City of Oaks history on City of Rhetoric blog

This story has an amazing amount of information on the history of Raleigh's Growth, and delves into the unique mixture of good and mixed motives.

City of Oaks | City of Rhetoric

Best Sign of the Day

http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/07/20/590187/16-protesters-arrested-at-school.html

Growing Pains

Cash Michaels has put together a PSA on the coming event for diversity in our schools.

HERE



And Steve Ford of the N&O explains how the clash of the cultures began.

HERE



Mayor Meeker certainly stepped in it when he recently tried to describe the problem facing older neighborhoods in Raleigh when it comes to the effect of this new school board's education policy. Quoting Steve Ford's article:

Don't be shocked, but Southern resentment of Yankees once was focused on the Northerners' determination to stamp out the Confederate rebellion and the practice of slavery, on which the ruling class of Southern whites believed their way of life depended.

Now we see a Southern mayor - albeit a District of Columbia native educated at Yale and Columbia - articulating that familiar cultural tension, but from the standpoint of someone convinced that the perspective of long-time Southerners (of whatever race) is more closely aligned with black residents' interests.

There is of course a disconnect in Wake between 1) the old-timers who went through desegregation of the schools, merger of the former city and county school systems and the crafting of diversity policies, and 2) the many newer arrivals, often settling in the rapidly growing suburbs, who put prime importance on stability in school assignments and on having their kids attend school with kids from the same kind of background.

No matter how it is pointed out, it is an important point. So hooray for the Mayor with goo on his shoes. Let's make sure all this sudden growth in Raleigh leaves no family behind.

Raleigh's Union Station

SHARING THIS TASTY TIDBIT:

Union Station

Raleigh's Multi-Modal Transit Center

A draft report for Raleigh's Union Station has been completed for public review. The objective of the design and development strategy is twofold: first, to prepare a conceptual multi-modal transit center design that coordinates the location of various existing and future transit service areas with convenient connections among service platforms; and second, to prepare a development strategy for properties within and in the vicinity of the transit center.

A public open house will be held on May 12 to present the report findings and answer questions. The Raleigh Urban Design Center (133 Fayetteville Street) will host two opportunities to attend:

12:00 to 1:30 p.m. - Informal information session with City staff available to answer questions

6:30 to 8:00 p.m. - Formal presentation followed by question & answer

After the open house, a 30 day comment period will be provided followed by the preparation of a final report. Comments must be submitted to Martin Stankus by June 11, 2010.

OpEd on Toad Mansion in N&O today

The N&O ran an editorial today on the effects the economic crisis has had on the building boom in older neighborhoods.

Bizarrely, the teardown craze hit neighborhoods whose value lay precisely in their small-scale charm.

Harrop notes that the real estate crises has run in three waves:

This is part of what experts are calling the third wave of the real-estate crisis. The first wave was speculators fleeing when prices began to fall. The second was homeowners hit hard when their interest rates "reset" from their very low introductory rates. Many of these adjustable-rate mortgages were subprime.

The third wave has hit prime mortgages held by the cream of the borrowers. Many of these homeowners had suffered a job loss or collapse in business income.

Here in oldish Raleigh, Anderson Drive shows 8 properties for sale in a three block stretch. Not for sale at this time are a couple of occupied spec houses, who are riding this wave out as rental or owner occupied. Yet several of the adjoining side streets have a serious case of culture shock.

Chateaus were plopped down on intimate village streetscapes. Why do that in places beloved for their neighborly settings ....

Why do that, indeed.

For we who mourn the homes that the giants replaced, the sadness lingers. The builders of bigness may be moving on, but they've left their pyramids behind. Charming rows of bungalows in Seattle and Denver still sit in the shadows of bulky villas shoehorned on small lots.

Full read is here.

Raleigh's Hillsborough Street

Keep Hillsborough Street funky
Independent Weekly | 27 MAY 2009 • by Bob Geary, rjgeary (at) mac (dot) com
After the city's open house for the Hillsborough Street roundabouts project last month, some of us walked over to Players Retreat, a 51-year-old neighborhood saloon, to watch our Carolina Hurricanes battle the brutish New Jersey Devils. It was Game 7, and the Canes stole a 4-3 victory that night with two goals in the final 80 seconds, which caused everybody in the place to go completely nuts.

