Land Use

Councilman Ben Kallos, a Manhattan Democrat, said he wants to protect Central Park from being shadowed by skyscrapers.

Mr. Kallos said: ... A Billionaire should not be able to take light and air from Roosevelt Island...

New York City Council Member Ben Kallos, representing District 5, said the most important thing was to include regulations for supetalls in the new the Zoning for Quality and Affordability (ZQA) proposal issued by NYC Planning.

"Central Park is everybody's park, and billionaires shouldn't be able to buy the sky and cast the rest of the city in shadows," said City Councilman Ben Kallos of Manhattan.

Councilman Ben Kallos is working with the East River 50s Alliance, a community group that coalesced around an effort to defeat plans for a 900-foot skyscraper in Sutton Place, to raise the money and dole it out to the analysts, planners, and lawyers that the activists will need in order to usher a rezoning bid through the city’s uniform land-use review process, or ULURP.

“We’re here to stop the parade of super-scrapers across 57th Street,” Kallos said. “Draw the line at a residential neighborhood.”

“Intro. 775 does not resolve the problem it seeks to address,” said Councilmember Ben Kallos, who is a member of the Landmarks Subcommittee and opposes the bill, adding that it would “lay waste” to communities.

“We don’t want to create a situation where landlords can game the system and run out the clock,” said Councilman Ben Kallos, a Democrat from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, who is a member of the Landmarks Subcommittee and an opponent of the bill.