REMARKS
Preserving landmark buildings through air rights flexibility
4:53:32
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57 sec
Chair Garodnick explains how the City of Yes proposal aims to preserve landmark buildings by providing more flexibility in transferring air rights.
- The proposal will make it easier for landmarks to transfer their air rights in the immediate vicinity and at the next intersection
- This change addresses the current difficulty in effectuating air rights transfers, with only about 15 successful transfers over the last 50 years
- The goal is to give landmark buildings more opportunities to benefit from their unused development rights, as originally intended by the landmarks law
Daniel Garodnick
4:53:32
You bet.
4:53:33
I'll do them both.
4:53:34
First, on how to preserve landmarks.
4:53:38
The first on that, by enabling more flexibility for landmarks to be able to transfer their own air rights, we are giving them an opportunity which is functionally not available to them today.
4:53:52
When we created our landmarks law in New York City and said, okay.
4:53:55
Well, we're gonna lock you in as a landmark.
4:53:57
We're gonna give you the flexibility to sell off the air rights which we're trapping you with on your site.
4:54:04
But at the same time, we created a special permit process, which was so difficult to effectuate that we've only seen about 15 of them over the last 50 years.
4:54:16
So we are gonna make it easier for landmarks to be able to transfer those air rights a little bit more freely in the immediate vicinity and at the next intersection to give them a chance to be able to do what we wanted the landmarks to do in the first instance.