This, I thought, is what Hillsborough Street must've felt like in the glory days. ...


Virtually everything that gives Raleigh its identity is on Hillsborough Street or connected by it: The Capitol, downtown, the university, the old fairgrounds, the new fairgrounds, Glenwood South, Pullen Park, the Oberlin community, the Democratic and Republican state headquarters. I could go on, but it usually clinches such arguments to note that the YMCA where Andy and Barney stayed is on Hillsborough Street—or it used to be. There's a new "Y" where the old, Andy-era one stood, and the new one bares its back to the street.

Explore here.

or here.

How to Save a House and Create a Home

The current Independent Weekly has a cover story on Builders of Hope. Bob Geary begins the story this way, embedding the beginning of the real story here.

It wasn't only the spike in Raleigh teardowns, though the sight of perfectly habitable homes being reduced to rubble helped Nancy Murray settle on a strategy. She already was on a mission to learn all she could about affordable housing and how to build it. Call it audacity, call it a ministry, but Murray—an advertising executive turned builder and social activist—thought she could supply top-drawer, affordable houses in good neighborhoods to working-class families.

Then it clicked: Murray would save the homes imperiled by teardowns and have them moved to a new location. She would upgrade them using the best green techniques while preserving as much of their old wooden bones as possible, then sell the houses at prices high enough to recapture the costs but below their new appraised values.

Such was the genesis—the biblical as well as temporal meaning—of the nonprofit organization Murray created in 2006, Builders of Hope.

This most amazing story of hope becoming reality can be read here. The chance for hope to recycle itself into the future is the best development of all.

An Over the Top Award to Builders of Hope for this Positive Development.

The world is a stage ....

KAI RYSSDAL: There was a tiny glimmer of hope for the housing industry this morning. According to the Commerce Department, construction spending didn't fall as much last month as experts had been guessing. But it's still plenty hard to sell the houses that are being built right now. That's especially true in places like Nevada and California, where suburbs that were overbuilt and overpriced look like ghost towns now.

Developers are more desperate than ever to clear those foreclosed or unsold homes off their books. So they're stealing a page from the realtor's playbook. Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman tells us some builders are trying to stage the next real-estate turnaround.

HERE

What Happens in Texas

... let's hope it stays in Texas.

The nightmare is reported here.

On the Town

This is the latest story produced by WUNC-FM on Raleigh's growth. Raleigh's position at the top of the fastest-growth ranking is a surprise to some, and not a surprise to others.

"Well, we have a lot of green here in terms of the trees, the parks and greenways, a school system that is generally in good shape, traffic is not too bad at the moment…. just all kinds of positive things that we have here that other cities don’t have the combination of."

-Mayor Meeker

The Comp Plan is certainly a significant effort at trying to manage our growth so that this which is so positive remains a part of our fair city. Fallonia believes getting a plan onboard could not come soon enough. Ask any of the older neighborhoods how spot growth is going.

Story can be heard here.

Download

The Comp Plan can be studied here.

I hope it becomes a little park

Courtesy of flickr.com - tonyjcase

Day 074/365 - the Bugs Bunny house

You remember that old Loony Toons where a building is being constructed over Bugs Bunny's hole, and he goes to war to save his home. The end result is this huge skyscraper with a divot taken out of it where his hole is.

This house is kind of like that. The Big Evil Conglomerate bought up all the surrounding land save for this one house - the owner refused to move - so they built around her.

Makes for a very odd looking building, donchya think?

(The full story here)

This is an update to an earlier story about a woman in Seattle who held out against progress. An unlikely friendship developed between her and the super on the building project. He looked out for her until the end. From her obit:

During her last days, Martin said he made sure that she was comfortable at home.

"She got to do it the way she wanted to do it," Martin said. "She had already made up her mind, and that's the way it was going to be."

He still wonders what drew him to the cranky, stubborn woman who seemed to do all she could to discourage friends or visitors.

"I think we were a lot alike. I am stubborn and so was she. We had some incredible arguments," Martin said. "She was amazingly smart."

It's unclear what will happen now to the tiny two-bedroom, two-story house built in 1900. Macefield said she doesn't have any relatives. Her only child, a son, died of meningitis at 13.

Martin isn't holding out much hope for the old house. It leans seriously to one side, he said. "I straighten the pictures every time I come over," he said.

