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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Andrew Berman, Executive Director of Village Preservation, on Tony Dapolito Recreation Center
5:56:44
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123 sec
Andrew Berman, representing Village Preservation, strongly objects to the proposed $5.552 billion budget allocation for demolishing the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center instead of restoring and modernizing it. He argues that demolition of this landmark building goes against preservation principles and is environmentally unsound.
- The center has been closed for over five years due to neglect and deferred maintenance by the parks department.
- Berman emphasizes that landmark designation should protect the building from demolition unless there's financial hardship or immediate danger of structural collapse.
- He calls for the Parks Department to use the $52 million to restore the building and for the City Council to supplement funding as needed.
Andrew Berman
5:56:44
Hi.
5:56:44
I'm Andrew Berman, executive director of Village Preservation, the largest membership organization in Greenwich Village, the East Village, Noho.
5:56:51
On behalf of this organization and thousands of New Yorkers who utilize the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center, I'm here to express my extreme objection to the proposed use of $5,552,000,000 dollars in the city budget to demolish rather than restore and modernize this beloved neighborhood recreation center.
5:57:10
The center's been closed for more than five years due to neglect and deferred maintenance by the parks department.
5:57:16
Beginning last year, the city made public their desire to demolish the building rather than finally undertake long overdue repairs.
5:57:22
This is a classic case of the city saying that one set of rules apply to them and another to everyone else.
5:57:29
This is a landmark building that this community fought to have preserved.
5:57:32
Landmark designation means this building should not be demolished unless the owner has a financial hardship where the building faces an immediate danger of structural collapse.
5:57:42
Neither are the case here, but the city wants the rest of us to do what they say, not what they do.
5:57:48
If we allow landmark buildings to be demolished simply because the owners have put off necessary maintenance and don't want to invest money in repairs rather than demolition, we have a very bleak future ahead of us.
5:58:00
We have we have personally toured this building and seen the conditions.
5:58:04
There is nothing here that cannot be repaired and brought up to code.
5:58:08
Our city is made up of countless buildings like this that faced similar challenges and were imaginatively reinvented and restored to continue to serve the public.
5:58:18
It's environmentally unsound to demolish rather than restore and an insult to the memory of both the community leader after whom the center is named and the thousands of largely poor and working class New Yorkers that the center served over the last hundred and twenty years simp to simply demolish the building out of laziness and lack of care.
5:58:38
We call upon the parks department to use the $52,000,000 to restore the building and for the city council to supplant that funding as needed to ensure