spaces and report twice a year on the status of each POPS. It would also mandate the DOB to report annually on complaints and violations.

In May, City Council member Ben Kallos accused DDG of violating the spirit of zoning laws.

Amid complaints from community advocates, the city’s Department of Buildings launched an audit of the project and issued a temporary stop work order.

One donor gobbled the Lower East Side nursing home where apparently clueless city administrators lifted a deed restriction based on the buyer’s pinky promise to keep it a health facility — then flipped it for condominiums.

Another blotted out the Upper East Side sky with a luxury tower many stories taller than zoning allows because the Department of Buildings got outfoxed by a wily developer who bent the rules.

Both of those fails came to light only because community boards and City Council members Margaret Chin and Ben Kallos sprang into action at the behest of constituents who had gotten the cold shoulder from the mayor’s side of City Hall.

Councilman Ben Kallos wrote a letter to the DOB pushing the agency to issue the stop work order on May 16.

"New Yorkers have won a rare victory over developers by stopping a skyscraper in a residential neighborhood," Kallos said in a statement. "I am glad we stopped this loophole before it was too late."

Citywide Administrative Services Commissioner Lisette Camilo testified at a City Council hearing two weeks ago that she would share records on more than a dozen properties with pending restriction changes, but according to Brewer and Councilman Ben Kallos, she still hasn’t.

The requests come several months after the city lifted deed restrictions on the Rivington House nursing home, paving the way for the property to be sold to a developer that plans to convert it to luxury housing — a deal now being investigated by the US Attorney’s Office.

Kallos suggested the delay could hurt the mayor’s spending plan. “We need to see it before we pass the budget,” he said.

City Council Member Ben Kallos is accusing Joe McMillan’s DDG Partners of using a novel tactic to expand the size of its planned Upper East Side condo tower that Kallos says violates the spirit of the city’s zoning regulations.

The developer filed to alter the tax lot at 180 East 88th Street back in 2014, seeking to slice off a narrow, four-foot strip of the property. The change, which was eventually approved, allowed the developer to skirt requirements for buildings abutting the street, which in turn allowed DDG to build its planned tower a full 60 feet higher, opponents charge.

The “sole purpose” of the alteration, Kallos wrote in a letter to the city’s Department of Buildings, was “to frustrate the intent of the zoning resolution,” the New York Times reported.

Councilman Ben Kallos, a Democrat from the Upper East Side, sent a letter to the Buildings Department last Monday requesting an immediate stop-work order for the tower, arguing that the “unbuildable lot” could create a “dangerous precedent for a new and dangerous loophole.”

DCAS is in the process of revamping the review process to include more public review. Right now, the main notification is a brief appearance in the City Record, which you can view here for some light reading.

A fix is necessary to stop those looking to make a killing on land, that most precious NYC quantity. Besides profits there are a few other things we need in NYC — truly plentiful and affordable housing, schools and homeless shelters, as Councilmember Ben Kallos noted at Friday’s hearing.

It would be a shame for none of those needs to be addressed on plots that were intended to be preserved.

But those are the current rules of the game.

City Councilman Benjamin Kallos asked about the "windfall" developers received from the way in which properties were valued.

He cited that the Harlem property's deed was lifted for $875,000 and the plot was sold for $3.1 million. The Lower East Side deed was lifted for $16 million and the land was later sold for $116 million. 

Camilo told council members the agency is not moving forward on any new deed restrictions until its internal review and the investigations are complete. She said about 13 applications, many of them made years before, are currently on hold.

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