"Eventually it will all go to progress."

. . .

She adored animals, and could be seen almost every day standing outside her front yard tossing out seeds for the birds.

Bob Geary Writes Again!

Please see the Independent for the complete article:

Imagine Raleigh without sprawl

18 MAR 2009 • by Bob Geary, rjgeary (at) mac (dot) com

In the run-up to this week's public hearing on Raleigh's draft comprehensive plan, the advice to city leaders from a stream of visiting experts has been remarkably unified. Success, experts say, depends on taking city life "back to the future."

The era of suburban sprawl is ending, these planners maintain, not simply because of high gas prices, but because it is fundamentally unsustainable. As Christopher Leinberger, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., put it in a recent talk, the more "drivable suburban" neighborhoods a city allows, the lower the quality of life becomes for everyone living in them. The fastest-growing market now, said Leinberger, a developer, is for "walkable urban" places: the kind Raleigh doesn't have, yet needs to create, that are modeled on what cities were before cars took them over.

Such places are far more complicated to build and manage than the suburbs, Leinberger said. But done right, these areas improve as they grow. They have more cultural diversity and housing options—and with public transit, the chance for people to save money by owning fewer cars, or none. If Raleigh fails to create them, Leinberger warned, "You will be left in the 20th century."

The question for Raleigh is where these walkable urban places should be. ...

Hope you will be at the Comp Plan Hearing tonight: details follow, courtesy of Bob's article:

• What: A public hearing on Raleigh's draft comprehensive plan
  
• Where: Raleigh City Hall, 222 W. Hargett St.
  
• When: Thursday, March 19, 6:30 p.m.
  
• What to expect: Raleigh Planning Director Mitch Silver will present the draft plan, a blueprint for the city's growth over the next 20 years
• What's next: After the public hearing, the plan goes to the city planning commission. It is expected the commission will consider the plan this spring, then sent it back to City Council, which could adopt the plan as early as June.
  
• More info: Read about the process at Planning Raleigh 2030: tinyurl.com/6l8myd
  
• Learn more about the plan for the city's neighborhoods: tinyurl.com/dldeyc
  
• Leinberger's analysis and the other experts' jibes with the basic goal of the comprehensive plan to curb sprawl and guide development into designated "growth centers." Yet it also raises the issue of whether the plan identifies too many centers—including some in places that can never be urban.
  

Love this:

At the same conference, Mindy Fullilove, professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, said true urbanism is characterized by a sense of connectedness that allows people of diverse backgrounds and incomes to nonetheless feel that they live in the same community and share an identity with the same "great place."

At a time of rapid upheaval in the world, Fullilove said, people yearn for the kind of stability and belonging that existed—before urban renewal cut through it—in the Hill district of Pittsburgh where her parents grew up. It was a relatively poor, predominantly African-American community of row houses, storefronts and apartments. There were no high-rises, nothing fancy. But it was a place where people believed "whatever problems you have ... you can get together and solve them."

The Incredible Journey

The NEW YORK TIMES
To Save a Venturi House, It Is Moved
By TAMMY LA GORCE and A. G. SULZBERGER (NYT)
The owner of the Lieb House, a beach cottage designed by the architect Robert Venturi, had wanted to tear it down. Instead, it was rescued by relocating it. Here.

The spectacle attracted a throng of about 150 onlookers to the third floor of Pier 17 at South Street Seaport, including Mr. Venturi, the 83-year-old Pritzker Prize-winning architect who built the house in 1969 for Nathaniel and Judy Lieb. The Liebs had it built near the northern tip of Long Beach Island on the Jersey Shore. The current owner of the property planned to demolish the structure, prompting the unusual rescue effort, which involved selling the house to an owner willing to relocate it.

Bob Geary covers affordable housing initiatives

Click for larger image • North Hills East, the massive mixed-use development under construction in Raleigh, could have bus transit in its future. But the city didn't require affordable-housing units in exchange for a rezoning that allowed higher density. A task force says that policy must change. Photo by Bob Geary

Pushing Raleigh on affordable housing initiatives
It's time for inclusionary zoning, advocates say
11 FEB 2009 • by Bob Geary | INDYWEEK.COM

A task force appointed by the City Council wants Raleigh to become the first major city in North Carolina to employ inclusionary zoning as a way of boosting its supply of affordable housing.

