Bill de Blasio says he’s a “progressive.” Well, he now has a chance to show he’s truly committed to “progress” — by urging the City Council to approve a long-overdue makeover for one of the most vital areas of the city: Midtown East.
The average building there dates to World War II. Problem is, obsolete zoning laws — passed more than 50 years ago — make it impractical (if not impossible) to improve buildings.
Mayor Bloomberg’s team has put forward a good plan to reform those laws so owners can upgrade or replace their buildings to make them more attractive to commercial tenants.
That would fit well with de Blasio’s vows to close the city’s “inequality” gap. As New York Sen. Chuck Schumer noted on these pages, firms that will take space in these buildings employ more than CEOs. They also create jobs for analysts, clerical workers, livery drivers and other middle-class New Yorkers. And the rehab projects will gin up business for construction workers.
The area, Schumer says, “must be allowed to modernize and meet the needs of today’s, and tomorrow’s, workers.” Exactly. That’s the very definition of “progress.”
The council is set to vote on the plan any day. De Blasio could help it pass by pushing council members to sign on. Just one hitch: The key councilman, Dan Garodnick, who represents the district, has suggested putting off any zoning fixes until at least next year, in hopes of extracting more concessions. De Blasio himself recently suggested that “we should press the pause button.”
How different this is from what de Blasio promised New York back in July, when he spoke about development this way: “We can’t afford a process rife with delays, subject to knee-jerk NIMBY-ism . . . We need to grow, and we have to be aggressive about it.
“The things I value as a progressive — good jobs and affordable housing — cannot happen if projects stall or never materialize. If we aren’t doing everything possible as a city government to spur on development . . . we risk nothing getting built at all — and that is the worst possible outcome.”
We’ll soon learn whether he meant it.