Inclusionary zoning—which would require that large housing developments include some percentage of units affordable to low-income buyers—is a critical tool given Raleigh's worsening shortage of such housing, task force members and advocates say.

"The question is, are we going to include people of different income levels in all developments of a certain size?" asks Chris Estes, a task force member and the executive director of the N.C. Housing Coalition, an advocacy group. "Not doing so now has led to a variety of problems, including concentrations of poverty, lack of entry to jobs and the whole school reassignment issue."

A new housing analysis published by the Wake County Human Services Department shows roughly 46,000 Raleigh households (35 percent) are paying too much for their housing, using the generally accepted federal standard that housing should cost no more than 30 percent of family income. The main reason: There's not enough housing available at lower prices.

Most of those overpaying are renters with incomes below 50 percent of the median household income for the Raleigh-Cary metro area, which in 2006 was $69,800 a year. At the low end, for families with incomes below 30 percent of the median—$21,000 a year or less—the housing shortage is growing by some 1,300 units annually, according to the county's analysis.

The latter is a countywide figure, but other data in the study indicate that fast-growing Raleigh, which has accounted for about two-fifths of Wake's new housing this decade, is a major contributor to the affordable-housing problem, not the solution.

Lack of housing options has also hobbled Raleigh and the county's ability to serve a growing special needs population, including persons with mental, developmental and physical disabilities, according to the report. Some 10,600 such folks live in the county on incomes below the federal poverty level, which is $9,310 for a single person, $18,850 for a family of four—and most of them depend on services only available in Raleigh.

Thus the task force, created in connection with the development of a new comprehensive land-use plan for Raleigh, is preparing to recommend that the City Council take a series of aggressive steps, including:

Writing new zoning laws for transit-oriented development near commuter rail or bus stops, requiring "housing diversity and affordable housing choices."

Using incentives to encourage all new mixed-use developments, regardless of location, to be "mixed-income" as well.

Creating a new local funding source (a tax or impact fee) to help fund affordable housing—along with a land trust or other vehicle to assure that it remains affordable.

Targeting more of the existing funding—which includes federal housing funds as well as periodic city bond issues—to housing that's affordable at the lowest income levels, rather than to those at or near the $69,800 median.
The task force is chasing a moving target. When it met last week, it was still debating exactly how to word its recommendations, which are intended to be included in the comprehensive plan. Meanwhile, however, the comprehensive plan, issued in draft form in December, is being rewritten by the city's planning staff in anticipation of a public hearing March 3.

Task force members were divided on whether to call for "mandatory" or "voluntary" inclusionary zoning, but most were either in the first camp or else searching for a policy that would require results—actual affordable units in all large developments—without using red-flag words like "require" or "mandatory."

Their fear is that the City Council, which shelved an inclusionary zoning initiative by Councilor Thomas Crowder five years ago and has shown no inclination to take it up again, will reject any policy that seems to lean too hard on developers, especially in today's sad-sack economy.

"I'd like to see us make some progress on this issue," said member Gregg Warren, executive director of the Downtown Housing Improvement Corporation (DHIC), a city-supported low-income housing developer. "I think if we say 'mandatory,' we're going to get shot out of the saddle."

"As a builder, 'mandatory' to me means where else can I [build] where it isn't required?" member Richard Gaylord added. "It's something my heart wants to do, but my pro forma [financial statement] won't allow it."

On the other hand, Gaylord said, if Raleigh ties an inclusionary zoning requirement to incentives like density bonuses or other subsidies that would boost the returns to investors, not cost them money, they'd be better received.

According to Estes, most communities that have inclusionary zoning do just that, allowing builders to go taller or denser in exchange for including units they agree to sell at prices affordable (with payments of less than 30 percent of household income) to low-income buyers.

About 400 communities around the country have inclusionary zoning ordinances, but only a handful are in North Carolina. Davidson, the college town near Charlotte, was the first to adopt a mandatory ordinance in 2001. Chapel Hill has a non-mandatory program with guidelines that encourage developers to include 15 percent affordable units in rezoning applications, which are otherwise not likely to be approved.

"You can always work backwards," said Claude Trotter, a former city planning commission member, "but if we're not out there pushing for it"—an ordinance with teeth, that is—"you'll never get it." Trotter urged the group to "hold firm" for a mandatory approach.

One group that is pushing is Congregations for Social Justice (CSJ), a two-year-old coalition of 35 faith-based groups and 19 nonprofits in Raleigh that has made affordable housing one of its two top priorities. (The other is alternative, community-based corrections programs.)

Alan Reberg, a minister at Raleigh Mennonite Church and chair of CSJ's housing committee, has been a regular attendee at the task force meetings. CSJ helped persuade the City Council to create the task force; he thinks it's worked well, and should be succeeded by a permanent affordable housing commission that can advise the city on what an inclusionary zoning ordinance should say, and what else it should do to tackle a serious problem.

"With 46,000 households paying too much, I mean, good night!" Reberg said. "The shortages are horrendous, and the city and county do—I want to say they do a good job, but it's just woefully inadequate.

"And it's a job government can't do all by itself," he added, which is why an inclusionary policy is vital. "We need every segment of housing providers contributing, because no one sector is going to be able to pull it off."

Community Conversations: FEB 2, 2009

Practical Strategies for Historic Preservation

Maintaining Raleigh's unique community character is a hot topic in our city. Reasonable people can disagree about what our priorities ought to be and how best to achieve them, but the public discourse doesn't need to be contentious. Bill Schmickle, author of The Politics of Historic Districts: A Primer for Grassroots Preservation, will share his North Carolina-based perspectives on the political dynamics that drive proponents and opponents, especially in public forums, and how best to navigate them.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Please bring your friends and neighbors.

Monday, February 2, 2009

7:30 - 9:00 pm

Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church
2723 Clark Ave, Raleigh NC

Sponsored by Preservation North Carolina.

Legislating Conversation?

Letting the Neighbors Know About Construction Plans
By Ann E. Marimow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 15, 2009; GZ03

In the wake of legislation approved last month to combat "mansionization" of communities, Montgomery County Council member Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda) is pressing ahead with a companion initiative meant to give neighbors a heads-up about major renovations or tear-downs of older homes.

Berliner calls the bill a "conversation starter" among neighbors. But builders and County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) say they see something more troublesome.

Under current practice, neighbors and neighborhood associations learn of construction projects after building permits have been issued and displayed on properties. Berliner's measure would require builders in some cases to notify certain neighbors and civic associations before a permit is approved.

Opponents of that approach are concerned that the measure would set up the false expectation that notice to neighbors would allow them to block or influence approval of construction.

Berliner seemed surprised by the level of discomfort with the bill. On Tuesday, he offered to significantly narrow the legislation to apply only to construction that replaces homes that are torn down or additions that are greater than 50 percent of an existing structure. It would not affect small-scale renovations or additions.

"This is notice only -- without any legal rights attached to it," Berliner said, "to encourage early conversation with your neighbors."

Berliner has the backing of council member Marc Elrich (D-At Large), who called the bill an "innocuous" requirement.

But the proposed changes did little to convince the building community, whose concerns Leggett shares. Raquel Montenegro, an associate director for government affairs at the Maryland-National Capital Building Industry Association, said the concern is "not what the bill says" but that residents "will believe they are entitled to stop construction on the property next door." She said it would be difficult for the county government to educate residents and to lower expectations.

. . .

Staff writer Miranda S. Spivack contributed to this report.

Raleigh Comprehensive Plan

Where we are in the process:

The Public Review Draft is here!

The City of Raleigh is pleased to announce the availability of the Public Review Draft of the 2030 Comprehensive Plan. This is a complete draft, made available to all interested individuals and parties for review and comment. The Department of City Planning will be taking comments from December 1, 2008 through January 31, 2009. Click here to browse the document on-line, comment directly on the Plan's text, and download a printable version. This page also contains information about where to browse a paper copy, and how to provide input on the document outside of the on-line tools.

What's next in the process?

The Public Review Draft has been released, and a variety of meetings and workshops will be held throughout the months of December, 2008 and January, 2009 to brief the public and appointed boards and commissions, and to receive input. The official roll-out of the Public Review Draft was held on December 3, 2008 at the Convention Center downtown. Most significantly, three citywide Public Workshops on the Plan will be held on January 13, 14 and 15 at various locations throughout Raleigh. Click here for a full schedule of meetings and briefings. All meetings are open to the public.

Begin your research HERE. You may be pleasantly surprised. Or not. Review period ends on January 31.

Luxury Liners

http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/1323118.html

excerpts:

Luxury not selling

Sales of all Triangle homes have been off 28 percent through the first nine months of the year. But sales of luxury homes -- those $500,000 and above -- are off 66 percent, according to a Triangle Area Residential Realty report that tracks the luxury market through Sept. 30.

The market for homes above $1 million, albeit small, is particularly shaky. At least 121 homes priced above $1 million were sold during the first nine month of 2008. That's down 28 percent from last year. At the same time, the number of million-dollar homes listed for sale grew 59 percent -- more than twice the growth rate of all listings.

"Developers kind of were convinced that we were Atlanta and that we were going to have this massive influx of people who were going to buy $1 million housing," said Stacey P. Anfindsen, an appraiser a Birch Appraisal Group of Cary, who prepared the report. "That's the bet that they made. And they lost."

In Fallonia's neighborhood, this translates to 4 unoccupied speculative monoliths and at least 4 unsold but occupied overthetoppers. In addition, two are currently being readied for the market, one other avoided foreclosure by selling for a $500,000 loss.

The greatest mystery is the unoccupied owner built mansionette (you can't be a mansion on less than .5 acres, can you?) nearby. Best guess is that by not occupying until after the new year, the gargantuan property tax increase is avoided a little longer. A little troublesome considering every one on the street got whopped, except the most expensive house out there.

Is there any wonder why these massive replacement homes are seen with mixed feelings in older neighborhoods?

Loopholes vs Landmarks in NYC

NYTimes.com | Preservationists See Bulldozers Charging Through a Loophole | By ROBIN POGREBIN | Published: November 28, 2008

Hours before the sun came up on a cool October morning in 2006, people living near the Dakota Stables on the Upper West Side were suddenly awakened by the sound of a jackhammer.

Preserving the City
The Wrecking Race
This is the second in a series of articles examining the workings of New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Preservationists lost a battle to protect the Dakota, built in 1894 and shown here in 1944, after the owner secured a stripping permit.

Soon word spread that a demolition crew was hacking away at the brick cornices of the stables, an 1894 Romanesque Revival building, on Amsterdam Avenue at 77th Street, that once housed horses and carriages but had long served as a parking garage.

In just four days the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission was to hold a public hearing on pleas dating back 20 years to designate the low-rise building, with its round-arched windows and serpentine ornamentation, as a historic landmark.

But once the building’s distinctive features had been erased, the battle was lost. The commission went ahead with its hearing, but ultimately decided not to designate the structure because it had been irreparably changed. Today a 16-story luxury condominium designed by Robert A. M. Stern is rising on the site: the Related Companies is asking from $765,000 for a studio to $7 million or more for a five-bedroom unit in the building.

The strategy has become wearyingly familiar to preservationists. A property owner — in this case Sylgar Properties, which was under contract to sell the site to Related — is notified by the landmarks commission that its building or the neighborhood is being considered for landmark status. The owner then rushes to obtain a demolition or stripping permit from the city’s Department of Buildings so that notable qualities can be removed, rendering the structure unworthy of protection.

“In the middle of the night I’m out there at 2 in the morning, and they’re taking the cornices off,” said Gale Brewer, a city councilwoman who represents that part of the Upper West Side. “We’re calling the Buildings Department, we’re calling Landmarks. You get so beaten down by all of this. The developers know they can get away with that.” ...

Loopholes big enough for bulldozers to drive through seem to be quite the problem in every area interested in balancing preservation of that which makes a place valuable and growth which is positive. We have our own loopholes around this town, which is why your neighborhood may have historic status and a teardown problem at the same time. In New York, it boils down to this.

Under current rules, once a landmark hearing has been scheduled, building owners may not obtain demolition or alteration permits. But if such a permit is secured before a hearing is scheduled, as was the case with Dakota Stables and 711 Third Avenue, the work may proceed without penalty.

Safeguards crumble because the landmarks commission and the buildings department lack an established system of communication, and commissioners often are unaware that permits have been issued. There is also no set procedure by which the buildings department alerts the commission when someone seeks a permit to strip off architectural detail.

The NY Times six month study of landmarks, commissions and preservation can be found here.

Giving Thanks

Enjoyed this ...

http://vincemichael.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/thanks/